AIDS

AIDS (or Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome) was a disease which existed on Earth during the late 20th and the 21st century.

In a part of US President George W. Bush's State of the Union address of 2003 which appeared in the 31st century database, Bush talked about eradicating AIDS on the most afflicted Earth continent, Africa. (ENT: "Future Tense")

Background

• David Gerrold reportedly pitched a script for Star Trek: The Next Generation involving infections of Regulan bloodworm carried by helpless victims. The story, called "Blood and Fire", used bloodworm infection as a metaphor for the 1980s AIDS crisis, describing the same kinds of mistreatment and persecution of carriers. A disagreement with Gene Roddenberry led to the script being abandoned and Gerrold's departure from the series.
• The Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "The Quickening" was initially to have an alien disease that was based on AIDS. Although Naren Shankar dropped Ira Steven Behr's idea for the AIDS metaphor, Terry Farrell still saw the AIDS reference, commenting that the episode was "a good one to work on because I was thinking about the AIDS metaphor while we were shooting it. I felt like we had a touch of reality in that episode". (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, The Official Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Magazine Vol. 18)
• The story of ENT: "Stigma" is a metaphor to the current AIDS pandemic in which people living with HIV/AIDS are ostracized and are often looked upon with the prejudice, displayed by the Vulcan attitude to Pa'nar Syndrome. [1] [2]

External links

• AIDS at Memory Beta, the wiki for licensed Star Trek works
• AIDS at Wikipedia
• The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS - UNAIDS
• International AIDS Society - the world's leading independent association of HIV/AIDS professionals