For more than twenty years, scientists have tried to determine exactly how the AIDS epidemic started, and how it spread throughout the world. There has been a continual effort to track this disease from its origin and to detail how it spread throughout the world. The first recognized cases of AIDS occurred in the U.S. during the early 1980’s. As a number of gay men across the U.S. began to develop a rare form of cancer as well as various infections which were resistant to conventional treatment, doctors began to realize that these men were most likely suffering from a common syndrome. Shortly afterward, the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) was discovered. In the early stages of AIDS research, many people were reluctant to believe that HIV caused AIDS. Rather than seeing AIDS as a disease caused by a virus, which therefore then made everyone susceptible to it, a great many doctors and researchers initially chose to believe that this was a disease which only affected gay men, and was a result of their lifestyle. Because of the stigma associated with this disease, the government did not initially respond as they would to a new disease. It was not until the actor Rock Hudson died of AIDS in 1985 that the disease began to be mentioned in the media. In 1990, Ryan White, who had contracted AIDS as the result of a blood transfusion, died at the age of 18 and the following year, NBA player Magic Johnson publicly announced he was HIV positive. These two events had a massive impact on public awareness. By the year 2007, research awareness and prevention programs were in place in nearly every developed country in the world. Now, in the new millennium, there is hope that one day this disease can be cured.