HIV/AIDS: A New Era of Treatment

I 1982 four words caused panic across the world, changing the way many thought about disease and survival. Those words were acquired immune defi ciency syndrome, or AIDS, which is caused by the human immunodefi ciency virus, or HIV. Deaths from this disease increased throughout the years without any end in sight. The United States suffered its share of deaths and the most deaths were experienced in 1995. In that year, approximately 50,489 people died from the virus (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2009). This high death rate caused many to question how a disease could take so many lives in such an industrialized and advanced society. More surprisingly, people began to blame the government for not working fast enough to fi nd a cure and even worse, many claimed the government was behind the creation and spread of the disease. This public epidemic caused people to unite with the common goal of fi nding a cure for this deadly, unrelenting disease.