EFFECTS OF OPTIMISM ON THE SEXUAL BEHAVIORS OF HIV/AIDS SUBJECTS
A disease later to be defined and designated as acquired immunity deficiency syndrome (AIDS) began attacking human beings at some point in the 1970s or, perhaps, even earlier. The discovery in 1980 that a virus, the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), was the causative agent of AIDS confronted humankind with an epidemic potential not encountered since the polio emerged in 1885 and, perhaps, not since bubonic plague swept northern Europe in the fourteenth century.
The absence of a cure for AIDS or a vaccine for HIV resulted in a massive effort to stop the progress of HIV/AIDS through behavior modification. Over time, these efforts began to produce positive outcomes, as the incidence of HIV-positive diagnoses, the development of AIDS among HIV-positive patients, and AIDS deaths began to decline in the developed nations where such efforts were the most intensive and well funded. Disturbing changes in these trends began to appear by mid-1999; however, as the Centers for Disease Control in the United States found that the rates of decline in HIV-positive diagnoses, the development of AIDS among HIV-positive patients, and AIDS deaths were slowing (Bynum, 1999). A research study investigating these trend changes is presented in the remainder of this proposal.
A number of propositions have been advanced as explanations for the apparent changes in the trends in HIV-positive diagnoses, AIDS development among HIV-positive patients, and AIDS deaths. Prominent among these propositions are those that postulate that medications are becoming less effective, mutations of the HIV are becoming more virulent, appropriate HIV/AIDS education is failing to reach younger people, and that the very efficacy of the medications used in the treatment of AIDS had led to a complacency among members of at-risk (for HIV/AIDS) population that is manifested as a retreat from safer-sex practic...