It's a dread disease. It's a killer of a disease. It moves rapidly and it kills rapidly. It will sneak up and catch you when you least expect it.
It can kill you. It does kill you. You never know who could have this disease. He could be sitting right next to you.
You know it's contagious in a certain way and that it's fatal if you get it.
There's a lot of walking time bombs out here that haves it.
I think it's like the plague. I think it's worse than the plague.
I didn't think it could happen in Arkansas.
It's just not worth it for that one night or whatever.
You know, at least give the other person a chance to protect themselves.
And God's actually showing us that if we're going to behave in this way that there's going to be some punishment or reward for it.
It's not transmitted by God. It's transmitted by sex, mommy to a baby, and by blood.
It will be better to be the first to be cured than the last to die.
Yeah, I heard a lot about AIDS lately. As a matter of fact, I've had a friend of mine tell me a joke just the other day.
How do you give CPR to an AIDS patient?
Who would have ever thought it could have happened to me?
AIDS. Can I get it?
This is a story about ordinary people like you and me, and it's about living and dying.
Millions and millions of people worldwide will be stricken with this plague, this venereal disease that we call AIDS.
Hi, I'm J. Keyworth, and I'm here to help you understand what science has learned about AIDS over the last six years.
AIDS, acquired immune deficiency syndrome, is a venereal disease caused by a tiny virus, an insidious thing.
It's called HIV, or human immunodeficiency virus.
The disease it causes is a progressive one, which means that all or most of those stricken will eventually die from this virus.
The AIDS virus slowly destroys the body's immune system, our defenses against disease, and it can directly strike and destroy the brain.
Both paths lead to death. Scientists believe that, like syphilis, it could have been around in monkeys or man for hundreds of years.
When you think about the problem of where the virus came from, you really should think in terms of all disease.
What does disease come from? And disease is something which generally evolves with organisms.
Mice have their diseases, and cats have their diseases, and we have our diseases. And we evolved in Africa.
Scientists believe the disease originated in Africa. We also know the virus can lay dormant in man for ten years or even more before any symptoms emerge.
Because there's a lag between infection and disease, there were years in there in Africa in which we certainly did not know that there was any disease there, although it probably was.
And during that time, people caught it. Travelers to the United States, travelers to Europe, perhaps travelers to Haiti because there was certainly an important nidus of infection in Haiti.
A new name for old diseases. I think they just kind of modernized it, like gonorrhea and syphilis and all the other venereal diseases.
AIDS is a venereal disease.
Dr. William Hazeltine is associated with the Dana-Farber Research Institute and is dedicated to finding drugs to intercept the virus before it can ever progress to AIDS.
First of all, its route of transmission is predominantly sexual. There is a major route of transmission that is also drug abuse, but the major route worldwide is sexual.
It's transmitted from men to women, it's transmitted from women to men, it's transmitted from men to men, and it's transmitted from women to women sexually. That qualifies as a venereal disease.
We go through life protected by a hidden army of white blood cells that makes up our immune system. This army has sentries and warriors that both detect and fight bacteria and viruses.
There are also field commanders, the T4 cells. Normally when a virus invades the body, these T4 cells spring into action and mobilize the army to repel the virus invaders.
But the AIDS virus is especially insidious because it seeks out those very T4 cells and uses them as incubators to create more viruses.
In turn, both the infected T4 cells and the replicated AIDS viruses infect and eventually kill other healthy T4 cells.
At the same time, the AIDS-causing viruses are also attacking the brain. Either part of the invasion can lead to death.
In the case of the immune system, the reduction of T4 cells leaves the body vulnerable to diseases.
The whole process can take anywhere from two to ten years, sometimes even longer.
But once a person is infected, we call him or her an FWA, a friend with AIDS.
Perhaps no one has done more to identify how AIDS is spreading in America than has Dr. Robert Redfield.
This virus is going to strip away people in their third and fourth decade of life.
If they get infected in their early 20s, they'll probably get symptomatic in their early 30s.
If they get infected in their late 20s, they'll get symptomatic in their late 30s.
So we're going to lose that basically creative power of really what I consider the hub of every major institution that we have.
Whether it's two million or four million has been variously estimated, that's the size of our problem.
Not 40,000 who are sick with AIDS, not 100 or 200,000 who have some symptoms, but the total infected population.
And if you look at it that way, the current rate of progression of this disease is perhaps equivalent to two 747s worth of people crashing every day, two or three.
I was laying at home on the couch during the day watching TV, and I guess it was the Phil Donahue show or something like that.
And this doctor came on with an AIDS patient.
Terry Connor is an FWA, a friend with AIDS.
He's just 28 years old.
He lives in a rural Pennsylvania town.
He got it from a prostitute while traveling on a business trip.
Every single thing he had, he was describing I had.
My jaw started dropping with each symptom he described because, you know, I had the thrush in my mouth.
I had the high fevers.
I was just getting everything.
And that was the first, you know, after being sick for the last six months on and off, this was the first boom.
It was like AIDS, AIDS, this could be AIDS.
And I said, it can't be me.
I'm not gay.
I'm not this and I'm not that, which at the time, you know, was pretty much a gay disease.
So I went to the cardiologist, my mom's cardiologist, and he immediately took a look at me and he says, you don't need me.
And he called over to the hospital to the chief of infectious disease at the hospital I go to.
And I was in the hospital that day.
Three days later, I was diagnosed with AIDS.
And your world, your world just comes crashing down on you, you know, when you say, no, this can't happen to me.
You know, I remember laying there and the doctor comes in with five other doctors around them.
And it's kind of like a doom parade or something is the way I saw it, you know, laying there and not knowing anything about this disease, really.
And they tell me, you know, you have AIDS.
I had the pneumocystis pneumonia at the time.
And when they told me that, I kind of just swallowed it.
There was nothing I could do.
And I did kind of have an inkling, you know.
But then I remember he left and the last thing he said to me was, you can cry because I would.
And I remember thinking, what a cold thing to say to somebody.
But all he was doing was preparing me for what was to come.
My name is Temma Loft.
I'm from Baltimore, Maryland.
Temma works for the phone company.
She could be anybody's daughter.
She was also unsuspecting and very vulnerable.
She got it from a state trooper.
I was sitting in a beauty shop the other day and they were interviewing a woman that was sitting next to me getting a manicure.
And she was really adamant about saying that she didn't know anybody and she was never going to be around anyone that had this virus.
And I really felt like turning around and looking at her and saying, lady, I got news for you.
You got an infected person sitting right next to you and you don't even know it.
At work, Temma faced some difficult problems.
My peers have been better.
In the beginning, they acted really scared of me and really afraid of me.
I heard comments like they were afraid to use the bathroom after me, thought they'd get it like that.
They didn't want to put their hands in a donut box.
They were afraid they would get it like that.
And just different things.
But it seems as if time goes by, it's gotten better.
I mean, the proof is in the pudding.
If it was transmitted casually, I'd have wiped out the phone company.
I'd have wiped out the beauty shops that I was going to.
I'd have wiped out my family.
I'd have wiped out everyone in this room, everyone who's ever interviewed me, every television interviewer.
I mean, we're talking another Holocaust.
If it was casual contact, everybody would have it.
I don't think it could be transmitted by casual contact.
Many people worry about catching AIDS from casual contact, just as you might catch a cold or flu.
Dr. Anthony Fauci heads AIDS research at the National Institutes of Health,
America's leading federal research center in medicine.
We asked him, could people contract AIDS from drinking glasses?
Family members of individuals who are infected with the virus or who have AIDS,
who have been known for years to be sharing glasses,
there is no evidence whatever that the virus can be transmitted that way.
Someone coughs? You know?
I think that the data on sneezing and coughing is some of the strongest data arguing against transmissibility that way.
And the reason I say that is that we have now, over at least a five-year period,
studies on thousands of health care providers who get sneezed on and coughed on
and exposed to saliva and other bodily fluids at a very intensive rate,
far, far in excess of anything you would expect to see in your normal social interactions with anybody in society.
People who work in a kitchen.
On solid data, namely having a million or more people in this country who are infected with the virus,
who have been involved in food handling within families,
where you would expect someone would cut their finger or what have you in preparing the food.
There has been no evidence whatever of transmissibility of the virus that way.
Since you have so many people across the country eating out.
The way that one could conceivably think of the absolutely far-out chances,
if you have enough blood that is in the food that's prepared,
that then that blood gets into your mouth and you have a cut on your mouth,
again the chances of that happening are probably less than a chandelier in the restaurant falling on you
and killing you while you're eating your meal.
Well then, can you get AIDS from swimming in a public pool?
The concentration of chlorine in a swimming pool or a hot tub or what have you is enough to kill the virus dead.
People even ask about spitting.
Certainly health care workers in hospitals with people who are infected with the virus
get either usually inadvertent spitting,
but perhaps even sometimes on purpose where you can get a lot of saliva on you.
Again, there's zero evidence at this point that that can transmit the virus.
Parents of young children worry about their child being bitten.
There is a finite chance that if someone has saliva that has the AIDS virus in it
and you bite someone and the blood from the mouth and the saliva gets into your blood that that can occur,
but there have been a number of incidences of children within households who bite and scratch each other and play in the normal way
and there is again no evidence at all of there being transmissibility that way.
People worry about all kinds of bodily fluids, even tears.
We have a large amount of data from health care workers
and within the families of individuals who have an HIV-infected person in the family
that there is no evidence whatever that tears can transmit it.
Since we know needles can transmit AIDS, should people be wary of getting tattooed?
Tattoos I would worry about because there's no guarantee that the tattoo artist is going to sterilize that needle appropriately.
How about someone who wants to have their ears pierced for earrings?
If the needles are sterilized in a way that would kill the AIDS virus, I would say you wouldn't have to worry about that
or if some people use disposable needles then you wouldn't have to worry about that.
We often share razors. Can you get the AIDS virus from sharing a razor?
There is no evidence that it can be transmitted that way,
but I think it would be prudent, for example, if someone does have infection with HIV
who might cut themselves and get blood on the razor, that a person who is aware of that does not use that same razor
because they themselves might cut themselves. That would be tantamount to perhaps even sharing a needle.
Are health clubs places to avoid?
If you have sex in the health club, if you shoot drugs in the health club, you can get infected with the virus.
If you do any of the other things that people do in health clubs,
namely things that are to build up your health, exercise, swimming, jogging, racquetball or what have you, sweating, taking showers, no.
Can you get the AIDS virus from someone's sweat?
You can be in a sauna with someone and sweating.
If you're in a sauna with someone having a sexual encounter, that would be the way you would get it.
More generally, how about contact with AIDS victims in the workplace?
The workplace is the classic example of casual contact.
It doesn't make any difference if you're down the hall on another floor or in the next desk.
You're not going to get AIDS by casual contact.
Should you think twice about offering homes or apartments to friends with AIDS?
There is no scientific rationale for refusing housing to someone who's infected with the AIDS virus or who has AIDS.
Should a person with AIDS be allowed on a flight or other public transportation?
If someone is infected with the AIDS virus and they are perfectly capable of making the flight,
there is no reason at all, scientifically or I would imagine ethically, to prevent that person from being on that flight.
I would be frightened for him to be around other children with AIDS.
From what I've read, it's not contagious unless they have contact with the blood and that sort of thing.
But I'd still be frightened.
If you're dealing with someone in the classic grade school level, not preschool,
and that individual is able to handle their bodily functions and are not so sick as they can't handle stool or urine,
by handle I mean cannot actually take care of themselves,
then if someone can take care of themselves, then it would be alright to have that person in the normal school setting.
So I wouldn't hesitate to have my child in school, in grade school, with someone who's infected with the virus.
AIDS is not a respiratory disease like colds or flus.
Casual contact, simply being around people with AIDS, is not the way AIDS is transmitted.
Remember, AIDS is VD.
Syphilis, gonorrhea, genital herpes, none of these is transmitted through casual contact.
But let's look at situations in our daily lives where blood, saliva, or other bodily fluids could come into contact with us.
We all go to the dentist.
Dr. Temple, a practicing dentist, suggests questions to ask our own dentists.
If someone is worried, then the basic thing I think I would suggest the patient to ask the dentist and ask the staff is,
number one, are you sterilizing all instruments, drills, birds that's put in my mouth, or disposing of as many things,
the suction tips, the saliva ejector, things like that, between patients?
Are you disinfecting everything that you can't sterilize?
And asking the dentist if he does wear masks, gloves, and eyeglasses.
The gloves are probably as much protection for the patient as they are the dentist.
Is it safe to give blood? Blood banks deal with that question every day.
Everything that we use is sterile and disposable.
If we stick the needle into your arm and then cannot get the blood out and you are kind enough to let us try again in your other arm,
the set that we used initially is disposed of, it's incinerated and gotten rid of,
and we use a clean needle and a complete sterile set every time we stick the needle,
whether it's within your own arms or whether it happens to be someone else's, as sterility is a federal requirement.
Cases have been reported of contracting the AIDS virus through transfusions.
With increased screening of the nation's blood supply, the chance of receiving HIV-infected blood has diminished,
but some doctors still recommend caution.
The most common operations that are done do not really require any blood.
For example, a patient that is going to have a gallbladder operation or a hysterectomy or a breast operation or something of that sort,
under most circumstances will not really require a blood transfusion.
You should ask your surgeon whether the particular operation which he or she is contemplating generally requires blood or blood transfusion,
and if so, how many units of blood would be required or would be optimal,
and do I have time, doctor, to set aside that blood, which may take me three weeks between units of blood that I'm going to set aside before I have my operation.
Many people are now considering banking their own blood, otherwise known as autologous transfusion.
This is certainly one way to lessen your chances of possible exposure to the virus.
However, a person could have an emergency situation where there is no choice.
It's hardly appropriate for your physician to allow you to bleed to death,
and you're going to accept the small risks attendant with getting transfusions that are going to save your life.
As we've seen, AIDS is not transmitted casually, but rather it's a venereal disease,
transmitted by blood or blood products or through sexual relations.
Many people have thought that AIDS is a disease of gay men or drug addicts,
but AIDS is a venereal disease transmitted sexually or by blood-to-blood contact, not just by homosexual activity.
Dr. Robert Gallo is a co-discoverer of this virus.
The concentration of AIDS in the homosexual population helped him and others
to open the door to our current understanding of the cause of AIDS.
He is a leader of finding ways to prevent its spread.
People who are not homosexual had received an advantage by the explosion in the homosexual population.
We could focus on a population of people, work out the epidemiology and find the cause of the disease much faster,
because this virus would have come to America sooner or later, whether there was homosexuality or not.
They say it's a lot of homosexuals that have AIDS. That's probably true,
but they don't know there's a lot of walking time bombs out here that have it, and that's a man and a woman.
Most people don't know exactly when they're at risk, exactly who they come in contact with who might be infected,
but Wenda Tucker, a 28-year-old FWA and a single mother with two small children, does know how she became infected.
He claimed that he didn't know that he had it, and he felt bad about it.
And then he was having a relationship with another woman, so I guess I'm quite sure he felt very bad about it.
And he was hurt, too, and I'm quite sure he was going through the same changes that I was going through.
The first thing came to my mind is that I know I'm dying.
And the second thing I was worried about was my kids. Who's going to take care of them? They're so young.
I mean, I'm an average person. Get up in the morning, take my kids to school, go to work every day, you know.
After work, sometimes, you know, the work crew, we get together and go to happy hours, you know, just stuff like that.
Just enjoying life. And it was just an accident. It was just an accident.
And I was just one of the innocent ones. Everyone is probably innocent.
You know, there's so many people out here that has it and don't know it. That's what scares me. That's all.
That's what scares me. And it's time for everyone to kind of come out of their bag and let your kids know what's going on
so they can be prepared before they go out there and, you know, experience things.
People often say, I don't have any contact with drugs, nor with people who use them.
But unfortunately, you may not know until it's too late.
I was living with a person that was using drugs intravenously, and though I'd never done it myself, he got infected and I, in turn, got infected.
Elizabeth Ramos, a single parent with two sons. She thought she was safe.
It can happen to anyone. I, myself, as an example, I was not an IV drug user, and I'm a woman. And I did not sleep around.
So people have to try to be honest. You know, at least give the other person a chance to protect themselves.
Hi, my name is Jarvis Nathan. I spent ten and a half years in the military, in the service.
And as of February of 1986, the armed forces, the branch of the armed forces, started to do routine screening for the AIDS virus.
In April of 1986, I tested positive for HIV and went through the process of being medically aborted out of the service.
Everything in me died. I experimented with drugs. I experimented with sex. This is America. I experimented with those things.
I regret looking back at it now. I wish I had had that one type of relationship. I wish I had settled down and got married a long time ago and had kids.
Now I'm in a position where I can't do that. I can never have kids. I can't get married. I won't get married.
I can't go out and do the things that I was doing before.
Jarvis, Terry, Temma, Elizabeth, Wenda, all friends with AIDS, none of whom knew, all tragic.
Let's look at another kind of relationship, unsuspecting, also ordinary, but also tragic.
AIDS entered my life in a very dramatic and shocking way because it took the life of the person that I loved the most.
Lloyd Thomas lived with his girlfriend Paula in Little Rock, Arkansas.
We were together for seven years. During the first four, four and a half, five years, we lived together,
but not necessarily with an attitude of strictly being committed only to each other because we wanted to, before having children, et cetera, get our running around done.
It's very ironic that it was several years after we really became anonymous that the realities of the AIDS infection took our life.
It was inconceivable that we were riding a time bomb, that we'd already been infected.
So ordinary people can get AIDS, but many people believe that the chance is acceptable,
maybe one in a thousand from just a single encounter, like a one-night stand.
You certainly can get the virus on a single sexual encounter.
Dr. Nathan Klumek completed a study in Belgium testing the sexual contacts of a single AIDS patient during the period of infection.
The study we performed in Brussels concerned one African man who died from AIDS, and when we diagnosed HIV infection, we asked him to give us all his partners, female partners.
It was a heterosexual man, and we were able to found 19 women who have been in contact, sexual contact, with this man during the last three years.
And about on this 19 women, 17 accepted to be tested for HIV, and we found 10 out of 17. That means around 60% of them were positive.
The role of women in AIDS is crucial. The only way that the virus, the HIV virus, can get out of the infected group where it is primarily concentrated is through the bodies of women.
Dr. Helen Singer Kaplan has studied the situation.
It is not too late to stop it, but only if women stick together and refuse to be exposed to an infected partner. That means testing, that means monogamy, that means really asserting yourself.
It is not asserting yourself to insist on a condom. That's just complying with what the man really wants.
It is really and appropriately effective to say, I do not want to die. I do not want to give birth to AIDS babies.
You have to prove to me that you are not infected before I have sex with you.
I would like to say to every woman in America, to my daughters, to my single friends, to every sexually active woman, and most particularly to the young girls, to the girls in junior high school, in high school, and in college.
Our bodies were meant to bring forth life. Let's not use them to bring forth death.
We hear a lot about safe sex, but safer sex is probably more appropriate because having sex with an infected person is a serious risk.
No matter what precautions you take, the only sensible action is to know.
Can't you still get AIDS even if you do use condoms?
We can tell people that condoms reduce their risk, but by no means do they make it a guarantee that this is safe.
And in the only study done, it reduced the risk of transitioning to around one out of five, one out of six.
And we have a lot of experience with condom failure rates in pregnancies being between eight and thirteen percent.
I myself would like to believe that condoms make sex safe, but they don't.
The only safe sex that you can really think of is something in which there is no chance of any exchange of body fluids.
So that is not really safe. I'm very worried that people will get a false sense of security about condoms.
The AIDS virus is lethal in any wet parts of your body, the inside of your mouth where it's lined, the inside of your vagina, the inside of your anus, the tip of the penis.
Some people think the nipples also. It swims around and it can enter from person to person through those wet places.
Vaginal sex is not safe. Anal sex is not safe. Oral sex is not safe.
Then you have to stick to dry sexual practices, manual stimulation of the genitalia, mutual masturbation, caressing the dry parts of your body, dry kissing, sharing fantasies.
It's not the way most parents like to talk to their children, but unless we are really clear about what you mean, if you hedge and talk around sexuality as most people are likely to do,
if we don't name the body parts and the specific sexual activity, you can get killed.
Is kissing safe?
I've often gotten asked the question, well if a ten minute deep kiss with exchange of saliva is unsafe, how about a four and a half minute kiss?
Now that's putting it to its obvious degree of being ludicrous, but I think it brings up the point that it really doesn't matter the time element.
It matters whether or not there really is exchange of saliva.
The current test for AIDS is an ordinary blood test, just as you might routinely have for cholesterol or for any other indication of your overall health.
It indicates the presence of the antibody, the response of your body's immune system to the presence of the foreign HIV in your blood.
Studies have shown that the virus can hide for three, six, twelve, even more months before those antibodies are detected.
Nevertheless, a single test will generally, in most cases, tell you whether you've been exposed, and each additional test which you receive will make you more certain.
And the same for your partners. You don't get tested for TB or hepatitis every month, nor for signs of cancer, but routine testing diminishes the risk.
In the future, a single definitive test may be developed.
What's more important to you, having a sexual relationship with this human being or protecting yourself from the possibility of endangering your life?
I wouldn't just jump into it because it's not worth it. I mean, you could die, you could find out you have the next day, it's just not worth it for that one night or whatever.
I just think to be responsible, you know, everyone should really be tested.
Men, as well as women, are very concerned today about being safe. And most men, and I'm speaking to women now, will appreciate your taking responsibility and bringing up the subject.
But you have to understand what you're asking for, and you have to really be sensitive to your partner.
That means you've got to trust your partner and have a monogamous relationship with him, otherwise it makes no sense. He'll be okay one day and sleep with someone who's infected the next day.
I have a lot of people who come to me and say, I've had sexual contact, risky sexual contact, two weeks ago. I'm anxious.
That's not a good way to have prevention.
First, if you think you are at risk, test yourself. If you are negative, and most of the people will be negative, take the opportunity to think about your future and to decide to change yourself.
That's a positive way to have a test.
You know, the other issue in public health that we've neglected is what we normally would do for syphilis.
I look right now that there are four opportunities provided each member of the armed forces, which I would like to see provided each American.
And the first is the opportunity basically to get optimal medical care based on knowing that they're infected.
The second is the opportunity to not sort of face the future with blinders, to basically know about the medical conditions that their body has.
The third is the opportunity no longer to unknowingly transmit this virus to somebody else.
And the fourth is the opportunity at least to be informed if they've been unknowingly exposed to the virus.
If your physician doesn't want to give you the test, you should go to someone who would give you the test.
It's clear that in 1987, the AIDS virus is not a curable disease.
But I as a doctor, I can't cure diabetes. I can't cure cancer. I can't cure hypertension. I can't cure chronic heart disease.
There are many things as myself as an internist in chronic disease that I can't cure, but I can treat them.
Dr. Redfield has made an important point here, one of the more important messages of this story, and it's simple.
You're better off knowing if you've been infected and being under a physician's care than by staying in the dark.
That physician can treat you. He or she can ensure that your symptoms can be treated and that you'll receive new drugs as they become available.
I might ask if there's anything in an experimental stage to allow it to either cure it or to prevent it from happening
and whether the research is moving along fast enough to meet the needs of the people who have to avail themselves of it.
If you mean, do we have drugs or technologies which can remove every trace of the virus from a person once that person is infected, the answer is at the present time, no.
But do we have drugs or approaches which have a high probability of suppressing the virus?
The answer, in my opinion, is yes.
Dr. Samuel Broder of the National Cancer Institute, and thanks to him, AZT became the first effective drug for use in the treatment of AIDS.
Since September 1987, it has been made available for any licensed physician to prescribe.
That means that today, anyone afflicted with AIDS and under a doctor's care can, knowing the risks, be treated with this drug.
It's not perfect, but it is effective.
AZT has been tested thoroughly with people who are in the latest stages of the disease, and it has prolonged life.
It is now being tested on people who have more recently been infected.
The hope is that it will work even better with healthier people and stop the replication of the virus and the progression of the disease.
Your physician can look at your T4 count and other factors, and together you can decide if and when to begin treatment.
And Dr. Broder and his coworkers are developing and testing other drugs that could follow AZT.
AZT is a drug which, following certain activation steps within the cell of a patient,
becomes an important false building block for the virus which causes AIDS.
And the metaphor that I like to use is that it is junk food in the same way that a teenager might like junk food.
The virus likes AZT almost better than its normal constituent building blocks.
What that means is that the virus will be fooled into accepting AZT in its activated form.
And once it incorporates AZT as it replicates, it becomes terminated. It dies.
AZT can cause side effects, including anemia. Here are a few friends with AIDS who have taken AZT.
I remember, you know, day after day of just feeling not very good.
And then one day I woke up and I was laying in my bed. I remember it clear as can be.
I woke up and something was wrong because I felt very good. I felt very normal for the first time in months.
And I remember shaking my head thinking, you know, something's not right here because I didn't –
I forgot what it felt like to feel normal, to feel, you know, just normal, you know, whatever that is, you know.
And I thought, God, this must be the AZT working, you know, after it went through its toxicity, you know, making me feel bad.
And it felt tremendous. It was so nice to have a day that I felt normal.
But unfortunately, at the same time, I've got the negative effects of it, which were my blood counts all dropped to dangerously low levels.
And it put me right in the hospital.
AZT is not the answer for everyone. In Terry's case, it didn't work.
However, it is the first of many new drugs under development. For Jarvis Nathan, AZT is helping.
I am presently on AZT, the new drug that they came out with. It's not a cure, but it prolongs life in the AIDS patient.
I've had two battles with pneumocystis pneumonia, one in November of 1986 and one in July this year.
I've gained weight. I'm still running eight miles every two days or so, swimming, playing tennis and managing to stay healthy.
If it means it might stop the replication of the virus, I'll take it.
As soon as someone tests seropositive that is infected with the virus, they should go to the doctor immediately because treatment is available.
I think there's a very good case to be made now for those people who are starting to get disease to go on drug therapy immediately.
The future of patients is probably less dramatic than it was a few months ago.
We can propose to the patient treatment with AZT. For patients who are discovered as seropositive, by following them very closely,
every three months I follow my patient, we check for T4 cells, the lymphocytes, and if there is a decrease of lymphocytes, we start with AZT.
And that changed the prognosis of the disease very, very dramatically.
So it's a less negative disease than it was a few months ago.
The optimism I have about AZT is grounded in facts, hard facts, not speculation.
But I believe that in the near future other things will change and more facts will be available and we will be able to say that more things work.
A tremendous amount has been achieved in a relatively short time.
In fact, the progress that has been made is unprecedented in the history of disease.
Well, one of the very interesting concepts that's emerging is that drugs that are effective for therapy may also be very useful for prevention.
The concept is very similar to what's done with malaria now. We don't have vaccines for malaria, but yet we prevent malaria infection.
How do we do that? We do it by chronic administration of a drug that's not very toxic.
In fact, it's what's in gin and tonic. It's in the tonic, the quinine in the tonic, protects us.
Hopefully we'll have some drug like that for AIDS.
Those same drugs that are proven to be effective for therapy should be effective in preventing infection in the first place.
Dr. Daniel Zaguri is a leader in the treatment of AIDS patients and in development of means to prevent it.
He has worked with and earned the trust of people in Central Africa where the disease is already rampant among heterosexuals.
He is trying to apply the best of research from throughout the world to the helpless victims there.
We went to the African-Zahirian authorities who supported it and therefore together with Professor Lourouma and later on with Dr. Salin, who is a French general who worked in Kinshasa
through the Franco-Zahirian cooperation.
Dr. Zaguri is a leader. He first injected himself with an experimental vaccine that may assist us in developing a new treatment or a future vaccine.
I took my cells out of the body. I infect them massively with a recombinant vaccine. I fix them and I have them back in my body fluid. We don't have the right to give a false hope.
Of course, we decided in our program to, in agreement with the Zahirian Ethics Committee and the Zahirian authorities,
to immunize against the AIDS virus AIDS patients. We start with two patients in a late stage.
And it is true that those patients felt better in a way that they went back to their work. That prompted us to enlarge the essay to ten AIDS patients.
Those now didn't present yet any complication.
Clearly, this venereal disease is a worldwide calamity. Our friends with AIDS learned about this disease the hard way.
They didn't have the information and the knowledge to protect themselves. But now you do. Share it. Share it with your loved ones, your friends, your coworkers.
Everyone needs to know. Everyone.
I think, frankly, I've let the ball drop in that because it's a dread disease. It's a killer of a disease. At this point, there's no cure for it.
I don't know when there's going to be a cure for it, if ever. And I should have discussed that with my daughter and I have not done so.
Well, education is a key.
That's why I think it's really important for education to be, you know, disseminated because if they don't start educating the teenagers and the kids, then they're going to end up where I am.
A lot of people don't take the time out and say, well, let me read this brochure or let me call up the hotline and see if they can send me something, you know, on this disease.
Basically, you want to know, are you the type of person to sleep with a different person every night? You want to know if they've done drugs? You want to know, are you bisexual?
I manage to understand that. I think I'll stick around to the twelfth round. Sex can be beautiful in every sense of the word, but life can be even more beautiful.
I mean, I've accepted that I think probably just through the recent doctor visits that I am going to die. I've made that adjustment. I don't like it, but I've made the adjustment.
But until then, I'm going to fight. I'm going to fight until there's nothing left.
I'm from a rural, rural country area in the least most likely place for it to come and get me. And it did.
And the only thing I can say to you is nobody can protect yourself but you and nobody's gonna.
And until there is a cure for this disease, protect yourself. You know, I mean, it's your life.
Believe me, if you're the kind of person that thinks it can happen to you, you're wrong, man. You are just wrong. You're living a fantasy.
But we can't be deceived by the needs we feel today.
For the love of unborn children whose lives are ours to bless.
For the love of one another, we must put our fears to rest.
For all of you that's part of me.
Oh, me that's part of you.
Waiting till we know we're safe.
So that we must do.
I will always love you.
With all my soul allows.
But I won't risk a lifetime.
For a nighttime with you alone.
For the love of unborn children whose lives are ours to bless.
For the love of one another, we must put our fears to rest.
And the lives we've lived before this, who could ever contemplate.
A time where if you love someone, you love enough to wait.
A time when only patience makes us masters of our fate.
How I pray it's not too late.
Pray the lovers wait.
For the love of unborn children whose lives are ours to bless.
For the love of one another, we must put our fears to rest.
Pray the lovers wait.
For the love of unborn children whose lives are ours to bless.
For the love of one another, we must put our fears to rest.
Pray the lovers wait.
For the love of one another, we must put our fears to rest.
Pray the lovers wait.
Thank you for watching!