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The Global Impact of AIDS
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13131 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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11 / 1987 |
2,770 Words |
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Evans Johnson
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As the newest deadly communicable disease spreads quickly around the world, the developing nations, already hard-pressed financially, will find it difficult to cope with the economic and social impact of the epidemic.
The developing and less developed nations, particularly in Africa, are in danger of losing a generation of leaders to what has been called potentially "the plague of the millennium."
"If you were the devil, you couldn't conceive of a disease that would be more disruptive and disturbing than this one," said Dr. Alvin Friedman-Kien, a New York University dermatologist.
In the scant few years since the first cases were diagnosed in the late 1970s, AIDS has grown into the single most controversial health topic in the United States, and it has shaken to the core the world health community. As an official with the World Health Organization (WHO) put it, "With the eradication of smallpox, we thought we had the communicable diseases on the run. We were absolutely stunned as we came to realize that an entirely new, deadly communicable disease had appeared out of nowhere."
In central Africa, where many scientists now believe the disease had its origins - although they admit they do not know how it began or exactly where - AIDS is spreading rapidly among the young, educated elite. The CIA estimates that five million people may die from AIDS there within the next five years.
The "devastation" of the ranks of the elite in African and other Third World countries could lead to radical political changes, a CIA study on the impact of AIDS said. The greatest danger to international relations stemming from the spread of AIDS, the CIA suggested, springs from one of the aspects of the disease that has only recently been recognized: chronic dementia.
Neurological complications
As AIDS research has mushroomed, it has become clear that victims can suffer severe brain damage without ever showing any of the symptoms previously considered markers for the disease. A study published in the Archives of Neurology in January 1987 estimated that more than half of all AIDS victims are stricken with neurological complications.
Bradford A. Navia and Richard W. Price of New York's Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center wrote that their research showed that one out of every five AIDS sufferers had already developed dementia before they were diagnosed as having AIDS, as defined by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Ten percent of the patients, they wrote, died without ever developing the illnesses cited by the CDC as associated with AIDS.
The Navia-Price study suggested that one-quarter of AIDS victims may develop paranoia, hallucinations, and agitated psychosis. It is this aspect of the disease that has so alarmed the CIA and strategic analysts outside of government.
The CIA study warned of the danger that afflicted African leaders may grow increasingly xenophobic and become both anti-Western and anti-Soviet as they are forbidden to travel to the
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