AIDS stands for Acquired Immune Deficiency Disease. It is caused by a virus.

The disease originated somewhere in Africa about 20 years ago. There it first appeared as a mysterious ailment afflicting primarily heterosexuals of both sexes. It probably was spread especially fast by primarily female prostitutes there. AIDS has already become a crisis of STAGGERING proportions in parts of Africa. In Zaire, it is estimated that over twenty percent of the adults currently carry the virus. That figure is increasing. And what occurred there will, if no cure is found, most likely occur here among heterosexual folks.

AIDS was first seen as a disease of gay males in this country. This was a result of the fact that gay males in this culture in the days bef

The AIDS virus is extremely fragile, and is killed by exposure to mild detergents or to Clorox, among other things. AIDS itself may be transmitted by actual virus particles, or by the transmission of living human CELLS that contain AIDS viral DNA already grafted onto the human DNA. Or both. Which of these two mechanisms is the main one is not known as I write this essay. But the fact remains that it is VERY hard to catch AIDS unless one engages in certain specific activities.

Some people think you can get AIDS by any thing like touching but they are ignorant. Casual contact (shaking hands, hugging, sharing tools) cannot transmit AIDS. Although live virus has been recovered from saliva of AIDS patients, the techniques used to do this involved concentrating the virus to extents many thousands of times greater than occurs in normal human contact, such as kissing (including "deep" or "French" kissing). Thus, there remains no solid evidence that even "deep" kissing can transmit AIDS. Similarly, there is no evidence that sharing food or eating utensils with an AIDS patient can transmit the virus. The same is true for transmission by sneezing or coughing. There just is no current evidence that the disease can be transmitted that way. The same may be true even for BITING, though here there may be some increased (though still remote) chance of transmitting the disease.

ore AIDS had an average of 200 to 400 new sexual contacts per year. This figure was much higher than common practice among heterosexual (straight) men or women. In addition, it turned out that rectal sex was a particularly effective way to transmit the disease, and rectal sex is a common practice among gay males. For these reasons, th

Some common words found in the essay are:
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