AIDS, A Strange and Deadly Virus (1986)

[Music] [Music] US Army Fort Detrick once renowned for its biological warfare experiments [Music] today more AIDS virus is produced here than anywhere else in the world but it's being grown for an entirely peaceful purpose [Music] to make a vaccine against one of the most lethal and perplexing infections ever to challenge modern medicine around the world there's an intense scientific effort to unravel the complexities of this virus its prime target is a human white blood cell usually the linchpin of the body's immune defense system this cell is crippled and on the verge of destruction littering its surface hundreds of virus particles are budding forth ready to spread the deadly disease this is the virus that causes AIDS [Music] over the last three or four years we have seen every one of our worst predictions confirmed we've many of us felt like Cassandra who could see the future could speak the future would be listened to but would not be believed I think from now on the facts will speak for themselves we are seeing the mounting number of AIDS cases in this country and around the world that we anticipated two or three years ago we are seeing the devastating health effects the health effects the impact on our healthcare delivery system those facts will speak for themselves the AIDS virus seen here in cross-section and magnified more than a million times was first identified only two years ago the disease it caused this is all so new to begin with AIDS was just an obscure medical curiosity a strange illness affecting a handful of homosexuals and drug abusers in American cities today the virus has claimed thousands of lives and threatened millions more [Music] the AIDS virus is one of the simplest life forms on the planet it belongs to an unusual family called retroviruses only recently discovered to infect humans [Music] within ifs spiky outer shell is a protein core that protects the virus's genetic heart these foreign genes can pirate the cells that they infect the viral genes are permanently inserted into the normal cellular DNA of the infected cell of the particular person that the that got infected so that infection of that cell is forever because the viral genes are now part of the cellular genes integrated right in this integration occurs when the short chain of virus genes meets the DNA of the infect himself the human cell is taken over sometime in the future the inserted genes will make copies of the virus not only is that cell infected for a lifetime when that cell divides the daughter cells will also have not only the cell genes but also the viral genes so infection of the person is forever Bobby and her husband Bruce work at a New York Hospital three years ago Bobby had an unusually heavy period and was transfused with four units of blood one was contaminated with the virus last summer she was diagnosed with AIDS I was scared I you know I I immediately thought back to the blood transfusions and knew you know that's exactly you know where it came from and I was first of all very scared of dying I mean I I've done a lot of reading on AIDS being a nurse and you know I I know that the outlook was supposedly very bad that people don't survive over three years and the patients that I've seen who've had the AIDS they were all very very sick people and you know just dying people Bobby and Bruce had been married for less than a year when she developed acute pneumonia the lung infection was the first indication she had AIDS well it was just unbelievable sadness that this would happen to her you know that we were basically just starting out on our lives and to think that instead of all the good things that you try to expect at least at the beginning and all that immediately it's gonna be just you know sickness and pain and it's very unfair aids stands for acquired immune deficiency syndrome that means the virus severely damages the very blood cells which normally protect the body from infection the communist cells in the blood are the red blood cells that carry oxygen around the body but there's a rarer sort the white blood cells that are crucial to the body's immune defense system there are many different varieties of white blood cell and together they form a complicated interacting system rather like an orchestra the AIDS virus specifically attacks one particular class of white blood cell called the t4 helper lymphocyte it's the conductor of the immune system Orchestra invasion by the virus can plunge the body's defense mechanisms into chaos the virus fuses with the T cells outer membrane injects its genetic blueprint into the cell and begins the insidious process of taking control the result can be devastating it's devastating because first of all it can attack the critical cell of the immune system thus all we call the T helper a t4 cell which regulates much of the function of our whole immune mechanisms and therefore you get a lot of other infections what we call opportunistic infections opportunistic infections means you have an infection by an organism which normally doesn't hurt you but in this case it'll hurt you because you don't have proper functioning of your immune system things that we normally live with can kill in other words because your immune mechanisms are so altered secondly it's so devastating because it affects the brain oh we've known that over a year now infecting the brain it can cause dementia and it can cause death directly these are cases that often go and report it because they're not showing up as AIDS but as brain disease people don't often know the virus is there if the AIDS virus attacks the brain the prospects for those infected could be appalling in Boston they're urgently trying to discover the extent of the threat if you see these numbers here yeah there are numbers like 1 2 3 & 4 right also letters like a B C and D right I want you to take this pen and connect these circles but in a special way I want you to alternate numbers letter number letter okay trying to important questions must be answered how many people show signs of mental problems and what is the severity of their symptoms number letter number letter number letter mark Greenberg and Alexandra Beckett have begun a long-term psychological study of 150 people exposed to the AIDS virus sorry Oh some of their subjects have full-blown AIDS others like this volunteer have only a mildly impaired immune system already there are indications that infected people long before they develop AIDS can experience mental problems I used to have a real good memory and you could give me a list of 100 like items in a store and I could like greet him back to front word backwards what sequence they were and all that stuff you know and I mean now it's like I go to store for five items and I forget three of them you know brain scans reveal the damage done by the virus the brain literally shrinks and fluid here in black fills the space over 50% of AIDS patients may ultimately become demented the complaints that we've most often heard are that people are having difficulty concentrating we have commonly had people describe episodes during which they have a sudden strong emotion unprecedented and that they feel they're performing less well than they used to add tasks that they are quite familiar with oh by repeating measurements every six months it should be possible to pick out any changes in performance the fear is as the years go by brain damage is something people infected with the virus must increasingly come to face I'm less upset by I said well you know that's just what's happening that's what's doing and I don't I live with it you know I mean diabetics live with the fact they have to take insulin and they have problems with that and you know I have this virus and I live with a problem that it brings there could hardly be two worst targets for a virus to attack them the immune system and now the brain how many people are under threat the way to tell is by looking for antibodies about six weeks after infection the immune system reacts against a foreign invader specific molecules on the surface of the virus stimulate the production of antibodies the antibodies lock onto the virus but they often fail to arrest its progress people may seem healthy but they remain infectious and liable to become ill most people infected with the AIDS virus do not have AIDS if you take a group of a hundred infected individuals each year about a dozen will develop early symptoms of the disease with a traditional year a proportion of these pre AIDS cases go on to develop full-blown AIDS while another dozen previously healthy individuals become unwell no one can yet say whether eventually all hundred will succumb or whether some people can permanently fight off the virus it's a crucial question because the numbers infected our enormous in the United States we're talking about the best estimate I've seen came out in the New England Journal in December 1985 about 1.75 million Americans I would say maybe half that number of Europeans there are large centers of infection in South America the number of infected people in Africa is very large whether that's 10 million or 20 million people I think is the question not whether it's 2 or 5 million there are a lot of people infected in central Africa in the last few years a lethal form of the AIDS virus has become widespread in several Central African countries bordering Lake Victoria political conditions make research extremely difficult but Western specialists who visited the region believe that across the continent millions are infected and tens of thousands are dying in Europe numbers are more certain the three worst affected countries are France West Germany and United Kingdom at the latest count there were 275 confirmed cases of AIDS in Britain than almost 2,000 in Europe as a whole the United States now has seventeen and a half thousand cases of full-blown AIDS well over a million Americans carry the virus without yet showing any symptoms of the disease the epidemic is concentrated in Los Angeles San Francisco New York and Miami cities with large populations of homosexuals and drug abusers the same risk groups are affected in Canada and probably Haiti both with around 400 cases and in South America homosexual spread may be a factor in Brazil which now has 540 cases in the cosmopolitan cities of Rio de Janeiro and San Paulo as for the rest of the world so far only Australia is significantly affected with 170 cases mainly in Sydney's gay community but it's in Africa that the AIDS pandemic is at its most acute it's hard to believe that homosexuality or drug abuse can account for the millions infected with the AIDS virus there at the end of last year an international conference was held in Brussels to consider AIDS in Africa and why the virus is spreading there so rapidly many African governments simply refused to accept they face an epidemic that's associated in the West with homosexuality and drug abuse if there is AIDS in their countries they say it must be merely a few cases due to visiting Western tourists purchasing homosexual favors it is a taboo in all sexuality is culturally a taboo in our environment and yes and what a burn ization poverty when it is easy for these young men who lost their identity from the rural setting into the urban areas you know to to eat for prey to these these practices but the weight of evidence simply doesn't support the argument of a homosexual spread unlike Western countries the virus in Africa affects almost equal numbers of males and females and this suggests the disease may be being spread sexually between men and women something many scientists have so far been reluctant to believe I've become more convinced than I was before that aids in Africa is transmitted principally by sexual contacts and principally by heterosexual contacts there may be other factors such as the reutilization of hypodermic needles that haven't been properly sterilized and some people have said perhaps insect biting insects like mosquitoes might spread the virus but the one thing that's come through loud and clear is that AIDS is spreading in the most sexually active people in a community and particularly amongst the promiscuous mosquitoes needles do not select between oohs people are so very much so I think it still comes down to saying if you want to avoid aids avoid having too many sexual partners Project Aware Suzanne speaking yes I'd like to ask you some questions to see if you meet the criteria for this study all right during the last three years have you had five or more male sex partners in her from San Francisco you have if AIDS is spreading sexually between males and females in Africa then is the virus now infecting women in the West so you're afraid that you may have been exposed to the virus let me ask you a few questions how long ago was that relationship and was your past boyfriend sleeping with other men during that time women who who need to join a study like this are in a difficult position most of them have become aware far before we exist that they have some reason to be concerned about having met the AIDS virus but they may not be very clear about what the specific circumstances of risk really are and they may be very afraid to get additional information because for them the answer may be more frightening than no answer so by and large women who end up phoning in and asking about whether it's appropriate for them to be tested are ones that have already wrestled with the possibility that behavior that is illegal prostitution say or drug use or immoral lots of sexual partners without having told the current sexual partner that that's the case may in fact not only be illegal or immoral but may also have exposed them to AIDS Project Aware z' field workers are out on the streets recruiting three groups of women partners of male AIDS cases promiscuous single women and prostitutes [Music] it's a difficult thing to get people to enroll in a study like this there are no lists you can't look up a list of prostitutes and call them on the phone and say will you come in even if there were such a list they wouldn't come in so we have a very skilled field staff who walk these areas and our reputation in the community is of people who can be trusted women who volunteer are tested for the virus and questions crystally about aspects of their sexual behavior that may put them at risk okay how many men have you had sexual contact with during the last six months I don't know supposed to answer that question well I just tell me approximately how many men you think you've had your last expense how many do you have per day on the average in the last six months mm-hmm about three a day three a day okay do you work every day yeah okay so let's see six times three is eighteen okay eight in a week yeah so 18 a week and the arithmetic works out at around a thousand partners a year we have now enrolled and tested over 300 women the study is not complete but among those early participants we have found that about four percent of them are in fact zero positive for the virus at this point some people might regard that as very good news in the given that these are high-risk women by definition only for four centers they are positive on the other hand that's a lot of women who have something to worry about it's not only prostitutes who are picking up the virus the aware study shows that promiscuous women with far fewer sexual contacts are equally at risk it does bug me sure I'm I'm very well aware of it I have a brother who's gay I'm sure you're taking extra precautions as compared to maybe a year or so ago as far as safe sex goes there being fairly picky and choosy about who you're going out with anymore is it I always pretty much have so far women in Western countries as much at risk from the AIDS virus as their counterparts in Africa many people ask us about how much it's reasonable to extrapolate from the African information to information in countries like the United States and it's a very difficult question to discuss because on the one hand we believe that we know of no virus that has a sexual preference that it does in fact attack lymphocytes from both males and females this virus on the other hand the evidence that we have so far is that it doesn't do so with kind of equal success in gussto and the question is why is that so there's definite proof that a woman can be infected via her vagina for women in Australia developed antibodies to the virus following artificial insemination with contaminated semen the virus may not be able to penetrate the thick well protected walls of the vagina itself but it can probably enter a woman's bloodstream via the uterus with its rich supply of surface vessels for the menstrual cycle when a woman is infected the virus becomes present in vaginal secretions presenting in turn a danger to males there's no evidence to say exactly how the AIDS virus infects men promiscuous males commonly have an inflamed urethra due to other sexually transmitted diseases possibly a small sore just inside the penis may offer the AIDS virus a route of entry condoms are definitely a sensible precaution homosexual anal intercourse has frequently been blamed for spreading the disease unlike the vagina the lining of the rectum is thin and bleeds easily the theory is that infected semen might pass directly into the passive partner's bloodstream but the lower intestine is a none hygienic environment that swarms with the very immune cells the AIDS virus targets for the highly promiscuous this suggests a bizarre alternative route of transmission the conventional assumption is that the active sexual partner injects infected semen into the anus of the repulsive partner this is possible unquestionably it occurs however a man can only have inin Jack ulation so many times these people have sex 20 to 30 times in an item and therefore the transmission of semen probably takes a secondary role to a more physical transfer of infected cells the rectum of a passive homosexual is invariably inflamed that means infected cells will be present in the anus of this person a man who comes along and goes from anus to anus in in a single night will act as a mosquito transferring infected cells on his penis going from one person to the next so if we have one passive person partner who is not infected he probably will get infected by the physical transfer of cells from one to the next when this is practiced for a period of a year with a man having 3,000 sexual intercourse one could readily understand this massive epidemic that is currently in progress from all the various theories one message comes through loud and clear safe sex means avoiding physical contact with other people's bodily secretions among the gay community it would probably involve a use of condoms and not only condoms but a condom in between people to prevent the physical transfer of one cell from one between the recipients this is inconvenient but given the choice of death or condom I'll choose a condom there is another group of AIDS victims who may not follow even such simple advice after homosexuals intravenous drug abusers are the group most at risk in Western countries their habit of sharing needles means that with drawn blood is often left behind in the syringe between fixes it's the perfect way to spread a blood-borne virus this association with behavior that is illicit or taboo is another deadly activates it makes public education difficult and it exposes victims of the virus to undeserved prejudice and discrimination that's what hurts me the most the fact that I was nursed in the hospital they all knew I was a nurse in the hospital and I was bright my room was right outside the nurse's station so I could always hear them talking about me there was one nurse who actually refused to take care of me which that hurt I was I wasn't referred to as Bobbie they referred to me as the nurse with AIDS and I mean I just kept thinking that if this is how they treat a fellow nurse what do they do to the other patients there the irony is aids is hard to catch even though he lived with Bobbie for over two years Bruce is free from infection we take some precautions with ourselves it's not like we have different kinds of laundry or different sets of sheets or different last way or anything like that you know we live together we sleep together we're man and wife Bruce no longer fears catching the virus its first weak link is that it transmits in specific ways and is otherwise very difficult to catch perhaps there's a second in its armor that could be exploited to treat those like Bobby for whom prevention is now too late if an effective treatment can be developed it'll depend on understanding the virus life cycle within a human cell first the virus binds to the outer membrane and injects its genetic core inside the cell [Music] the virus genes are stored in an unusual form on a chemical variant of DNA called RNA a special enzyme reverse transcriptase is carried by the virus to copy its genes into normal DNA it's an essential step in the virus life cycle and it offers researchers a promising target for a therapeutic drug Matsuya Hiroaki Mitch to his friends has been leading the hunt for a drug that might stop the reverse transcriptase enzyme from working he's tested hundreds of substances and narrowed the search to the contents of what he calls his magic box all these 30 compounds show some promise against the AIDS virus and most of them work in a similar way they're all modifications of a natural molecular building block chained together by the virus to make the DNA copy of its genes a small change converts the natural starting molecule into a sort of chemical full stops that poisons the virus when it's incorporated into the growing DNA chain no further building block can be added and viral replication grinds to a halt to discover which particular chemical works best Mitch has developed an elegant test both tubes contain living cultures of human t-cells specially selected to be extra sensitive to the AIDS virus the cells on the left have been infected by the virus it's just possible to see that the small colony at the bottom of the tube has shrunk to find out if a potential drug can inhibit the virus a small sample is added to a new infected tube this time the colony on the Left stays the same size as the normal one on the right this drug is protecting the cells and might be worth testing in humans I think one always has to bear in mind that a tissue culture technique may not predict for what happens in a person there are many other factors in a person there is toxicity of the drug against various organs as how a given drug can be handled by various parts of the body there may be inherent sites in a person that are essentially immune so to speak from the effects of a drug where a drug cannot reach or cannot be metabolized actively enough to bring about an effect so I think that it is a leap of faith to assume that because one has an agent that works in a test tube that one will have an agent that will work in human beings near Washington is America's National Cancer Institute here one of the most promising of niches chemicals called AZT is being tried on 25 volunteer AIDS patients I was scared about going down to Washington I look terrible at the time I could just tell by how the people were looking at me that you know they might not have wanted me because you know and I try to look the good that day because I wanted so desperately to be in the program you know I made my face up but I was just so darn weak at the time but they accepted me in the first day that we were there they gave me the drug but they just did it a one-day thing yeah I guess to see if I wasn't allergic to and that it was getting into my system and they brought me to my room it was a lovely room I had a lovely view I met all the nurses who were really friendly to me and I was thinking what's going on here everybody's being so friendly and nice to me you know why is this going on don't they know what disease I have every two weeks Bobby flies down from New York at government expense for a careful evaluation of how well the drug is suppressing the virus in her body not bad you know 45 minutes but it was on time and everything so it ended up being okay very good step up on the scales for the game and we get you eight 50.3 oh good I was 49 last time so another kill oh very objective signs of how well Bobby is responding to the treatment our essential Sam Broder must try to decide how much Bobby's well-being is really due to the drug and how much to her remarkable determination to overcome the virus the first thing is look here there was a button there and today I sat down and mapped I've put on quite a bit of weight how much have you gained I've gained well today I'm fifty point three kilograms which I've never weighed that in my life before about your fevers if I haven't had any fevers at all my ten my temperatures usually thirty seven exactly okay so no thanks for going really well well I'm very pleased like you know fairness I can't yeah I mean you don't know how pleased we are I mean we are so happy right now but you have to understand that although and extremely gratified about you sponsor I can't be sure but the drug that we gave you did this I mean it's way too soon to make that conclusion but if my atributes did the drugs oh I do i I don't care what anybody else says it's the drug despite Bobby's enthusiasm there are many uncertainties about the drugs she's taking it may not reach the brain in large enough amounts to stop the virus there it may have bad side effects it may even hurt to cause cancers it's only an experimental drug okay we have your PWA compound your doses 12 ml every four hours but for her it's a lifeline to touch on to every four hours night and day how much of it to fight this this is a weeks of life you know I'm convinced that perhaps I'll have to be on this drug the rest of my life but you know it's not that bad doesn't have a good taste at all I have to mix with orange juice but you know I just feel that the drug is making me better during the six months Bobby's been taking AZT she's had no recurrence of the acute pneumonia that almost killed her last summer but less encouragingly the level of white cells in her blood remains abnormally low Bobby's immune system has been profoundly damaged by the virus it does not seem to be recovering obviously she's doing very well and I think that her immune system is not getting any worse so that even if she would to get another infection it could be treated and she'd get better and we have a lot of time I think now and I'm sure that certainly in the time that we have a cure will be found I'm confident of that if a better treatment is to be found it will probably come from a more fundamental understanding of the virus particularly the workings of its genes black or retroviruses the AIDS virus has three standard genes the first makes the core proteins that protect the virus's genetic material the second makes the reverse transcriptase enzyme which is the target for the AZT drug puppies receiving the third makes the spiky outer shell but the AIDS virus has three extra genes that scientists have never seen before one of them called the trans activator controls the way the whole virus replicates the trans activator comes into play long after the virus's genes have inserted themselves into the cell's DNA the virus can remain silent in this state for years then for reasons no one understands it suddenly comes alive the trans activator gene plays a crucial role in accelerating this process without that trans activator the virus is completely dead just can't grow that was not predicted from anything we knew about other viruses we had predicted that it would just replicate slowly like most other viruses without it's trans activator however we find without its friends activator no growth at all that has an important implication for therapeutic intervention for making new drugs for AIDS viruses what we are always looking for are things that a virus does that a cell doesn't do and this particular positive feedback loop is unique to this virus cells don't do it it's a viral gene product and what's very important is that it's a viral gene product without which the virus cannot grow therefore we have a new target for anti AIDS drugs so there are hopes of a cure for AIDS but the reality is still far off what about a vaccine to prevent infection in the first place well if a vaccine is ever made then a plaque should be fixed to this house in Glasgow for many years more than a hundred cats lived here with their eccentric owner in the early 1960s a number became ill with an infectious form of leukemia the local vet brought the mini epidemic to the attention of a pathologist from Glasgow University and so it was that Bill Garrett came to study feline leukemia and to isolate from the cats the virus responsible for the disease it turned out to be a retrovirus and Bill Garrett succeeded in making a vaccine to protect cats against it well the basic principle is the same and the more you are trying to preserve a certain set of molecules which are on the surface of the virus and the virus uses these molecules they stick out from the surface and it uses them to penetrate the cells of the body say common cold going into your nose these prongs and the virus so to speak stick into the cell and that's the way the virus gets into the cell and when you work when you become immune to a disease like the common cold your body has generated molecules which stop the attach onto these spikes on the virus and stop it getting into the cells now the idea of every vaccine and there are many different ways of making vaccines is to preserve these molecules and present them to the body in such a way that the body thinks this the virus and responds to it but these the vaccine doesn't do any damage of course through the body bill Garrett is coordinating one of the most advanced AIDS vaccine programs in America he needs massive amounts of the virus [Music] Larry Arthur can provided here at Frederick we produce virus under highly contained conditions called feed preconditions for protection of the investigators individuals have to enter through a limited access doorway they dress in protective clothing the air balance is set such that the air is negative to all of the rest of the building the virus is propagated inside of cells that we keep in a large walk-in incubator tradition where around 250 liters a week the since we've been in operation we produce somewhere in the range of 12,000 liters of virus that's 3000 gallons should total up to be somewhere around a thousand trillion virus particles probably we've produced more AIDS virus in this facility than any place in the world the virus is harvested every Monday and every Thursday it's separated from the cells in which it grows and purified to extract the proteins banks many different approaches to a vaccine are being tried one of the most promising implies an extract from the bark of an Amazonian oak tree a few drops are added to the purified virus proteins the mixture is placed in a dialysis bag where the two substances slowly react with one another like detergent added to oil if conditions are just right then the molecules of protein clumped together forming miniature particles called immune stimulating complexes or it comes the theory goes these is calm should work like artificial viruses provoking a strong antibody response to fight off later infection by the real thing there's one way to test whether the s calms work in practice they must be injected into monkeys the only species other than man which can be infected with the AIDS virus some of the monkeys in this facility carry the virus in their blood so stringent safety precautions are essential this monkey is free from infection it's been heavily tranquilized so it can be prepared for inoculation with the experimental vaccine [Music] if this monkey makes good antibodies then many human lives may be saved if it doesn't a vaccine against AIDS may be impossible well the first step in the vaccine is to see whether you can make it and the second step is to put it into animals there is no way of testing a vaccine apart from doing animal experiments so that's in the monkeys and the first thing we measure then as I said was whether the monkeys managed to produce antibodies against that we have tried different doses of the vaccine we had to start with very small doses to make sure it was safe and didn't harm the monkeys it didn't so we've stepped up the doors now and this has produced a very good antibody response that's stage 2 the third stage then is to find a method of infecting the apes and monkeys with the AIDS virus and see if our vaccination procedure will stop them being infected advance warning of the problems that an AIDS vaccine may face comes from similar retro viruses that infect animals there's one responsible for a sheep disease called busines that's so similar to the AIDS virus it's difficult to tell them apart sheep suffering from busines have much in common with human victims of AIDS the virus affects the brain as well as the immune system causing a chronic disease that stretches out over many years some scientists believe the two viruses are members of a common family the lentiviruses a relationship that may not bode well if the AIDS virus behaves in humans as the animal viruses behave in their natural hosts then a human vaccine is going to have a lot of problems the visnur viruses of sheep and the goat virus first of all the infected cells of the immune system antibodies either are not made to the virus or they do not protect the virus against the virus infection just like influenza it seems the AIDS virus can mutate to evade the body's defenses the protein spikes are what count in the immune response key points on the surface of these proteins are recognized by the antibodies by mutating at precisely such places an extremely small change in the virus can defeat antibodies produced both naturally and via vaccine antibodies made to the old configuration no longer bind and the virus can stay one jump ahead of the immune system and there's a second reason to doubt a vaccine will work the AIDS virus can escape detection by the immune system if it enters the body inside a cell from another person this foreign cell is then engulfed by a scavenging slug like macrophage and so the AIDS virus passes directly from cell to cell by passing any antibodies in the blood well these are hypothetical questions and we don't know the answer to them I mean the only way you can do it is to try a tas a curtain see I mean we've got to make the vaccines it was thought to be a daunting prospect and kept looking there for example we know there are several forms of the virus but in fact one vaccine protects against all the different types so we've just got to go ahead as usual and science and do the experiments the initial results bear out bill Garrett's optimism blood drawn from vaccinated monkeys appears to contain a few antibodies capable of protecting cells infected artificially in the laboratory but only time will tell whether they can protect an animal monkeys may provide help in an entirely different way one species the African Green carries a virus very similar to aids and yet it never gets he'll just whine may provide new clues in developing both a vaccine and a treatment it may also explain where aids came from in the first place a chance scratch or bite may have allowed this virus to jump from monkey to man where it later mutated into the deadly form we know as AIDS today if you are not killing one species with a virus from another an odd virus will arise in the population which is able to infect the new species but for that to become a disease in the species there must be certain circumstances so sure housing our contacts in which the virus gets a chance to spread the many viruses don't spread very easily and these retroviruses do not spread very easily as you know you need to a very close contact and when a virus like this it may have been around aids for quite a while but not until with the arrival of the permissive society and the Society of homosexuals this is a very close contact epidemiological a which has allowed it to spread the only certain way to halt the spread of AIDS is to discourage sexual behavior that places people at risk San Francisco is one of the cities where the AIDS epidemic among homosexuals first began here a determined effort has been made to educate people about the danger from the virus San Francisco is also where they've been charting the progress of the disease for the longest time one of the earliest studies has been run by a British epidemiologist Andrew Moss we began working on a to 1982 first thing you did what we did was a study in this neighborhood and we found out that about one of three hundred gay man living in a mile of here have AIDS and now it's about 1 in 30 in this gay area of San Francisco there's been a tenfold increase of AIDS in the last four years well over half of San Francisco's homosexuals and I infected with the virus they are anxious to do something about it the participation rate was amazing it's because it gay men who lived here wanted a disease to be sold he wanted it to be understood and kissed on a cell phone this man's lover died of AIDS four years ago he's one of 450 gay men masters recruited for the study the aim is to find out why some people exposed to the virus escaped while others become infected and my son who are infected remain healthy while others develop the disease one all this first started there was no information whatsoever on gains and when he was dying for me and asked me to get involved in this program every year a few days before Christmas he arrives at Ward 86 the AIDS clinic to become another statistic in Macias survey likely to lift you turn up to the top of your mouth good and stick your tongue way on when I first started in the program I was very young I guess you could say worried him - every little thing that would have like a cold or feeling warm or anything would have me thinking that I have AIDS and after time passed though I started to put my fears away because the best way to work out things is just going day at a time and if the disease comes along and disease comes along after testing 10 it doesn't the medical examination is only the beginning volunteers are also asked to reveal the natural history of their sex life what they did with whom how often and with what protection all of your sexual habits changed since you were last here well I used to go a few years ago I used to been at the bass used to meet men on the buses and on the street and stuff and ever since the information on a scam out and I've had a few friends to have died for me ever since then enough um I've really stopped doing all that stuff [Applause] what about safe sex practices pretty much I don't have intercourse with any mud with anyone because I figured that's the biggest risk that you can be taking right now I'll loosen the tourniquet in just a moment the verdict on whether such sexual restraint actually makes a difference is to be found in the blood of Andrew Moses subjects are there any signs that education is halting the spread of the virus what we see is it's leveling out after four years in which numbers went like this numbers that are going like this we see about 60 cases of AIDS a month in San Francisco and have done for the last year now what does this mean I think it reflects a major change in sexual behavior amongst gay men in San Francisco beginning three or four years ago we're finally beginning to see the results of that in the incidence data but I want to make a caveat what we see what we measure what we can is just AIDS as it has been defined for the last four years and the AIDS virus is a retrovirus and we know that retroviruses can have lifelong manifestations and it's possible that what's flattening out and maybe going away is just the early manifestations of the virus and that we'll see new manifestations later on in its course it's been suggested that primary neurological AIDS or perhaps the kind of lymphomas or subgroup of lymphomas may be diagnoses that we'll see more of so we want to be cautious and watch it carefully before we say it's going away while the victims live on in the hope of a cure and those at risk a vaccine medical science is still struggling to come up with an answer to AIDS as many people celebrating Christmas in Ward 86 have learned to their cost so far there is just one sure way to stop the spread of the virus safe sex some pessimists believe those two words may remain the only hope [Music] we're usually confident of our ability our technological ability to solve problems and I think that's given us a great sense of comfort in this disease and I think it's a false sense of comfort we that is we who work with a fundamental aspects of this virus know how far away we are from even understanding its workings understanding how it causes the diseases it causes and even some aspects of how its transmitted we have many areas of uncertainty not the least of our uncertainties are how to stop it although there is some hope now for drugs and some hope for vaccines we can't and nobody with reliability can predict when and if we can slow down the spread of the disease or even stop what appears now to be an inevitable decline once the disease begins so we are a long way from being able to control it just put it simply we're in the presence of an epidemic for which we have no vaccine and no effective treatment and that's as simple way as I can put [Music] that was the final program in the Discovery Series stay with us for a preview of next week's program [Music]

Channel: kurvapicsa

Views: 132,169

Keywords: AIDS (Disease Or Medical Condition), Virus (Type Of Infectious Agent), Health (Industry), Medicine (Field Of Study), USA, gay, LGBT, HIV, 1980s, 80s, United States Of America (Country), Disease (Cause Of Death)

Id: 4EO-6NgcasI

Length: 50min 31sec (3031 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 25 2014