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Showing results for tags 'HIV'.
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It turns out others who were ranked #1 at year end are not in this photo: Pete Sampras is probably the one with the longest period of year end #1 ranking who was not at that photo shoot. Regardless, its a neat picture and between Nastase and recent and current #1's it covers a lot of decades, not just years. That is a lot of tennis history. Boy I disagree on the "luck" description concerning Arthur Ashe. He reportedly contracted HIV from a blood transfusion in the 1980's due to a heart attack. I knew someone over a long period, who died from Aids around the same time period as Ashe. During his last year of life, while with AIDS, I watched him whither away at my best friends home (his brother). It was devastating. During the 1980's another very close friend was a very active AIDS scientist working at some companies that were trying to find a cure for AIDS. I knew his colleagues and the President of that firm (whose sister I dated for a bit). I learned a fair amount about the entire scientific process wherein researchers around the globe were trying to find a cure for AIDS or a medicine(s) that would prevent HIV from turning into AIDS. One horrible accounting for the time it took to come up with a medicine that could prevent HIV from turning into AIDS was the political environment that severely limited total dollars and research to come up with an antidote. It was overwhelmingly political in the US. Funds were limited. It was completely political. There was no guarantee that more money, more research, more testing, more effort could have arrived at a cure more quickly. But it might have. The scientists were well connected in terms of sharing results and branching off into newer possible solutions. It is possible that the "cocktail combination" of drugs that prevented HIV from turning into AIDS could have been discovered earlier with more money and more effort. To me it was one of the ugly episodes of predjudiced politics that possibly resulted in many more deaths than needed to occur. I can't accept the description of terrible luck.
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I found this to be astonishing history of science on a topic that is both current and recent history: "New Study Shows HIV Epidemic Starting Spreading in New York in 1970" on nbcnews.com A very gruesome and painful disease and some remarkable science. Just interesting reading.
