SCI W1

1a - And the Band Played On

Topic/Instructions

View HBO movie titled, “And the Band Played On.” The movie is 140 minutes in length and stars Matthew Modine. This movie is a chronicle of how HIV/AIDS was researched and made public in America. Matthew Modine, stars as Dr. Don Francis, a researcher at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who seeks to uncover the cause of a number of mysterious deaths. With little funding, not only must he fight the disease, but also fight a disinterested public, the government, the media and even the communities where the mysterious virus strikes hardest. But as the death toll mounts, public interest is stirred and Francis’ research becomes a desperate race against time.

You can view the movie on cable,Netflix or you can download the movie for free at the following link: https://vimeo.com/85778803 (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.

Write up a short commentary about one of the subtopics of the film that you found interesting. Please note that I'm not looking for a summary of the movie. I'm looking for your impression of the way it was dealt with by the characters. For example, what obstacles did the physicians, epidemiologists and other scientists meet with in trying to solve the mystery? How did human nature interfere with their efforts? 

Potential topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

a.  how they realized that they had a potential epidemic on their hands,

b. what they went through to determine how it was transmitted.

c. what obstacles they went through to they tried to assemble the clues and data to solve the mystery.

d.  target populations,

e.  efforts by epidemiologists to tracking the disease transmission

f.  how the politics of science put road blocks into their efforts

g. identifying the viral microbes

h. government agency intervention

i.  eliminating the HIV virus from the blood banks

j.  human emotions.

Create your own thread, and write your posts (150-200 words).  Be prepared to manage the discussion that sprouts from your own post, and write meaningful replies to at least two classmates' posts.  

1b.AIDS - Basic Question and Answers

Instructions

In this course, HIV & Epidemiology, we will be going back and forth between a number of different topics. If you scan the topics of each of the 15 Modules, you will see that we will be talking in depth about basic biology, medicine, epidemiology, understanding graphs and tables, statistics. human emotions and sociology to name a few. However, each of these topics seems to build on knowledge from the other modules. We will begin the course with a brief overview of HIV and AIDS to give you some very basic knowledge to build on. After all, we have to start somewhere. 

1. Start by reading the article at the following link to learn some basic facts about the disease: 

https://www.khanacademy.org/science/health-and-medicine/infectious-diseases/hiv-and-aids/a/what-is-hivaids

2. Then watch the short video, which will give you an overview of AIDS: 

https://www.khanacademy.org/science/health-and-medicine/infectious-diseases/hiv-and-aids/v/what-is-hiv-and-aids

3. Now, lets start a casual discussion. Write up a question about HIV, AIDS, or any topic related to this course that you'd like to know more about. Maybe you have known an AIDS patient and would like to tell us something about how the disease progressed, or the psychology of dealing with the disease. Anyone can post an answer to any post, but please try to stay on topic. 

Everyone should post at least one original question and should contribute something meaningful to at least 4 other topics. Your posts don't need to be too long, but I'd like you all to gain a broad working knowledge before we begin the course. 

Module 1 Reflection

In each module, we'll have a final discussion to "reflect" on what we learned this week. Here you can post commentary on something that we discussed, how a concept would apply to a particular situation, etc. For Week 1, why don't you each just tell me what you're hoping to get from the course. You can make multiple posts if you'd like, or pose questions for additional discussions. be creative. Everyone should make at least one meaningful comment, and that should be at least 100 words.