40 years ago, the first cases of AIDS were reported in the US
On June 5, 1981, a curious report appeared in the Center for Disease Control's weekly public health digest: Five young, gay men across Los Angeles had been diagnosed with an unusual lung infection known as Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP) -- and two of them had died.
It was the first time that acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) -- the devastating advanced-stage of HIV infection that would go on to claim the lives of more than 32 million people globally -- was reported in the US.
Days after the initial report hit the newspapers, the CDC learned of many more such cases in gay men. Not only did those men have PCP, they also had other secondary infections, among them a rare and aggressive cancer known as Kaposi's sarcoma (KS).
About a month after that first report, the write-up in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report counted 26 gay men across New York and California with those diagnoses -- a number that would increase exponentially.
Deotis McMather is pictured asleep in bed at the San Francisco General Hospital's Ward 5B -- the first AIDS hospital unit in the nation. After being diagnosed with AIDS, he returned to his apartment, where all of his belongings had been thrown out onto the street.
more...
Homophobia kills!
There are other forms of systemic oppression. Recognize!
= new reply since forum marked as read
is the number of gay men who lived through the AIDS crisis who tell me they have never heard of sarcoma.
(I was diagnosed with a sarcoma in December. Since sarcomas are rare, I am not surprised when most people haven't heard of it. But I am dumbfounded at the number of gay men in their late 50s and up whose first reaction is, "I've never heard of sarcoma."
It doesn't seem that long ago to me, and KS was one of my first connections I made when I was told I had a sarcoma.
