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CONCLUSION
HIV and AIDS have been repeatedly linked in time, place and population group; the appearance of HIV in the blood supply has preceded or coincided with the occurrence of AIDS cases in every country and region where AIDS has been noted. Among individuals without HIV, AIDS-like symptoms are extraordinarily rare, even in populations with many AIDS cases. Individuals as different as homosexual men, elderly transfusion recipients, heterosexual women, drug-using heterosexual men and infants have all developed AIDS with only one common denominator: infection with HIV. Laboratory workers accidentally exposed to highly concentrated HIV and health care workers exposed to HIV-infected blood have developed immunosuppression and AIDS with no other risk factor for immune dysfunction. Scientists have now used PCR to find HIV in virtually every patient with AIDS and to show that HIV is present in large and increasing amounts even in the pre-AIDS stages of HIV disease. Researchers also have demonstrated a correlation between the amount of HIV in the body and progression of the aberrant immunologic processes seen in people with AIDS. Despite this plethora of evidence, the notion that HIV does not cause AIDS continues to find a wide audience in the popular press, with potential negative impact on HIV-infected individuals and on public health efforts to control the epidemic. HIV-infected individuals may be convinced to forego anti-HIV treatments that can forestall the onset of the serious infections and malignancies of AIDS (Edelman et al., 1991). Pregnant HIV-infected women may dismiss the option of taking AZT, which can reduce the likelihood of transmission of HIV from mother to infant (Connor et al., 1994; Boyer et al., 1994). People may be dissuaded from being tested for HIV, thereby missing the opportunity, early in the course of disease, for counselling as well as for treatment with drugs to prevent AIDS-related infections such as PCP. Such prophylactic measures prolong survival and improve the quality of life of HIV-infected individuals (CDC, 1992b). Most troubling is the prospect that individuals will discount the threat of HIV and continue to engage in risky sexual behavior and needle sharing. If public health messages on AIDS prevention are diluted by the misconception that HIV is not responsible for AIDS, otherwise preventable cases of HIV infection and AIDS may occur, adding to the global tragedy of the epidemic. |