Update – Actor Charlie Sheen Reveals
Update – Actor, Producer, Charlie Sheen made a revealing announcement that he is HIV-positive.
“I am here to admit that I am, in fact, HIV-positive,” actor Charlie Sheen told NBC’s Today Show host Matt Lauer. He added that he wanted to stop the “barrage of attacks and sub-truths” that are “threatening the health of many others.”
HIV stands for human immunodeficiency virus. If left untreated, HIV can lead to the disease AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome). Unlike some other viruses, the human body cannot get rid of HIV. That means that once you have HIV, you have it for life. No safe and effective cure for HIV currently exists, but scientists are working hard to find one, and remain hopeful.
HIV affects specific cells of the immune system, called CD4 cells, or T cells. Over time, if left untreated, HIV can destroy so many of these cells that the body can’t fight off infections and disease. However, with proper medical care, HIV can be controlled. Treatment for HIV is called antiretroviral therapy or ART. It involves taking a combination of HIV medicines (called an HIV regimen) every day. Today, a person who diagnosed with HIV before the disease is far advanced and who gets and stays on ART can live a nearly normal life span.
The only way to know for sure if you have HIV is to get tested. Testing is relatively simple. You can ask your health care provider for an HIV test. Many medical clinics, substance abuse programs, community health centers, and hospitals offer them, too. You can also get an FDA-approved home HIV testing kit (the Home Access HIV-1 Test System or the OraQuick In-Home HIV Test) from a drugstore.
Charlie Sheen
ABOUT THE ACTOR
Carlos Irwin Estévez (born September 3, 1965), best known by his stage name Charlie Sheen, is an American actor. Sheen rose to fame after a series of successful films such as Platoon (1986), Lucas (1986), Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986), Wall Street (1987), Young Guns (1988), Eight Men Out (1988), Major League (1989), Hot Shots! (1991), The Three Musketeers (1993), The Arrival (1996), Money Talks (1997), and Being John Malkovich (1999).
Carlos Estévez was born in New York City, the youngest son of actor Ramón Antonio Gerardo Estévez (who himself used the stage name Martin Sheen) and artist Janet Templeton. His paternal grandparents were immigrants from Galicia and Ireland, respectively.His father is a “devout Catholic” and his mother is a “strict Southern Baptist”. Sheen has two older brothers, Emilio and Ramon, and a younger sister, Renée, all actors. His parents moved to Malibu, California, after Martin’s Broadway turn in The Subject Was Roses. Sheen’s first movie appearance was at age nine in his father’s 1974 film The Execution of Private Slovik. Sheen attended Santa Monica High School in Santa Monica, California, where he was a star pitcher and shortstop for the baseball team.
At Santa Monica High School, he showed an early interest in acting, making amateur Super 8 films with his brother Emilio and school friends Rob Lowe and Sean Penn under his birth name. A few weeks before graduation, Sheen was expelled from school for poor grades and attendance. Deciding to become an actor, he took the stage name Charlie Sheen. His father had adopted the surname Sheen in honor of the Catholic archbishop and theologian Fulton J. Sheen, while Charlie was an English form of his given name Carlos.
