HIV Discovered as the Cause of AIDS 30 Years Ago Today

On this date thirty years ago, Health and Human Services Secretary Margaret Heckler announced the discovery of HIV as the cause for the AIDS virus. Since then, the treatment of HIV/AIDS has revolutionized medicine worldwide.

Before Secretary Heckler made the announcement, over 1,750 Americans had already died from human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) or from complications of it, and over 2,300 were living with AIDS. The discovery allowed health experts to mass produce large quantities of the virus, which would help them find treatments and develop a cure (which is still nonexistent).

"With the discovery of both the virus and this new process, we now have a blood test for AIDS. With a blood test, we can identify AIDS victims with essentially 100% certainty," said Heckler back in 1984, in an interview with MSNBC News.

Nonetheless, the virus is survivable, which is a medical milestone. The number of people receiving HIV treatment in low, and middle-income countries have increased 40-fold since 2002. Thanks to the World Health Organization and its partners, awareness of the virus has dramatically increased and each year an International AIDS Conference takes place to determine the status of the virus and how countries can improve HIV prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and care.

At the end of 2012, 35.3 million people were living with HIV. Approximately 50,000 new HIV cases are documented each year in the United States, and you can find information on other countries across the world on the WHO website. Over 1.1 million people in the U.S. are living with HIV, according to CDC statistics from 2010, and 44% of those are African American, followed by 31% White, and 21% Hispanic.

HIV is a sexually transmitted infection that is also spread by contact with infected blood, or from mother to child during pregnancy. The virus interferes with your body's ability to fight the organisms that cause HIV and it destroys immune cells called "T lymphocytes" that play a critical role in cell-meditated immunity. The virus eventually progresses into Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS), which kills 1.6 million people annually across the world.

You can read more about the HIV/AIDS virus on the CDC and WHO webistes.