HIV Language Issues

This post is about both educating people on the nature of HIV and AIDS and addressing the issue of the way the media uses language around these health issues.

HIV and AIDS have changed a lot in the last 25 years and people are no longer condemned to death but can live lives as long as anyone else and have sexual relationships.

1. HIV is the human immunodeficiency virus. AIDS is the accquired immune deficiency syndrome. AIDS is what they say a person has when they acquire illnesses that result when HIV has worn down a person's body to the point that they cannot defend themselves from normal illness such as flu.

2. AIDS is not a specific disease like HIV. AIDS is just what we say people have when they are no longer able to defend themselves and they get an "AIDS-defining illness". In that sense, someone might have AIDS and if their sickness (e.g. pneumonia) is cured, they will no longer have AIDS. These people could then live for years without contracting any more AIDS-defining illnesses depending on how their HIV progresses.

3. Because AIDS is not a specific illness, the recent standard for the media to publish all articles about it with it written as "Aids", is incorrect. Writing it this way leads to further misconceptions that AIDS is a specific disease and is misleading about what it is and how it affects people. I don't know how or who came up with this convention, but it is wrong and misleading and should be avoided if at all possible.

4. There is not an AIDS vaccine and never will be. AIDS is not a virus but what a person has at a certain point of their HIV progression, which can be treated and sometimes cured. They are working on an HIV vaccine because HIV is a virus. There has been some great progress with this lately, but it will still be years before anything is finalised.

5. HIV is contracted through contact into the blood stream with a sufficient amount of infected semen, vaginal fluids, rectal secretions, blood, breast milk, or during labour of an infected mother to the child. You cannot get it from kissing, shaking hands, or touching things that people with HIV have touched. Plenty of people with HIV have sexual relationships and do not pass it on to their partners.

These are all issues that a lot of people seem to be ignorant about. I hope reading this has clarified things. If you need more information the Terrence Higgins Trust is a great place to get more details. Or you can respond with a comment on this blog to ask me.