Biomedical Prevention: Has Its Time Now Come?(In Context‪)‬

In the early 1980s, the medical world was thrown into a panic by the appearance of a new and apparently highly contagious infectious disease of unknown etiology. This new illness, that initially seemed to affect only men who have sex with men (MSM), has evolved into a pandemic that has become one of the greatest public health challenges in the last half century. For too long, people infected with HIV were told they had no treatment options and that opportunistic infections and early death were inevitable. Fortunately, clinical researchers and social scientists having been working diligently for more than 25 years to change these circumstances. Beginning with the use of diagnostic and screening tests for HIV infection in 1985, the spread of HIV in the United States population has dramatically decreased. National HIV-testing programs have led to the testing of about 50% of Americans between the ages of 15 and 44 years. (1) Whereas HIV testing promoted individual knowledge of HIV serostatus, identification of HIV-transmission routes reduced unfounded fears about the spread of infection. Prevention programs that provided basic information about HIV and AIDS succeeded in decreasing transmission by promoting risk-reduction strategies for populations at high risk for infection. HIV testing also helped ensure the safety of the nation's blood supply. Since the mid-1980s, blood donor-screening methods and testing technology have reduced the risk of infection from contaminated blood transfusions to about I in every 2 million donations. (2)