As of September 30, 1991, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported that 163 countries and territories had identified AIDS patients, with the number of infected individuals rising to 410,000. According to estimates by WHO experts, the actual number of infected people worldwide was likely around 1.1 million, projected to increase to approximately 40 million by the end of the 20th century.
In 2005, Vietnam had approximately 260,000 people living with HIV/AIDS. In the first six months of 2005, 6,704 new cases of HIV were reported nationwide, including 1,377 AIDS patients and 670 deaths due to AIDS.
In mid-1986, WHO officially named AIDS as “Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome,” abbreviated as HIV in English, referring to the slow-developing virus that leads to the disease.
In 1988, to encourage global cooperation against the most lethal epidemic in human history, WHO designated December 1st as “World AIDS Day“.
In May 1983, a research team from the Ruyca, Montania Institute, part of the Pasteur Institute in France, first isolated the AIDS virus from the lymph nodes of HIV-infected individuals. This marked humanity’s first discovery of the virus causing AIDS.
In April 1984, a research group led by Robert Gallo at the American National Cancer Institute isolated infectious agents from T-cell cultures of AIDS patients, successfully identifying the AIDS virus. This breakthrough significantly advanced the medical community’s understanding of AIDS.
Since then, AIDS has become more widespread. Recently, the earliest known case of what is now recognized as AIDS was identified in a sailor from Manchester, England. In 1959, this 25-year-old sailor suffered from an unusual illness: severe skin pain, persistent high fever, and a serious lung infection that caused rapid weight loss. Shortly after being hospitalized, he passed away. Doctors were puzzled by his strange symptoms and performed an autopsy, discovering a type of fungus and enlarged cells in his lungs, resulting in numerous small holes. At that time, as medical knowledge about AIDS was limited, the doctors could only publish the symptoms in a medical journal and retained some of the patient’s organs at the Manchester hospital.
By 1983, after the French medical community announced their findings on the AIDS pathogen, pathologists at the University of Manchester studied the preserved organs of the aforementioned patient: kidneys and pancreas, ultimately identifying the characteristic symptoms of AIDS. They inferred that AIDS had existed since the mid-20th century, and that the disease had begun to spread the HIV virus, indicating that Western countries had already seen AIDS patients by that time.
Experts and medical scholars have concluded that the AIDS pathogen may have emerged 50 to 150 years ago, gradually mutating and evolving. After over a century, it has become an unprecedented and deadly epidemic. Today, the world faces rapid transmission and increasingly alarming mortality rates. AIDS is often referred to as the “Epidemic of the 20th Century.“
However, where did this unprecedented and terrifying disease originate?
Initially, it was observed that a high percentage of AIDS patients were found among homosexuals and people engaged in promiscuous sexual behavior in major American cities. Thus, it was believed that homosexuality, which contradicted natural laws, led to sexual chaos and unforeseen diseases, resulting in AIDS. However, extensive scientific research revealed that homosexuality has been present in Western countries since ancient Greece and Rome, and has also existed in Eastern countries for millennia. If homosexuality was the cause of AIDS, the disease would have been prevalent since ancient times; why has it only spread now? This leads to the conclusion: Homosexuality is not the origin of AIDS but is a dangerous transmission route for the disease.
Scientists have proposed various theories regarding the origins of AIDS:
– First: The hypothesis of extraterrestrial transmission to Earth. This theory was first proposed by two British scientists who suggested that the AIDS pathogen has long existed in space. However, for thousands of years, due to the lack of intermediary hosts, humanity has not encountered this disease until a comet collided with Earth, introducing the pathogen to humanity.
– Second: The hypothesis that monkeys transmitted the disease to humans. Scientists have discovered that similar pathogens exist in monkeys, particularly in Africa. In their research, they found that the spread of the pathogen in Africa occurred earlier and faster than in Europe and America. Estimates suggest that the prevalence of AIDS pathogens in major cities in Central Africa may reach 10% of the population. In the 1980s in Kinshasa, Zaire, blood tests revealed that 6-7% of samples contained the AIDS pathogen. 
In Zambia, by 1987, around 6,000 children were being treated for AIDS. In some regions of Africa, newborns with the AIDS pathogen accounted for as much as 5%, with half to two-thirds expected to develop AIDS within one to two years. During the peak of AIDS spread around the Great Lakes region in Central Africa, a French researcher discovered that some local communities had unusual practices: they injected blood from male and female monkeys into the thighs and backs of men and women for sexual stimulation. Some used this method to treat infertility and erectile dysfunction. From the perspective of blood contact and the high rates of AIDS infection associated with this peculiar practice, researchers hypothesized that AIDS was transmitted from monkeys to humans. The history of this blood-injection practice among certain Central African communities likely predates the history of AIDS itself, leading researchers to speculate that monkeys may have transmitted AIDS to humans long ago, but due to random factors, the disease would have emerged and self-destructed unnoticed until modern times when many Americans and Europeans traveled to Africa, many of whom engaged in promiscuous behavior, thereby spreading AIDS back to Europe and America, exacerbated by reckless sexual activity and drug use.
– Third: The theory that “humans created the pathogen.” This claim was reported by the media. In the mid-1980s, the Tanzanian government newspaper “Daily News” reported that AIDS was a product of American biological warfare research. Later, a British source cited information from a reputable publication stating that the UK opposed the claims of the Society for the Study of Living Body Structures, whose members argued that AIDS was created by a biological warfare research center employing new technologies for genetic manipulation to create a new and dangerous pathogen. They alleged that the U.S. began its research during the Vietnam War, aiming to develop a new type of biological weapon.
The first researchers experimented on green monkeys in Central Africa, later shifting their focus to voluntary trials with death row inmates. Among these prisoners were several individuals who identified as homosexual, and after their release, they inadvertently spread the AIDS virus into society through various means, leading to widespread transmission. This was a consequence that neither the experimenters nor the subjects could have foreseen. It can be said that this was part of a biological warfare research experiment; due to the long incubation period of the pathogenic agent discovered by relevant personnel, the results were far from ideal… and thus, further steps were abandoned. After this information was reported in the media, dozens of countries and territories have since been featured in news stories, leading to much speculation and public discourse. U.S. authorities have denied this viewpoint. However, some African countries and media reports have linked the United States, which has the highest number of AIDS cases in the world, to the U.S. biological weapons research community, maintaining a confirming stance.
Although significant progress has been made in AIDS research, the exact origins of the disease remain unknown. Clarifying the precise source of AIDS is of immense significance for the medical science community and for humanity as a whole.
