AZT The AIDS virus is one of the most deadly and most wide spread diseases in the modern era. The disease was first found in 1981 as doctors around the United States began to report groups of young, homosexual men developing a rare pneumonia caused by an organism called Penumocystis carini. These patients then went on to develop many other new and rare complications that had previously been seen only in patients with severely damaged immune systems. The Center for Disease Control in the United States named this new epidemic the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome and defined it by a specific set of symptoms. In 1983, researchers finally identified the virus that caused AIDS. They name