On June 5, 1981, a bombshell quietly exploded in America. On that day, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published a report on a rare and deadly illness affecting five young, gay men in Los Angeles.
It would be more than a year before the condition got its official name, but that was the day that Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, or AIDS, was officially recognized in the U.S.
Thirty years later, it can be hard to remember the fear and the desperation of those early days. It took more than three years to identify the virus that caused AIDS and to develop a test to detect HIV, the virus that causes it.
There were no treatments, and most people died very quickly. The average survival time after diagnosis was less than a year. People lost their jobs, their families and friends, and their homes when they got sick. Out of fear and ignorance, some schools refused to admit HIV-positive students and some doctors wouldn't treat HIV-positive patients. Churches and funeral homes refused to bury those who died.
And people died by the thousands. Over 600,000 deaths to date in the U.S. -- most of them young people in the prime of their lives.
Things are better now, thanks to the development of drugs to treat HIV. For those with access to health care, HIV has become more of a treatable, chronic condition than the fatal illness it was in the early 1980s. But still there is no cure and most people who live with HIV eventually will die as a result of their infection.
And every year, nearly 56,000 Americans still get infected with HIV, and 16,000 die of AIDS. Yet the number of Americans who see HIV as a serious health problem has declined dramatically since the 1990s. Why?
The explanations are familiar. Some people believe that only gay men and injection drug users -- or "those people" -- get HIV. Others believe that the treatments we have for HIV mean the virus is no longer a threat.
Those beliefs are wrong -- and potentially deadly.
To reinvigorate our response to the domestic epidemic, at President Obama's direction, the White House Office of National AIDS Policy and HHS worked with national advocacy groups, health care and community service providers, and people living with HIV/AIDS to create a comprehensive National AIDS Strategy to:
• Reduce the number of new HIV infections
• Increase access to care and improve health outcomes for people living with HIV/AIDS
• Reduce HIV-related health disparities
This builds off the National HIV/AIDS Strategy released last year, which is a road map to reaching those goals. I encourage you to read the Strategy, which now guides all Federal HIV-related efforts. I also encourage you to help us make HIV a memory by keeping yourself safe, informed and tested. You can use the HIV Testing and Service Providers Locator at AIDS.gov to find a testing site and care/support services near you.
You can also visit AIDS.gov's "30 Year of AIDS" page for additional resources, events, etc.
Thirty years is long enough.
Diane Winston: Religion and AIDS at 30
Edward Flattau: The Vatican's Unsupportable Logic
This is from that first report in 1981, which was filed by a Dr. Gottlieb at UCLA in 1981: "All 5 reported using inhalant drugs". That "inhalant drug" was Amyl Nitrate and it causes cancer. Deliberately inhaling something that had only been used before as a carburetor cleaner and an industrial solvent is a new behavior. Sometimes, new behaviors create new diseases. This is one of those times. Amyl Nitrate inhalants, otherwise known as "poppers" on the street, were inhaled as a sexual facilitator and enhancer. "Poppers" were marketed under various names, "Gym Locker", etc. and they were not regulated or restricted, so long as the labeling did not advise inhaling them. The street knew what to do with them. Well, sometimes, inhaling chemicals has a price that comes with it.
The follow up, in 1986, was the "Fast track" approval of another carcinogen called Zidovudine, or AZT. AZT was created as a chemo-therapy, only to be used for a short amount of time. Unfortunately for Glaxo, it was just too deadly to be submitted for approval. Until the AIDS scare. It was approved for use on AIDS patients, presumably, because the thinking back then, was "They're going to die ANYway", so, thousands of "AIDS" patients were given a DNA-chain terminator, AZT with predictable results: Hundreds of thousands of deaths, caused by AZT, but chalked up to "AIDS".
Sec. Sebelius, AIDS patients need your help. Since the AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP) crisis began in June 2009, waiting lists have increased from 99 people to currently 8,111 people across 13 states (http://www.nastad.org/). While the National AIDS Strategy aims to reduce HIV-related health disparities, most of those on ADAP waiting lists are no-income or low-income individuals, so AIDS-related health disparities are also continuing.
Last year your department reprogrammed millions in unspent funds to address the ADAP issues and we are asking both you and President Obama to again reprogram unspent funds to these cash-strapped ADAPs to stop the waiting lists and save lives. You have the power to put an end to these waiting lists .
HuffPost Readers: Please join AHF by signing a letter to Sebelius here: http://www.aidshealth.org/advocacy-policy/current-issues/obama-sebelius-aids-patients-need-help.html
Dr. Dorree Lynn
They are not getting tested. I got tested about 25 years ago. I don't have it. I am not a candidate to be retested.
I know someone who is one the longest living persons living a full life with Aids, he is 61 now and was diagnosed in the 80's. This is proof that AIDS is not a death sentence. Get tested! Take care of yourself, don't give up.
The TV shows, have more sexual related, or voyeurism type shows than anything very helpful with the exception of such shows as GEO, HIST, BBC, CNN, otherwise do not have any shows on this topic at all that I know of. And now there is a resurgence of AIDS especially in the elderly community.
With the little Blue Pill for men, it is allowing men to have intimate relations again. However, they think that only young people have or, get AIDS. And they are becoming playboys, and the women are sharing the men who are left. They do not stay with one woman, they are playing the field. The older person, from their fifties to eighties are the fastest growing group of people being infected in recent decades.
Now is the time to do another article about the newly shared news of the human Pamplona virus in throats of mostly men. They get it from the women or, other men. Women get it in the throat also from different types of sexual activity with same sex or men too.
I lived in NYC in the early 80's where I watched so many of my friends die. I attended more memorials than an 80 year old. With outrage, I witnessed my then president refuse to utter the name of the virus, let alone release funds to study it, until shamed into doing so by Elizabeth Taylor and a few of his other Hollywood cronies following the death of the closeted Rock Hudson.
As soom as funds were released The CDC, and The Pasteur Institute were able to get busy, identifing the virus which better later than never,led to the development of anti retro viral meds that make it possible for those with access to them, to lead normal lives. Even HIV mothers can now give birth to children not infected with the virus.
I buried my first partner because of the delay in releasing funds for research, but more importantly the homophobia that decided that HIV research was not a priority. It is not a Gay disease, never was.
So on this 30 year anniversary, this HIV positive man, with access to the meds, a 20 year relationship with a non-positive partner, and a vibrant life, bows his head in reflection. I wish that others would do the same, as opposed to posting uninformed knee-jerk comments.
It is your fault so you have to take care of them with compassion and pay the bills.
Thanks for reminding us of the small-minded ignoramuses who wasted critical time in delaying awareness of AIDS thirty years ago, and who behaved like beasts when fear overcame them. (They turned out to be the future torturers of America. Who knew.) Thanks for bringing to light how utterly contemptible religion is, how it molds people into fearful savages, how it dehumanizes people and makes everything worse. And thanks for the vivid reminder that there are still monsters among us who wish for nothing more than to see their neighbors suffer.
Wishing you all that you deserve.
insufferable paperwork. nonexistant assistance. you are a marginalized, second-class citizen. you will learn to skip meals, to pay for gas to get to work, or pay late bills. your credit is negative, barring you from assistance.
agencies cherry pick.
tests are required every year to prove they have hiv- a stunning waste of federal dollars.
nine months to get a gi/colonoscopy, another pill for the bleeding.
don't mislead americans as to how we have such a great system, "that thing get better", "hang in there", "we care". just imagine what an american who was not born here faces, in this daunting broken system.
adap, and ryan white funds, pay for professionals- who use the patient to gin the system, without patients receiving assistance. you are papering over the incredible, but always deniable racism americans living with hiv, or cancer, face.
unlike german policy makers, we can't find common ground, we fixate on our differences, at the expense of the working poor.
it's a setup for another election.
where we need to be is universal healthcare for all americans, as germany has proven. a strong economy, good healthcare, great education- they go together. with the republicans, we are never going to get there.
Here's an idea...keep government out of peoples lives and let the chips fall where they may. If I want to risk my life by not wearing a seat-belt then I should be able to. If I get injured in an accident...to bad for me...but it was my choice! Why is this so hard to understand?
Homosexuality is not a "lifestyle choice" for starters, so your argument's based on a fallacy. Even if it were, you're not exactly being evenhanded. I presume you wouldn't want heterosexuality banned, despite all the diseases, unwanted pregnancies and deaths that arise from it ...
http://www.hhs.gov/