In June 1981, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) published the first reports of a strange disease contracted by five men in Los Angeles. The men suffered from weight loss, high fevers, and pneumocystis, an unusual lung infection. The disease eventually became known as AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome). Additional investigation and research revealed that this deadly disease was not confined to the United States. It is now believed that HIV (human immunodeficiency virus), the virus that is widely acknowledged to be the cause of AIDS, originated in Central Africa and evolved from a similar virus that has been present in certain monkey populations for over fifty-thousand years. Since its discovery in 1981, the disease has spread dramatically. By the end of 1995, the CDC had reported that the total number of AIDS cases in the United States had grown to 513,486 and that 319,849 of those cases had already resulted in...