HIV attacks the body's immune system and without treatment, it can lead to AIDS. The virus is transmitted via contact with body fluids such as semen, blood, and other bodily discharges.
The new head of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has expressed some doubts about those facts. Now the Trump administration is contemplating the elimination of the HIV prevention division that is a part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), according to NBC News.
If the CDC is anything, it is supposed to be the chief agency that detects, controls, and eliminates infectious diseases. HIV is just such a communicable microbe. The CDC estimates 31,800 Americans were infected with it in 2022, the year in which the latest data are available. The CDC also estimates that "approximately 1.2 million people in the U.S. have HIV. About 13 percent of them don't know it and need testing."
