Brady Gannon
Artifact 9
Human immunodeficiency virus, otherwise known as HIV, is an extremely deadly disease effecting countless people worldwide every year. HIV can be treated and controlled although not cured. The disease is not discriminative and can kill anyone regardless of race, gender, age, or sexual orientation contrary to public belief. Gay men, African Americans, sex workers, and drug users are all at a higher risk to contract. Because of this, in the US, during the HIV/AIDS epidemic, there was a strong stigma against these aforementioned groups.
In the gay community (specifically the subgroup of men who have sex with men [MSM]) the stigma was particularly strong. There are about 1.1 million people who have HIV and it is estimated that 1 in 7 of those 1.1 million are unaware that they have it. This is because of the homophobia that runs rampant in the United States, gay men or MSM have less health seeking behavior because of the stigma, which increases their likelihood to develop depression or anxiety. Because these men don’t get tested and are unaware of their condition, this makes HIV so much more transmissible and so much more deadly.
In the US, HIV awareness has increased over the years once people acknowledged how deadly the virus was. With this awareness came many different treatments and preventative methods to protect these at risk groups from contracting HIV. The most important and helpful methods of prevention was education. A large percentage of people in the US were not aware how HIV was spread, which didn’t help the stigma against those groups prone to HIV. Many thought they could get it from touching someone infected. This helped the social stigma and people began to realize it was only through blood and sexual contact you can contract HIV. Another measure taken to prevent the spread of HIV was clean needle sites, some groups provide clean needles for drug uses to have so they are not re-using dirty needles and potentially spreading HIV. This is a controversial method because there is the argument that we would be enabling the bad habits of the drug users but if they are going to inject anyway, they should at least use a clean needle so they don’t spread HIV any more than it is already being spread.
In American culture the stigma was strong againt HIV/AIDS until American actor Rock Hudson announced he had the disease and eventually passed away in 1985. Other notable celebrities to lose their battle to HIV/AIDS are singers Ricky Wilson and Freddie Mercury. Through these celebrities’ deaths, the awareness of HIV became more prominent and the general acceptance grew.
HIV is not even close to being eradicated today and still a very deadly disease, in my opinion if we want to overcome HIV we as a culture need to get rid of the stigma against seeking help and getting tested. If that one person in every 7 knows they have HIV the number of deaths can decrease significantly and we can switch from working to prevent to working to cure the horrible disease and the impact that it has.
Help Received: Class Notes
https://www.avert.org/professionals/hiv-social-issues/homophobia
https://www.cdc.gov/hiv/risk/index.html
https://aidsinfo.nih.gov/understanding-hiv-aids/fact-sheets/20/48/the-basics-of-hiv-prevention
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_HIV/AIDS#Pre-1980s