General Knowledge about the Diseases:
HIV and AIDs are diseases that are often talked about together, since in a way they go hand in hand. HIV, or human immunodeficiency virus, is contracted through blood and bodily fluids. Large levels of HIV in the body lead to the destruction of CD4 lymphocytes, which are responsible for stimulating various types of immune cells. Eventually, continuous low levels of CD4 lymphocytes lead to an “opportunistic infection” (Melhuish, 1995), creating acquired immune deficiency syndrome, or AIDS. Currently there are two main types of HIV. HIV-1 is more worldwide, considered more aggressive and fast-progressing, while HIV-2 is harder to spread and mainly found in West Africa. As of 2016, there are almost 37 million people living with HIV.
As of 2016, there are almost 37 million people living with HIV. HIV and AIDS create higher risks of developing illnesses and infections, and puts patients at higher risks of developing non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, cervical, head, and neck cancers. That being said, the amount of new cases a year has decreased steadily, with there being an 11% decline from 2010 to 2016. Due to that and new advancements in treatments, deaths as a result of AIDS has also significantly decreased.
Epidemic of the 20th century:
In less than 10 years, over 100,000 deaths due to AIDS occurred in the US. The first reporting of the virus was made in June 1981, when 5 young men were treated for a type of pneumonia in different Los Angeles hospitals. Two of the 5 men died, with all five having the same infection at one point or another. About a month later, investigations started due to an increase in Kaposi’s Sarcoma and pneumonia cases in nearly 30 gay men. In 1982, the CDC used the term AIDS for the first time, as it became understood that AIDS could be passed through the blood and bodily fluids. In the years after that, more research finds that AIDS is caused by HIV and that gay men are the largest demographic reporting cases of the illness.
It took more than four years after the virus was discover for President Ronal Reagan to publicly acknowledge AIDS, and the New York Times hadn’t made it a major news story until nearly 600 people had died from it in the US. By the time ACT UP was founded, over 15,000 Americans had already died. Eventually more information is mailed nationwide about how to prevent AIDS, but by 1992 ,AIDS became the most common cause of death for young and middle-aged men in the US.
Work of the ACT-UP Organization:
ACT UP, the acronym for AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, was a prominent organization during the AIDS epidemic in the 20th century. Founded in 1987, ACT UP was in almost 20 countries, the activist group had around 150 different chapters. Although it didn’t have a large amount of members, the group often held noticeable protests, like disrupting political and scientific conferences with foghorns, fake blood, and smoke bombs. (France, 2020).
The organization was viewed in a negative light by both mainstream news outlet and gay newspapers, being considered to vulgar and overt when protesting. The organization took advantage of this reputation to create a sort of aesthetic, using progressive protests and artwork to further bring awareness to the epidemic. An example of this would be the Silence Equals Death Project, which became synonymous with ACT UP and the AIDS awareness fight.
Eventually, the group split into more specific communities like a womens committee, minority committee (it is worth noting that many of the original members of ACT UP were white and the organization did suffer from allegations of racism), science, housing committees. The members of ACT UP and its committees went on to help pass legislature to redirect budget funds for housing, and create treatments for AIDS.
Advancements in Treatment of HIV and AIDS:
ART, or Antiretroviral therapy, was introduced to the public in 1995. Since HIV is a retrovirus, its molecular information incorporates itself into our genome, which is then replicated and read to be turned into RNA. From there, it is turned into proteins that can act on and damage our cells. In HIV’s case, it only binds to CD4 cells, which are responsible for helping activate the immune system. HIV binds to these cells’ genomes, creates many copies of itself, and destroys the original cell as it leaves to search for new host cells. ART works by stopping the replication of the HIV virus in the body, which keeps the virus genome in the body but prevents it from infecting new cells or being able to even create more copies of itself. Thanks to ART and other HIV preventative treatments like vaccines and pre-exposure preventative treatments, it is much harder to get infected by HIV even if you are at-risk. Thanks to ART, it is also possible for those that already have HIV to live more normal lives without the fear of developing AIDS or passing HIV along to a partner.
Because of the many advances in treatments and prevention, the mount of new HIV infections went down 31% from 2010 to 2020, and while still a very high number, almost 700,000 people died from AIDs in 2020, compared to nearly 2 million in 2024.
Donating Blood with HIV or AIDS:
After it was discovered in 1982 that HIV can be passed through the blood, regulations had to be passed to keep non-infected patients and healthcare workers safe from risk of contracting HIV. Due to gay men being the largest affected demographic, the US CDC reached a consensus to ban sexually active gay men from donating blood, since they were most likely to have the disease and the most at-risk group, and there still wasn’t a way to test for HIV infection. Men who had ever been identified as at-risk were banned indefinitely from donating blood in the US. Many other countries set similar regulations, while others simply banned men for 5 to 10 years. While many agree that, at a time with no way of testing for HIV, banning the largest at-risk demographic was a fair call to make to keep others safe, many new technologies have been passed since then. We now know exactly how to test for HIV and AIDS, and now have new treatments like vaccines and Antiretroviral therapy to prevent and lower the levels of HIV virus in patients. These treatments lower the amount of virus present to a level of enough that it isn’t transmissible, meaning that if someone taking treatments for HIV were to donate blood, they wouldn’t pass the virus to the blood recipient. Many have brought this up to dispute the donation regulations, saying that we have entered into a point where the laws are no longer preventative but discriminatory.
This summer, the American Red Cross changed protocol to allow for more people to donate blood. In the past, sexually active gay men or anyone in relationships with gay men were not allowed to donate blood. Their rules were changed so that all gay men in monogamous relationships are now allowed to donate blood.
References:
CDC. “HIV/AIDs Timeline | NPIN.” Cdc.gov, 2014, npin.cdc.gov/pages/hiv-and-aids-timeline. Accessed 28 Oct. 2023.
France, David. “How ACT up Remade Political Organizing in America (Published 2020).” The New York Times, 2023, www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/13/t-magazine/act-up-aids.html. Accessed 28 Oct. 2023.
Melhuish, Anne, and Penny Lewthwaite. “Natural History of HIV and AIDS.” Medicine (Abingdon. 1995, UK Ed.), vol. 50, no. 5, 2022, pp. 298–303, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mpmed.2022.02.011.
Wainberg, Mark A., et al. “Reconsidering the Lifetime Deferral of Blood Donation by Men Who Have Sex with Men.” Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ), vol. 182, no. 12, 2010, pp. 1321–24, https://doi.org/10.1503/cmaj.091476.
Weiner, Andrew. “Disposable Media, Expendable Populations – ACT UP New York: Activism, Art, and the AIDS Crisis, 1987–1993.” Journal of Visual Culture, vol. 11, no. 1, 2012, pp. 103–09, https://doi.org/10.1177/1470412911430584.