The Strand – When HIV/AIDS first crept onto medical radar in the early 1980s, it was a mystery. Doctors from the U.S., France, Zaire, and Haiti noticed that patients, their immune systems overwhelmed, were dying from infections an otherwise healthy body would be able to fight off. By 1983, French medical researchers had isolated the virus HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus), which attacks the immune system and leaves the body vulnerable to infections and cancers. HIV was later connected to the development of AIDS (Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome – when the body is no longer able to protect itself from infection.)
