How should governments respond to health crises that deal with sexual behaviors?

AIDS epidemic

 

Word count min 200

 

You should not use any outside sources beyond the actual document to complete these assignments. Your submissions are intended to be your own analysis and reflections, not based on what you found on the internet or work you did with another student in the class (either past or present).

 

 

 

In 1981, the U.S. medical community noticed a significant number of gay men living in urban areas with rare forms of pneumonia, cancer, and lymph disorders. The cluster of ailments was initially dubbed Gay-Related Immune Disease (GRID), but when similar illnesses increased in other groups, the name changed to Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). The mid-1980s saw a number of advances toward understanding and treating the disease, but no vaccine or cure was forthcoming. Gay advocacy and community-based organizations began providing services and pressuring government to increase funding for finding a cure and helping victims.

 

In the following 1983 testimony before a congressional committee, three representatives of social service organizations sharply criticized the Reagan administration’s limited response to the AIDS crisis, advocated increased federal funding, and warned that AIDS was a societal “time bomb” likely to have grave consequences beyond the gay community. In 1995 AIDS became the leading cause of death for Americans aged 25 to 44. One of the witnesses, Mel Rosen of the Gay Men’s Health Crisis in New York City summed up the diagnosis of HIV: “When a person is told he or she has AIDS it is not like hearing that they have cancer, for example. When you have cancer you are told what the diagnosis, prognosis and treatments are. When you are told that you have AIDS you are hearing that you have a time bomb inside of you, that any day you will get an opportunistic infection and one of these infections would kill you, usually within 3 years.”

 

 

Read the attached document and answer the following questions:

 

What is the opinion of the author of this document concerning the federal government’s response to the AIDS epidemic?

How should governments respond to health crises that deal with sexual behaviors?

 

AIDS Epidemic.docx