* AIDS & AZT *

Pie Stars:

Votava, Laura [email protected]
Doenig, Eric [email protected]
McMenamy, Heather [email protected]
Situ, Peter [email protected]
Hussey, Scott [email protected]


Our group was formed by a former Chemistry 210 student who was a mutual friend to all of the current "Pie Stars" group members. Unfortunately, she dropped the class before the rest of us ever met so we spent several weeks just trying to get in contact with one another.

There were very few actual group meetings of the members of "Pie Stars". We met once or twice to discuss our topic and to trade information, but most of the work was done on an individual basis. We frequently e-mailed each other about interesting sites we found on the web, or talked on the phone to discuss details about the project. In the end we all met and combined our individual information into one awesome web page.

We decided to use AIDS and the AZT drug as our topic because it is fairly modern subject that everyone should be concerned about and relates well to organic chemistry. Plus we were able to find a variety of interesting sites on the web related to the drug and the virus, itself. Click Here and Here to see images of HIV.

Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), destruction of the immune system resulting from infection with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). A person infected with HIV gradually loses immune function due to the loss of certain white blood cells, called CD4 T-lymphocytes or CD4 T-cells, causing the infected person to become vulnerable to pneumonia, fungus infections, and other common ailments. With the loss of immune function, a clinical syndrome (a group of various illnesses that together characterize a disease) develops over time and eventually results in death due to opportunistic infections or cancers.

AIDS was thought to be the modern day "black plague", until recently when AZT was created. AZT is a product of much chemical engineering, and has shown a dramatic decrease in the consumation of the afflicted AIDS patient. Click Here and Here to see images of AZT molecular orbital.



"NORMAL WHITE BLOOD CELLS"



"AIDS ATTACKS IMAGE"



To read text about AIDS statistics and AZT:
www.projinf.org/fs/azt.html
www.aidsnyc.org/network/simple/zido.html
www.kff.org/natip/azt.html

The group project taught us alot about the AIDS virus and drugs such as AZT which are used to help treat it. Unfortunately, with all of our busy schedules we had alot of difficulty finding time to meet as a group.

The End