Swiss Cheese Research

Now that I’ve actually gotten into writing my literature review, I’ve realized that a lot of the sources I’ve been looking at all semester are not very valuable as citable material. They certainly helped me get an idea of what was out there about AIDS, but they don’t go very in depth on the issue. I feel like they mostly dance around it. Because of that, when I sat down to write something with them, I realized that they don’t come together into a cohesive argument. I had a LOT of holes that I didn’t see. I also realized that there are a lot of things that the articles I have been looking at assume about AIDS research without actually coming out and saying it. There seems to have been two sort of research waves on nutrition as it relates to AIDS. One started in the very late 70s when scientists were exploring the connection between malnutrition and immunity. By the late 90s, they seemed to have that connection pretty well established. This is one of those things the second wave of research has been assuming. This second wave started in the late 90s and is continuing now. Its focus has been on establishing how nutrition and AIDS affect each other. They’ve been exploring specific micronutrients and the effects of PEM on AIDS-wasting syndrome. The goal has been to establish recommendations for proper nutrition now that we know the two are definitely connected. The unfortunate thing is that the two have a very complex relationship, and it has been difficult to pinpoint exactly how the two interact. There is actually quite a bit of contradictory data that makes things difficult to explain.

Fortunately, I haven’t found anything that contradicts the assumptions I made when I chose this research project. Nutrition and AIDS are related. Women have it worse than men. South Africa experiences a lot of malnutrition and has a heavy burden of disease from AIDS. Although there is some contradictory data, I think for my purposes, what is available will be sufficient to guide me in forming a solid research project.