I am doing a speech about the 80's decade in my Public Speaking class and settled on the Medical Breakthroughs during the 80's. I would like to suggest you add this to your main topic's as there seemed to be quite a few first's such as first test tube baby born (although my research says the first was born in 1978 in England), Cocaine discovery, AIDS virus discovered (discovery actually in 1950's), and Prozac introduced as an anti-depressant and many more. Thanks

> I am doing a speech about the 80's decade in my Public Speaking class and
> settled on the Medical Breakthroughs during the 80's. I would like to
> suggest you add this to your main topic's as there seemed to be quite a
> few first's such as first test tube baby born (although my research says
> the first was born in 1978 in England), Cocaine discovery, AIDS virus
> discovered (discovery actually in 1950's), and Prozac introduced as an
> anti-depressant and many more. Thanks

its funny, someone asks me about this once every six months or so... you've got some glaring mistakes though

cocaine wasn't discovered during the 80s, maybe the 1880s... crack cocaine came into use in the 80s, but I don't see what that has to do with medical breakthroughs

and AIDS wasn't discovered in the 1950s, maybe some element of the virus was found in monkey's or something, but AIDS definately was discovered in people in the 80s. According to "Our Times, The Illustrated History of the 20th Century", June 5, 1981 is when the first signs something wrong was going on when a report was published about five cases of rare pneumonia that weren't generally found in adults, was found among 5 gay men in LA hospitals. A month later 41 gay men were found to have Kaposi's sarcoma, another rare disease. Soon gay men everywhere were found to be coming down with strange diseases. Initially it was called GRID (Gay related immunodeficiency) but changed to AIDS when it was found that people outside the gay community (such as drug users, female prostitutes, blood transfusion recipents) By December of 1982, 1,600 cases were reported, most in Africa. The microbe responsible was still unknown. By 1994, three million people were diagnosed with the disease. from page 591.

> its funny, someone asks me about this once every six months or so...
> you've got some glaring mistakes though

> cocaine wasn't discovered during the 80s, maybe the 1880s... crack cocaine
> came into use in the 80s, but I don't see what that has to do with medical
> breakthroughs

> and AIDS wasn't discovered in the 1950s, maybe some element of the virus
> was found in monkey's or something, but AIDS definately was discovered in
> people in the 80s. According to "Our Times, The Illustrated History
> of the 20th Century", June 5, 1981 is when the first signs something
> wrong was going on when a report was published about five cases of rare
> pneumonia that weren't generally found in adults, was found among 5 gay
> men in LA hospitals. A month later 41 gay men were found to have Kaposi's
> sarcoma, another rare disease. Soon gay men everywhere were found to be
> coming down with strange diseases. Initially it was called GRID (Gay
> related immunodeficiency) but changed to AIDS when it was found that
> people outside the gay community (such as drug users, female prostitutes,
> blood transfusion recipents) By December of 1982, 1,600 cases were
> reported, most in Africa. The microbe responsible was still unknown. By
> 1994, three million people were diagnosed with the disease. from page 591.

It was discovered that a British sailor died of AIDS in 1959 and a 15-year-old St. Louis boy died of AIDS in 1969. But no one knew what it was that killed them back then. They kept some tissue samples of those two victims and later on they found out that the two of them died of AIDS.