PSYC-307 Lecture Notes - Lecture 18: Retrovirus, Innocent Victims, Moral Panic
14 Dec 2017
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Document Summary
In 1981 msterious cases of rare infections sometimes expressed as cancer (kaposi"s sarcoma, pneumonia). Both signal the final stages in aids but this was unknown. Isolated high risk groups: gay men, haitians, iv drug users. Gave the impression that aids only effected the marginal groups. Moral panic, fears of catching the disease, prejudice against the groups (ex punishment of god for sin) It is a viruswhich enters the cell: retro, meaning containing rna, enters the nucleus of the cell and manipulate genetic information of the cell. Thecell doesn"t alert the immune system that the cell is abnormal. Retrovirus: hijacks cell, without marking it for destruction by an immune cell. It has rna, andcan survive and reproduce within the cell, without the immune system marking it for destruction. When it has invaded enough tcells, they implode and become useless-thus they have no defense to any infections due to low tcell counts.
