Young people today, born after the initial AIDS epidemic of the 1980s, seem to accept that among certain populations in our modern society the HIV virus is simply one of the very real dangers of unprotected sex. Originally, of course, AIDS was a death sentence--killing relatively quickly and killing the young. Though there continues to be no cure and no vaccine has been fully successful, today pharmaceutical cocktails are keeping victims alive and comfortable enough that many have an acceptable quality of life, despite the illness.

However, if scientists of the 1970s and 1980s knew what they know now, AIDS could have been slowed or possibly eliminated in the human population. AIDS was first recognized in the United States in the spring of 1981, and there were at least 181 cases by the end of the year. It took another two years for scientists to trace the disease to the HIV virus, and they compared the DNA of HIV with the DNA of various related viruses. Researchers have identified SIV (simian immunodeficiency virus) in monkeys, and they think that the virus made the jump to humans when two different simian immunodeficiency viruses combined in the monkey population. Chimps sometimes kill and eat monkeys, and scientists speculate that the disease thus entered the chimp population, from which it finally made its way to humans through those who hunted and ate infected chimpanzees. The chimpanzee SIV became the deadly human immunodeficiency virus when it infected humans. If there had been a better understanding of animal-human disease transmission, along with a better disease surveillance system in the 1980s, perhaps AIDS would never have gained the strong foothold that it still has in the human population today. . .

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