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Understanding HIV and AIDS: A Knowledge Quiz

This quiz tests your knowledge about HIV and AIDS, including symptoms, transmission, and associated stigmas.

1 There is currently no publicly available vaccine for HIV or cure for ________ or AIDS.

2 What does the following picture show? Main symptoms of AIDS. Estimated number of people living with HIV/AIDS by country Changes in life expectancy in some hard-hit African countries. Botswana Zimbabwe Kenya South Africa Uganda Kaposi's sarcoma

3 People who have been infected with one strain of HIV can still be infected later on in their lives by other, more ________ strains.

4 Often, AIDS stigma is expressed in conjunction with one or more other stigmas, particularly those associated with homosexuality, ________, promiscuity, prostitution, and intravenous drug use.

5 In HIV infected individuals, this is normally due to fungal (________) or viral (herpes simplex-1 or cytomegalovirus) infections.

6 Most of these conditions are infections caused by ________, viruses, fungi and parasites that are normally controlled by the elements of the immune system that HIV damages.

7 ________ is a disease caused by the single-celled parasite called Toxoplasma gondii; it usually infects the brain, causing toxoplasma encephalitis, but it can also infect and cause disease in the eyes and lungs.

8 HIV infection can only be diagnosed by PCR, testing for HIV pro-viral DNA in the children's ________.

9 ________ in 1981 and its cause, HIV, identified in the early 1980s.

10 There is also a significant although lesser increase in risk from STIs such as ________, chlamydia and trichomoniasis, which all cause local accumulations of lymphocytes and macrophages.

💡 Interesting Facts

  • after retiring from professional wrestling, Ida Mae Martinez was one of the first nurses in Baltimore to work with AIDS patients.
  • the AIDS activist group ACT UP twice shut down production of the Midnight Caller episode "After It Happened", believing that it would encourage vigilantism against people with AIDS.
  • a June 5, 1981, report by Dr. Joel Weisman in MMWR about five gay men with an unusual illness is recognized as the start of the AIDS pandemic and "the first report on AIDS in the medical literature".
  • Rev. Frederick B. Williams at the Church of the Intercession in New York City created the first program of any religious community in the United States to respond to the AIDS epidemic.
  • Love Patrol is a ni-Vanuatu edutainment soap opera designed to educate viewers about HIV AIDS.
  • the U.S. Federal Government's largest provider of HIV/AIDS services, the Ryan White Care Act, is named after Ryan White, a teenager who was expelled from his Indiana middle school in 1985 for having AIDS.
  • the Swedish government canceled a short film about AIDS that they commissioned from film director Roy Andersson because he had made it "too dark in its message".
  • when NBC pulled "Steve Burdick", an AIDS-themed episode of the medical drama Lifestories, gay and AIDS activists accused the network of fearing advertiser backlash.
  • the very first news article on what became known as AIDS appeared in the New York Native, a now defunct gay newspaper in New York City.
  • the relationship between two gay men at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic in Robert Chesley's erotic and emotional play Jerker takes place entirely over the telephone.
  • the Whitman-Walker Clinic adopted oral testing for HIV in 1993, before most major AIDS clinics in the US.
  • Inventing the AIDS Virus, written by molecular biologist Peter Duesberg, argues that AIDS is not infectious and that HIV is an unrelated passenger virus.
  • Fig Trees, an operatic documentary about AIDS activism, is narrated by a singing albino squirrel.
  • socialite Judith Peabody was known for clothes she wore from Bill Blass and Donald Brooks, as well as for legal aid to Lenny Bruce and her efforts at Gay Men's Health Crisis for people with AIDS.
  • NBC network executive Perry Lafferty produced the 1985 television movie An Early Frost, one of the first dramatic films to deal with the subject of HIV / AIDS.
  • Michael Jackson's "Gone Too Soon" was dedicated to the memory of Ryan White, a teenager who died following a battle with HIV/AIDS.
  • Jenna Bush's book Ana's Story, about a young woman with AIDS, has been criticized for not taking a stand on her father U.S. President George W. Bush's policies toward United Nations AIDS programs.
  • Ann Northrop gave up a successful career at CBS to eventually become an AIDS educator for the Hetrick-Martin Institute and co-host of TV news program Gay USA.
  • Bruce Voeller coined the term "acquired immune deficiency syndrome".
  • Thomas H. Paterniti introduced legislation in the state of New Jersey that would hold owners of adult bookstores liable if individuals contracted AIDS as a result of sexual activity on the premises.
  • Moscow Gay Pride has been described as "satanic" and likely to increase the spread of HIV/AIDS by Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov (pictured).
  • Marion Crecco sponsored a bill in the New Jersey Assembly promoting abstinence education in schools to prevent AIDS, stating that otherwise "we are allowing our children to play Russian roulette".
  • Jeannette Kagame, the current First Lady of Rwanda, works to help victims of the Rwandan Genocide and HIV/AIDS.
  • Botswana international footballer Donald Thobega was involved in the Test For Life campaign, which encourages supporters to get tested for HIV and AIDS.