The Rhetoric of a New Syndrome

From a medical viewpoint, AIDS (Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome) is described as a syndrome manifested by a state of immunosuppression, due to the infection with varieties of the human immunodeficiency virus (Stine 1993, p. 35). This means that there is no single disease involved, but that the state of immune deficiency allows various infectious agents to enter the body; subsequently, infections and various diseases develop. The immune deficiency also allows for organisms already present in the body that might otherwise remain harmless to get out of control and proliferate. In this sense, rather than being regarded as a single homogeneous disease, AIDS is seen as a condition of the human body in which the immune system can control neither the organisms already present in the body nor the ones that enter it. The agent that induces this condition of the immune system is now medically described as a human retrovirus (with several varieties) that, once in the body, binds itself to the surface of certain cells of the immune system (CD 4+ cells), inhabits them for a while, and then begins to reproduce itself there, using the genetic material of the cells. The reproduction process consumes the cells and weakens the immune system to the point where it collapses.

The first infections historically documented in relationship to this condition of the immune system (and hence to HIV) were Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP) and Kaposi's sarcoma (KS).