Neural Computing and the Aids Pandemic: The Case of Ohio

Abstract

Unless effective vaccines or a cure for the ravaging effects of the human immunodeficiency viruses (HIVs) arrive before the end of the century, possibilities that appear remote at the time of writing, the world faces one of the most devastating pandemics in its history¹. The World Health Organization (WHO), a normally cautious international body, has predicted 40 million people infected by the year 2000, upgrading prior estimates of 5-10 million made in the middle and late eighties. Although these smaller estimates appeared exaggerated at the time, the new 40 million prediction may itself be an underestimate, although reasonably reliable numbers to check these figures will become increasingly difficult to obtain. In most of the Third World, under-reporting is chronic, and in some regions of Africa and Asia officially reported figures may be as much an order of magnitude too low. Even in North America and Europe, both underreporting and late-reporting have constituted a problem for monitoring national epidemics; while in countries like France and Britain, HIV infection is still not a legally reportable disease, such reporting to a central authority being left entirely to an attending physician’s discretion.