Hello, my name is Rachael and I am currently researching the effect AIDS had in the 1980's for a research paper, and I was wondering if people wouldn't mind sharing the fears that they experienced during this decade. When AIDS first emerged, there wasn't a lot known about it or the cause. Dr. Robert Gallo announced in '83 that he had found HIV to be the cause, and I believe it was in '84 that Peter Duesberg challened the HIV theory. How do you feel about the clashing theories? Who do you believe to be right? If i could basically have input on the structure of the '80s, the feelings, emotions, fears stimulated by AIDS that would be a great help. Thank you.

Rachael

Hello, my name is Rachael and I am currently researching the effect AIDS had in the 1980's for a research paper, and I was wondering if people wouldn't mind sharing the fears that they experienced during this decade. When AIDS first emerged, there wasn't a lot known about it or the cause. Dr. Robert Gallo announced in '83 that he had found HIV to be the cause, and I believe it was in '84 that Peter Duesberg challened the HIV theory. How do you feel about the clashing theories? Who do you believe to be right? If i could basically have input on the structure of the '80s, the feelings, emotions, fears stimulated by AIDS that would be a great help. Thank you.

Rachael

I heard the ridiculous notion on the radio that it was a disease brought here by aliens

Hello, my name is Rachael and I am currently researching the effect AIDS had in the 1980's for a research paper, and I was wondering if people wouldn't mind sharing the fears that they experienced during this decade. When AIDS first emerged, there wasn't a lot known about it or the cause. Dr. Robert Gallo announced in '83 that he had found HIV to be the cause, and I believe it was in '84 that Peter Duesberg challened the HIV theory. How do you feel about the clashing theories? Who do you believe to be right? If i could basically have input on the structure of the '80s, the feelings, emotions, fears stimulated by AIDS that would be a great help. Thank you.

RachaelI was employed in the 80's and it was thought to be a disease only homosexual men could get. No one knew that the virus had been around since the beginning of time. We had just been through the sexual revolution in the 60's and the birth control pill had freed up a lot of people to have unprotected sex so no one thought that HIV was possible to get through heterosexual sex. The two theories that still predominate are that the HIV virus as we know it in the USA was caused by African natives eating the brain of the green monkey which was considered a delicacy. The green monkey was of course bleeding all over the natives who were capturing and killing these monkeys were being infected and then they were bringing these infections back to the villages. With air travel being more available to more and more people travel was becoming common place among a lot of people. American military was becoming present in all of the world as well. One of the other theories that was freely roaming in the 80's was that it was a Soviet lab experiment that was perpetuated for biological warfare and that the experiments with had been conducted in Africa. I personally believe that the virus has always been with us and that people have always had it and that it was just not recognized as cause of death until more high powered microscopes were invented. People have always died of flus, pneumonias and other unidentified causes. Opportunistic infections have always been around as well.
I believe that economics drives medicine and Science more than it has ever driven it in the past and that although HIV is a horrible, horrible, virus, there are other things out there as well, such as Leukemia, Gulf War Syndrome and all kinds of cancers. The treatments themselves are devasting. I think at this time the incidence of emphysema, and other lung and heart problems are just as devasting but not as popular to talk about since they do not involve people's sexual lives.