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A disease like none other, AIDS, took the world by storm and grabbed the attention of the medical community. It is rather frightening to realize that this disease is reaching pandemic infection levels throughout the world. This disease is life altering and can quickly become a death sentence. While we are currently making slow advances in the treatment of AIDS and HIV, a review of the historical timeline of this disease can provide us with a clearer picture of how it has impacted the world today. In the year of 1958, the disease known as AIDS struck its first victim. A man by the name of David Carr began to become very ill, expressing mysterious symptoms such as pneumocystis carinii. The following year, he died. The disease was still unknown at that point, and tissue samples from Carr showed to be HIV positive when tested in 1990. 1959 also showed the first active HIV infection. A man in the Congo proved to be positive for two of six of the genes that make up the AIDS disease. His blood was preserved and later tested. Consequently, the first case of AIDS in America occurred in 1959. A Haitian man in New York City died of pneumocystis carinii, a common problem for those with AIDS. Dr. Gordon Hennigar examined the man's corpse and believed AIDS was responsible for the death. 1969 was the next time that AIDS would show itself in America. A teenager in St. Louis was found to have died of an illness that left his doctors clueless. In 1987, tests confirmed that the boy had indeed died of AIDS. This fierce disease continued its rampage and in 1975 the symptoms of AIDS began to appear throughout Africa. In the next several years, the disease ran rampant around the world. Its widespread outbreak was proven when in 1976 a Norwegian sailor died of AIDS and it was believed that he contracted the virus in Africa in the 1960's. The African nation proved to have further cases of the disease spreading when in 1977 a man from Denmark and a woman from San Francisco were found to be infected with the disease, with both cases coming from the African continent. Unfortunately the San Francisco woman was a mother who had given birth to three children. All of her children were tested positive for the disease. HIV-2 was first diagnosed in 1978, occurring in a Portuguese man who claimed he probably got infected in Guinea-Bissau. In 1980, a man named Gaetan Dugas traveled to the bathhouses of New York and likely introduced the disease to America in a major way. He became known as "Patient Zero" due to the wide spread of the infection that he caused. In 1984, the HIV virus as it is known today became officially recognized by the United States. Dr. Robert Gallo was credited with discovering the virus as well as stating his belief that the virus was what was actually causing AIDS. This was a significant breakthrough since up to this time there were simply ideas that the variety of activities abundant in the homosexual community were responsible for the contraction and spread of the disease. Dr. Gallo continued to push the advances of AIDS research in the medical community and in 1996 he ultimately discovered that a compound known as chemokines can be helpful in slowing the progression of the disease. This singular advance proved extremely beneficial to AIDS patients everywhere. Understanding the historical significance in the timeline of AIDS helps us to better understand from where we have come and how much farther we have to go in conquering this beast of a disease.
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