What is HIV?
HIV or Human immunodeficiency Virus is a virus that causes the immune system to fail. It is contracted via bodily fluids such as blood, semen, vaginal secretions and breast milk from an already infected person. The four most common way to contract HIV are unsafe sex, contaminated needles, breast milk and during birth where it is passed from the mother to the newborn. HIV caused the immune system, the system in the body which fights infections both viral and bacterial, to fail leading to the person with HIV become more susceptible to infections. HIV does not kill people they usually die from secondary complications such as the common cold or flu which their body cannot protect them against. A person who has contracted HIV will progress to having AIDS in on average about 10 years.
What is AIDS?
AIDS or Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system that is brought on by HIV. A person with AIDS will usually pick up any infection that is prevalent in their community. They will experience illness more frequently and much longer than a normal healthy person.
Who Discovered the Human immunodeficiency Virus?
The discovery of HIV came about as scientists tried to find a cause for AIDS. AIDS was first recognized in the late 1980’s and was observed mostly in drug users and gay men. They found that these people were developing Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia and Kaposi’s sarcoma a rare skin cancer that usually only developed in people with compromised immune systems. In 1983 two different research groups discovered that a retrovirus was responsible for the immune deficiencies in AIDS patients. One group lead by Robert Gallo claimed that the virus was very similar to other human T-lymphotropic viruses (HTLVs) so named the virus HTLV-III. The other group lead by Luc Montagnier showed that the protein core was very different to those viruses and named the virus lymphadenopathy-associated virus (LAV). A compromise was struck and the new virus was named HIV Human immunodeficiency Virus.