Timeline

June 5, 1981

CDC Reports Initial Cases of HIV/AIDS in Los Angeles

U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports cases of a rare lung infection in five young, previously healthy, gay men in Los Angeles -- the first official reporting of what would become known as the AIDS epidemic.  Two of the men have already died.. Learn More.

The CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report described the men as having additional infections, indicating that their immune systems were compromised.  By the time the report was published, two of the young men were already dead. While this was the first official reporting of the disease, the history of the AIDS epidemic actually reaches back to the early 20th Century, when Simian Immunodeficiency Virus made the jump from chimpanzees to humans in Central Africa. The new virus began infecting residents in Léopoldville (now Kinshasa) in the Democratic Republic of the Congo some time between 1990 and 1920.  according to History.com/A&E Networks.  More than 60 years later, when HIV tests became available, blood samples from a Congolese man who died in 1959 tested positive for HIV and this was the first confirmed HIV-related death. But the existence and spread of HIV had gone unreported in the medical community until around 1980, when a handful of doctors serving urban populations in the U.S. started to see unusual symptoms in their patients. One of these doctors was Michael Gottlieb, a young immunologist at UCLA (University of California Los Angeles) who diagnosed a rare lung infection in five young men between 1980-1981.  Dr. Gottlieb arranged for his findings to be disclosed to the medical community in the CDC's weekly alert, MMWR. Dr. Gottlieb encountered his first patient with unusual infections in November 1980, when one of his medical school residents reported a young patient suffering from a severe yeast infection in his throat.  When the patient began having breathing difficulties, Dr. Gottlieb arranged to receive a scraping of the patient's lung tissue through a non-surgical procedure.  He was astounded by the test results. The patient tested positive for Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP), a rare lung infection, in addition to oral candidiasis, also known as thrush.  Dr. Gottlieb then reached out to a colleague who specialized in the new science of T-cells, the white blood cells important to the immune system.  The colleague tested the patient's blood and found that the sample had no T-helper cells, a result so astounding that he ran the test again, with the same results. In February 1981, Dr. Gottlieb would come across another young man suffering with PCP and depleted T-cells, and shortly after that, a third patient was referred to him.  Thorough examinations of the patients about their lifestyles yielded the information that were gay, but Dr. Gottlieb couldn't determine how their sexual identity was relevant. A fourth PCP patient appeared in April 1981, and then a report of a fifth man who already died (an autopsy found PCP).   Seeing an alarming trend, Dr. Gottlieb contacted an editor at the New England Journal of Medicine, the most prestigious medical journal in the U.S., and was told that the submission-review-publication process would take at least four months.  He believed this information needed to get out to the medical community fast, so he instead submitted his report to the CDC's weekly newsletter, the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), a weekly report read by medical officials concerned with infectious disease and public health. Assisting Dr. Gottlieb in publishing his report was Dr. Wayne Shandera, who worked in the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health as a CDC liaison. "Gottlieb talked through the charts while Shandera put the information into the dry, turgid prose that the MMWR preferred," wrote Randy Shilts in his epic recounting of the early years of the AIDS pandemic, And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic.  "The report noted the links between PCP, CMV (cytomegalovirus), and the oral candidiasis that commonly preceded the pneumonia." Dr. Gottlieb's report also stated, "The fact that these patients were all homosexuals suggests an association between some aspect of homosexual lifestyle or disease acquired through sexual contact and Pneumocystis pneumonia in this population." The five Los Angeles men in Dr. Gottlieb's report were not the only early cases in the U.S.  Starting around 1979, previously healthy men in New York City and San Francisco were their seeing doctors and baffling them with a range of symptoms that included fatigue, enlarged lymph nodes, flat purple lesions, oral candidiasis, shortness of breath, eczema, fevers, and amebic dysentery.  Their medical charts would be marked with notes like "fever of unknown origin," "Kaposi's sarcoma," "cytomegalovirus," and "toxoplasmosis."   But the traditional treatments for these conditions were not working. While sporadic cases of AIDS were documented prior to 1970, available data suggests that the epidemic started in the mid- to late 1970s. Grethe Rask, a Danish physician who worked in the Congo, died of pneumonia on December 12, 1977 after suffering for several years from opportunistic infections.  Ten years after her death, samples of her blood were tested and found to be positive for HIV. By 1980, HIV may have already spread to five continents (North America, South America, Europe, Africa and Australia), and in this period, it is possible that up to 300,000 people were already infected. In April of 1980, the CDC received a report on Ken Horne, a gay man in San Francisco who was diagnosed with Kaposi’s sarcoma.  Horne died on November 30, 1981.  The CDC would retroactively identify Horne as the first American patient of the AIDS epidemic. Following Dr. Gottlieb's report in the CDC's MMWR, he and his team published a more detailed report in the New England Journal of Medicine on December 10,  1981. Today, Dr. Gottlieb is an Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine and still treats patients exclusively at AIDS Project Los Angeles (APLA Health).  He is also a member of the Council of Advisors to STORIES: The AIDS Monument. * * * * Sources: Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report | Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "Pneumocystis Pneumonia - Los Angeles," June 5, 1981 American Journal of Managed Care, "A Q&A With HIV/AIDS Pioneer Dr Michael Gottlieb" by Maggie L. Shaw, June 4, 2021 And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic by Randy Shilts www.Be In The Know.org, "Origin of HIV and AIDS" PBS News Hour, "America's HIV Outbreak Started in This City, 10 Years Before Anyone Noticed" by Nsikan Akpan, October 26, 2016 www.History.com | A&E Television Networks, "AIDS Crisis Timeline" The New England Journal of Medicine, "Pneumocystis carinii Pneumonia and Musocal Candidiasis in Previously Healthy Homosexual Men -- Evidence of a New Acquired Cellular Immunodeficiency" by Michael S. Gottlieb, M.D., Robert Schroff, Ph.D., Howard M. Schanker, M.D., Joel D. Weisman, D.O., Peng Thim Fan, M.D., Robert A. Wolf, M.D., and Andrew Saxon, M.D.; December 10, 1981

June 1981

Rare Kaposi's Sarcoma Found among Gay Men in NY & CA

New York City dermatologist Dr. Alvin Friedman-Kien calls the CDC to report a cluster of cases of a rare and unusually aggressive cancer among gay men in New York and California. Learn More.

Dr. Friedman-Kien, whose clientele were primarily young men who identified as gay, said he was surprised at the finding that previously healthy men were developing Kaposi’s Sarcoma (KS), a rare cancer historically associated with elderly men of Eastern European or Mediterranean descent. KS is also associated with people who have weakened immune systems, according to the U.S. National Institutes of Heath (NIH).  The disease often presents as a purple plaque on the skin or internal surface of the mouth.  KS can also manifest on internal organs, such as the lungs and gastrointestinal system.

Dr. Friedman-Kien told New York magazine:

“In February 1981, I saw a young man who was perfectly healthy except for a number of spots on his skin.  I’d never seen anything like it, so I did a biopsy.  Under the microscope, the cell structure was clear: it was Kaposi’s sarcoma."

Dr. Friedman-Kien continued:  “A week later, another physician sent me another patient, also a gay man in his late thirties, also with disseminated KS."

Later research would establish that AIDS-related KS is the second most common tumor in HIV patients with CD4 counts less than 200 cells, according to the NIH.  Up to 30% of HIV patients not taking high-activity antiretroviral therapy (HAART) will develop Kaposi sarcoma. * * * * * Source: New York magazine, "Fighting AIDS" by Janice Hopkins Tanne, January 12, 1987 POZ magaine, "A Look Back at the Year a Rare Cancer Was First Seen in Gay Men" by Joseph Sonnabend, M.D., July 13, 2020 The New York Times, "Rare Cancer Seen in 41 Homosexuals" by Lawrence K. Altman, July 3, 1981

June 8, 1981

CDC Report Receives Nationwide Media Attention

News media begin to report out on the MMWR article, and within days, the CDC receives reports from around the country of similar cases of opportunistic infections among gay men. Learn More.

These news stories -- which were published by the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle and Associated Press -- captured the attention of the gay community and medical personnel nationwide. In response to the outpouring of reports and concerns to the CDC, the Task Force on Kaposi’s Sarcoma and Opportunistic Infections was created to identify risk factors and to develop a case definition for the as-yet-unnamed syndrome.  The Task Force worked under the CDC's Field Services Division in the Epidemiology Program.

To coordinate the task force, the CDC selected James W. Curran, M.D., who would dedicate much of his life to HIV/AIDS research and would publish numerous research papers on the disease.

Task force members included David M. Auerbach, M.D.; John V. Bennett, M.D.; Philip S. Brachman, M.D.; Glyn C. Caldwell, M.D.; Salvatore J. Crispi; William W. Darrow, Ph.D.; Henry Falk, M.D.; David S. Gordon, M.D.; Mary E. Guinan, M.D.; Harry W. Haverkos, M.D.; Clark W. Heath, Jr., M.D.; Roy T. Ing, M.D.; Harold W. Jaffe, M.D.; Bonnie Mallory Jones; Dennis D. Juranek, D.V.M.; Alexander Kelter, M.D.; J. Michael Lane, M.D.; Dale N. Lawrence, M.D.; Richard Ludlow; Cornelia R. McGrath; James M. Monroe; David M. Morens, M.D.; John P. Orkwis; Martha F. Rogers, M.D.; Wilmon R. Rushing; Richard W. Sattin, M.D.; Mary Ellen Shapiro; Thomas J. Spira, M.D.; John A. Stewart, M.D.; Pauline A. Thomas, M.D.; and Hilda Westmoreland.

In its first year, the Task Force on Kaposi’s Sarcoma and Opportunistic Infections received case reports from the following doctors working in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles:

Donald F. Austin, M.D.; Erwin Braff, M.D.; James W. Buehler, M.D.; James Chin, M.D.; J. Lyle Conrad, M.D.; Selma Dritz, M.D.; Diane M. Dwyer, M.D.; Shirley L. Fannin, M.D.; Yehudi M. Felman, M.D.; Stephen M. Friedman, M.D.; Robert A. Gunn, M.D.; John P. Hanrahan, M.D.; Robert J. Kingon, M.D.; Michael D. Malison, M.D.; Stanley I. Music, M.D.; Mark A. Roberts, M.D.; Alain J. Roisin, M.D.; Richard B. Rothenberg, M.D.; and R. Keith Sikes, M.D.

* * * * * Sources: National Institutes of Health, "In Their Own Words ... NIH Researchers Recall the Early Years of AIDS" Frontline | PBS,  "Interview: Jim Curran," interviews conducted Jan. 18, 2005 and Feb. 15, 2006 The New England Journal of Medicine, "Epidemiologic Aspects of the Current Outbreak of Kaposi's Sarcoma and Opportunistic Infections," January 28, 1982

June 16, 1981

First Person with AIDS Admitted to NIH

A man exhibiting symptoms of severe immunodeficiency is the first person with AIDS to be admitted to the Clinical Center at the National Institutes of Health. Learn More.

The 35-year-old, white gay man from New York City was transferred from a Connecticut hospital to the NIH in Bethesda, Maryland after researchers at the National Cancer Institute, an NIH branch that studied immunodeficiency diseases, heard about his case. Almost immediately after the new disease emerged on the medical scene, researchers recognized that patients with this unnamed syndrome often developed a rare cancer called Kaposi's sarcoma as well as other tumors, such as high-grade B-cell lymphomas. As a result, some of the earliest AIDS patient care and research was performed by cancer specialists at the NIH and elsewhere. The man admitted to the NIH was, for privacy purposes, referred to as "Patient D."  He came to the NIH from Hartford Hospital, where he had been hospitalized for two months with neumocystis carinii pneumonia, lymphocytopenia, cytomegalovirus, herpes simplex II, Candida esophagitis, and Mycobacterium avium tuberculosis of the lung, bone marrow, and esophagus. The patient had been healthy through adulthood until February 1981, when he began experiencing fatigue and weakness, followed by weight loss and fever. Thomas A. Waldmann, M.D., one of the NIH doctors who was first to examine "Patient D" said in a 1990 NIH interview: "The pattern that we observed in our patient was the kind of pattern one saw in Hodgkin's disease patients who were profoundly anergic [i.e., a condition in which the body fails to react to an antigen], or in patients with a form of profound immunodeficiency called 'severe combined immunodeficiency of infancy,' where the patient cannot make an effective cellular or antibody immune response. What we were seeing was an acquired form of cell-mediated immunity." Dr. Waldmann said the medical team performed every test they could think of to try to determine the cause of Patient D's condition, to no avail. "We were all groping, trying to understand what was going on," Dr. Waldmann recalled.  "In that era, one couldn't be fatalistic, even when someone was in an apparently irreversible state. One had to assume that somehow one might be able to reverse the immunodeficiency and with that bring into control the infectious disease." Members of the NIH's Metabolism Branch joined forces to study the patient's cells in a variety of tests.  Once doctors determined that Patient D suffered from a rare case of cytomegalovirus retinitis, the National Eye Institute became involved, photographing and studying Patient D's deteriorating eyesight. In addition to the research, the doctors were scrambling to find a treatment that Patient D would respond to, but these treatments failed to reverse the course of the symptoms.  In fact, it would later be discovered that chemotherapy, the traditional treatment for many forms of cancer, would be ineffective for (and even harmful to) AIDS patients because of their weakened immune systems. "At the end, the patient had massive cerebral necrosis and autolysis. We had a great number of people involved in treating all the different systems," Dr. Waldmann said in 1990.  "His disease continued, and the patient finally died on October 28, 1981 of hypotension and respiratory failure, with multisystem involvement." An autopsy of the body revealed an even wider spectrum of infectious diseases, including massive necrosis, encephalitis, and degeneration of the brain. AIDS researcher and early human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) drug developer Robert Yarchoan, M.D., recalled the gravity of the moment: “AIDS showed us that something that no one ever worried about before suddenly could become a major problem for the country and for mankind.  And when HIV was identified as the cause of AIDS, it became apparent that, in addition to persons known to have AIDS, thousands of people in the United States were already infected with this new virus without knowing it.  Moreover, at this time, infection with HIV was in most cases fatal.” * * * * * Sources: National Cancer Institute, "How Cancer Research Led to AIDS Breakthroughs," August 26, 2021 National Institutes of Health, "Dr Thomas Waldmann Oral History 1990," interview of Dr. Waldmann on March 14, 1990 by interviewers Dennis Rodrigues, Program Analyst, and Dr. Victoria Harden, Director of the NIH Historical Office.

June 30, 1981

UCSF Researchers Identify Oral Lesion as AIDS Precursor

The husband-and-wife academic team of John and Deborah Greenspan are first to identify hairy leukoplakia, an oral lesion which is a precursor to HIV and AIDS, while conducting research at the University of California San Francisco's School of Dentistry. Learn More.

When Dr. Deborah Greenspan started seeing a white lesion on the tongue of gay men coming to her clinical practice, she consulted with her pathologist husband, who suggested a biopsy to find out what was causing it.  Dr. John Greenspan (1937-2023) identified the oral lesions as a rare form of cancer which impacted the lymphatoid system, and he decided it warranted a closer look. "I thought this was strange,” he said in 2012 on the occasion of receiving the Gold Medal Award for Excellence in Dental Research.  “We typically saw it in Africa. But in this country, we only used to see it rarely -- for example, in immunosuppressed patients, such as kidney transplant recipients. So, we ended up seeing one of the first AIDS lymphoma patients reported in the world.” The Greenspans conducted studies that showed the lesions -- dubbed "oral hairy leukoplakia" (HL) because of its corrugated or shaggy appearance -- failed to respond effectively to the usual treatment of antifungal applications.  In fact, many of their patients already had or soon developed other immune-depressed symptoms associated with AIDS, such as pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP) and Kaposi's sarcoma (KS). They would publish the first description of HL and the results of their research in a 1984 medical report in The Lancet.  Co-authors of the research article included Marcus Conant, Sol Silverman Jr., Vibeke Petersen, and Yvonne De Souza, all researchers at UCSF. The Greenspans would then go on to establish a connection between HL and Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) in a 1985 report.  By 1987, they would be able to announce that HL and EBV were symptoms associated with AIDS. They would continue their work at UCSF over the next 30-plus years, leading a series of studies relating to the mouth and HIV/AIDS.  Their work has been instrumental in teaching physicians, nurse practitioners and other clinicians how to identify oral lesions associated with HIV infection. “The work of Dr. Greenspan and his colleagues has provided guidelines that enable dentists to recognize early oral manifestations of HIV/AIDS and thereby assist with early diagnosis and referral for treatment,” said John Featherstone, dean of the UCSF School of Dentistry.  “This is of particular importance in the global health world.”

July 1, 1981

Doctors Identify More Cases in San Francisco & New York City

As his first day as an oncologist at San Francisco General Hospital, Dr. Paul Volberding treats his first HIV-positive patient, a 22-year-old man with Kaposi sarcoma (KS).  The man would die a short time later. Learn More.

After completing a three-year fellowship at the University of California San Francisco, Dr. Volberding was ready to become a cancer specialist under renowned virologist Dr. Jay Levy.  Instead, he found himself on a lifelong journey of treating people living with HIV/AIDS and fighting the spread of the virus. Dr. Volberding remembered his first patient with clarity. “Twenty-two-year-old man, grew up in the Deep South, and as I recall he was estranged from his family,” Dr. Volberding told the San Francisco Examiner almost 35 years later. “He ended up in San Francisco working basically sex for food, and had innumerable previous sexually transmitted infections.” The man died within a few months, without his family present, Dr. Volberding recalls. Around this same time in the early summer of 1981, two doctors in the Bronx started to see HIV/AIDS symptoms in their own patients.  Dr. Gerald Friedland identified several cases of Pneumocystis pneumonia in injection drug users, and became one of the first to see the connection between IV-drug use and HIV transmission. Pediatric immunologist Dr. Arye Rubenstein began to identify the immunodeficiency of his pediatric patients, the children of drug addicts, as a symptom of what would be eventually called AIDS. Dr. Rubenstein, who had been seeing this particular kind of immunodeficiency in children and sometimes in their mothers in his Bronx practice since the late 1970s, was one of the first to connect pediatric cases to the new disease affecting homosexual men. These doctors who treated some of the first known cases of HIV/AIDS went on to do important, transformative work in the fields of treatment, research and public health policy. In 1983, Dr. Volberding established what would make San Francisco General Hospital the model for HIV care: the country’s first AIDS treatment center (Ward 86).  Later the same year, he joined the medical team at Ward 5B, the world's first in-patient clinic for AIDS patients. Dr. Volberding continued to treat HIV/AIDS patients until 2012, when he became director of the UCSF AIDS Research Institute.  Volberding would also become co-director of the Center for AIDS Research. In the years to come, Dr. Friedland also dedicated his life to AIDS treatment and research.  Following 10 years of working with HIV/AIDS patients in the Bronx, Dr. Friedland became director of the HIV/AIDS Program at Yale and Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology and Public Health at Yale School of Medicine. Dr. Friedland also became involved in HIV/AIDS international research aimed at providing access to antiretroviral therapy in developing regions of the world.  The major focus of his work became the integration of HIV and TB care and treatment in co-infected patients in South Africa. In 2018, on the occasion of delivering the keynote address at the 13th annual International Conference on HIV Treatment and Prevention, Dr. Friedland told The Body PRO: "Many of these people living with HIV, I have cared for, for decades.  I know them extremely well. They know me.  We have gone through this together and have this close collegial relationship as a partnership, so it's a wondrous pleasure to continue to provide." The other doctor working in New York City in 1981, Dr. Rubenstein, would decide to remain in the Bronx, caring for children with HIV AIDS.  In 1983, he received a grant from the National Institutes for Health to study the incidence of AIDS in women and children. In 1986, Dr. Rubenstein established that transmission of AIDS can occur in utero, and his breakthrough findings were published in the journal Clinical Immunology and Immunopathology. By this time, Dr. Rubsenstein had treated more than a hundred HIV-infected children, and in the summer of 1985, he opened a day care center for pediatric AIDS patients at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx.  He became Chief of the Division of Allergy & Immunology at Children's Hospital at Montefiore, and Professor of Pediatrics, Microbiology & Immunology at Albert Einstein College. In a 1987 interview with New York magazine, he spoke fondly of the parents, many of them former IV-drug users, of his pediatric patients: “Many come from a low socioeconomic group, they’re poor, the family may have broken up, they may have used drugs, and now their child has AIDS because they gave it to him.  You wouldn’t be surprised if they threw up their hands, but many don’t.  They become the best parents in the world.  They straighten out their lives, they spend hours with their kids. They give up longing for material things and look for spiritual and religious values.” * * * * * Sources: San Francisco Examiner, "Pioneering AIDS Doctor Reflects on First Cases in SF as City Strives to Eradicate Virus," February 8, 2015 University of California San Francisco, UCSF Profile: Paul Volberding, M.D. The New York Times, "For Doctors, Years of Grief and Daring," December 23, 1997 New York magazine, "Fighting AIDS" by Janice Hopkins Tanne, January 12, 1987 Yale Medicine AIDS Care Program, website Yale University, Yale Profile: Gerald H. Friedland, M.D. The Body Pro, "HIV 'Providers' Aren't Just Doctors: An Interview with Gerald Friedland, MD" by Stephen Hicks, June 19, 2018 The New York Times, " Ideas & Trends: The Strain of Caring for the Littlest AIDS Victims" by Jane Gross, August 4, 1985

July 2, 1981

Mention of 'Gay Men's Pneumonia' Appears in Media

The first mention of “Gay Men’s Pneumonia” is published in the Bay Area Reporter, a weekly newspaper for the gay and lesbian community in San Francisco. Learn More.

The short item advised gay men experiencing progressive shortness of breath to see their physicians. * * * * * Source: Bay Area Reporter, "Health Shorts: 'Gay Men's' Pneumonia," July 2, 1981

July 3, 1981

'Gay Cancer' Enters the HIV/AIDS Lexicon

Coinciding with the CDC's release of another MMWR detailing opportunistic infections among gay men, The New York Times publishes the article “Rare Cancer Seen in 41 Homosexuals.” At this point, the term “gay cancer ” enters the public lexicon. Learn More.

The CDC report, titled “Kaposi's Sarcoma and Pneumocystis Pneumonia Among Homosexual Men — New York City and California,” described cases of KS and PCP among 26 gay men (25 white and one black, and ranging in age from 26 to 51). In an 18-paragraph story on Page 20 of The New York Times, reporter Lawrence K. Altman cited 41 reported cases of "a rare and often rapidly fatal form of cancer."  Altman reported that eight of the 41 men diagnosed with the condition were already dead, and that the time between diagnosis and death from the disease was less than 24 months. In the last paragraphs of the article, Altman wrote:

"The reporting doctors said that most cases had involved homosexual men who have had multiple and frequent sexual encounters with different partners, as many as 10 sexual encounters each night up to four times a week.

"Many of the patients have also been treated for viral infections such as herpes, cytomegalovirus and hepatitis B as well as parasitic infections such as amebiasis and giardiasis. Many patients also reported that they had used drugs such as amyl nitrite and LSD to heighten sexual pleasure.

"Cancer is not believed to be contagious, but conditions that might precipitate it, such as particular viruses or environmental factors, might account for an outbreak among a single group."

According to Dr. Joseph Sonnabend, a New York City clinician who was among the first in the U.S. to recognize the emerging AIDS epidemic, this article was significant because of the Times' large, international readership.  But doctors treating New Yorkers from the gay community had been noticing strange symptoms and unusual illnesses in their patients for at least two years. "I had been observing some clinical and laboratory abnormalities among my patients as early as 1979. These included enlarged lymph glands, an enlarged spleen, low blood platelets and a low white blood cell count," Dr. Sonnabend told POZ magazine in 2020. "Then, in April or May of 1981, I was stunned to learn that Kaposi’s sarcoma was being diagnosed in young gay men in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Joyce Wallace, a physician whose office was close to mine on West 12^th Street in New York passed this information on to me," he recalled. When Dr. Sonnabend heard about the KS cases in young men, he reached out to a colleague, Dr. Alvin Friedman-Kien, a dermatologist at NYU medical center.  Dr. Friedman-Kien was caring for several gay men with Kaposi’s sarcoma, and soon Dr. Sonnabend joined him at NYU's virology lab. Through their research, the doctors found high levels of interferon in their patients.  Early research and discoveries like this formed the foundation of HIV/AIDS research for many years to come. * * * * * Sources: Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), "Kaposi's Sarcoma and Pneumocystis Pneumonia Among Homosexual Men — New York City and California," July 3, 1981 The New York Times, "Rare Cancer Seen in 41 Homosexuals" by Lawrence K. Altman, July 3, 1981 POZ magazine, "A Look Back at the Year a Rare Cancer Was First Seen in Gay Men" by Joseph Sonnabend, M.D., July 13, 2020 POZ magazine, "Interferon and AIDS: Too Much of a Good Thing" by Joseph Sonnabend, M.D., May 7, 2011

July 1981

CDC Creates Task Force on Kaposi’s Sarcoma & Opportunistic Infections

A Task Force on Kaposi’s Sarcoma and Opportunistic Infections is established at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention under the direction of Dr. James Curran. Learn More.

Shortly after MMWR description of five cases of Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP) among homosexual men in Los Angeles, additional cases of other life-threatening opportunistic infections and a malignancy, Kaposi sarcoma (KS), were reported to the CDC. Upon learning of these first cases, the CDC formed the Task Force on Kaposi's Sarcoma and Opportunistic Infections to begin surveillance and conduct epidemiologic investigations.  Despite budget constraints at the time, about 30 CDC officers and staff were assigned to the Task Force during the summer of 1981.  CDC Director William Foege, appointed epidemiologist James Curran to lead the task force. The Task Force first worked to establish a case definition for surveillance and investigation of the outbreak.  Previously, KS was known as an infrequently-diagnosed cancer that was rarely life-threatening, typically occurring among elderly men.  The outbreak seemed to represent a new epidemiologic form of KS. Between June 1, 1981, and May 28, 1982, CDC would receive 355 case reports of KS and/or serious opportunistic infections, especially Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, occurring in previously healthy persons between 15 and 60 years of age. Of the 355, 281 (79%) were homosexual (or bisexual) men, 41 (12%) were heterosexual men, 20 (6%) were men of unknown sexual orientation, and 13 (4%) were heterosexual women. Five states -- California, Florida, New Jersey, New York, and Texas -- accounted for 86% of the reported cases. * * * * * Sources: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "AIDS: The Early Years and the CDC's Response" by James W. Curran, M.D., and Harold W. Jaffe, M.D., October 7, 2011 Global Health Chronicles, "Interview: Jim Curran," video posted on YouTube on June 7, 2016 Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report | Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "Epidemiologic Notes and Reports Update on Kaposi's Sarcoma and Opportunistic Infections in Previously Health Persons -- United States," June 11, 1982

August 4, 1981

Elizabeth Glaser Receives Blood Transfusion during Childbirth Process

A pregnant Elizabeth Glaser, wife of television star Paul Michael Glaser, is rushed to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles to give birth to her first child.  She hemorrhages heavily during labor and requires a transfusion of seven pints of blood. Learn More.

A former teacher who worked as exhibit director of the LA Children's Museum, Glaser asked her doctor about the mysterious disease reported recently in the press, and her doctor dismissed her concerns, assuring her,  "Your nightmare is over." In 1985, daughter Ariel experienced persistent stomach pains and doctors were unable to determine the source.  The four-year-old was tested for HIV "as just a precaution," and the results came back positive for the virus. Each member of the Glaser family was then tested, and would result in the additional HIV diagnosis of mother Elizabeth and 18-month-old son Jake. Doctors determined that Elizabeth contracted HIV during her 1981 blood transfusion, and Elizabeth had unknowingly passed the virus on to Ariel through breastfeeding.  Jake, who was born in October 1984, had contracted the virus in utero. When Elizabeth sought counseling for Ariel, she discovered that no child psychiatrist would take the case.  Aware of the stigma of AIDS, the Glasers pulled Ariel out of nursery school and erected a wall of secrecy to protect their children. In August 1989 (one year after Ariel died of AIDS-related illness), the National Enquirer and other tabloids threatened the Glaser family with exposure. Elizabeth Glaser would side-step the media ambush by sharing her harrowing story in her 1991 autobiography, In the Absence of Angels.   She and two frinds then started the Pediatric AIDS Foundation, and she became one of the most aggressive and effective pediatric AIDS activists in the country. * * * * * Sources: Washington Post, "AIDS: The Glaser Family's Battle" by Janet Huck, August 28, 1989 Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, "Elizabeth's Story" The New York Times, "The Youngest Victims of AIDS" by Bettyann Kevles, March 3, 1991 Forbes, "Before Charlie Sheen, They Went Public With HIV" by Barron Lerner, November 17, 2015

August 11, 1981

Larry Kramer Hosts First Meeting to Discuss Pandemic

Acclaimed writer and film producer Larry Kramer holds a meeting of over 80 gay men in his large New York City apartment at 2 Fifth Avenue. Learn More.

Invited speaker Dr. Friedman-Kien, a dermatologist alarmed about the spread of Kaposi's sarcoma among the gay male population of New York, explained that they were witnessing the arrival of a new disease with a mysterious predilection for gay men. "We listened intently, respectfully, and full of dread as the soft-spoken Dr. Friedman-Kien described the devastation he was seeing in his practice and hearing from other physicians treating gay men," wrote activist Andy Humm in 2021 for Plus magazine.  "You could have heard a pin drop." When Dr. Friedman-Kien asked attendees to contribute money to support his research, Kramer passed a hat around the room and attendees ponied up a total of $6,635.  This would be the only money raised -- public or private -- to fight the AIDS epidemic in 1981. "While there were many gay groups in those days, none of us stepped up to coordinate a community-wide response -- whether through a sense that health authorities would address it (ha!) as they did with Legionnaire’s Disease in 1976 or fear that a community that had just officially ditched the mental illness label in 1973 would now be linked with a deadly physical malady," Humm wrote in his Plus opinion piece .  "It took Larry Kramer ... to bring us together." Kramer's call to action and other early efforts to raise funds and awareness around the disease that would later be called HIV and AIDS led directly to the creation of the Gay Men's Health Crisis (GMHC) Committee.  The committee would transition into a corporation in the summer of 1982, and become New York's primary service organization for HIV/AIDS. "The August 11, 1981 fundraiser at Kramer's apartment and the efforts of a handful of volunteers on Labor Day weekend 1981 were intended to raise money, but they succeeded mainly in raising discussion about Kaposi's sarcoma," according to David Román in his book Acts of Intervention: Performance, Gay Culture and AIDS. Kramer himself would emerge as an early leader of the effort to raise awareness about the new disease and solicit donations for the new Gay Men's Health Crisis.  And right away, he would be challenged by members of the gay community who accused him of causing unnecessary panic and villifying gay sex. Kramer's crusade would continue for decades. * * * * * Sources: How to Survive a Plague: The Story of How Activists and Scientists Tamed AIDS by David France (2017, Vintage Press) Acts of Intervention: Performance, Gay Culture and AIDS by David Román (1998, Indiana University Press) "40 Years Ago: Meeting at Larry Kramer's House as a Pandemic Began" by Andy Humm, Plus magazine, August 11, 2021 Photo courtesy of Larry Kramer Papers, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

August 13, 1981

President Reagan Introduces Sweeping Tax Cuts, Reducing Funding for Healthcare Programs & Research

President Ronald Reagan's introduction of a tax reduction plan lays the groundwork for a series of budget policies that drastically cut funding for social services programs and medical research.  These policies would adversely impact the work of health officials engaged in AIDS research and the wellbeing of millions of people about to receive an HIV diagnosis over the next 20 years. Learn More.

In his first year of office, President Reagan introduced a series of conservative reforms that prioritized the military over social services (i.e., "welfare programs") and medical research.  Reagan reduced taxes through the Economic Recovery Tax Act, and in the years that followed, successfully slashed the budgets of social welfare programs by more than $22 billion, according to history professor Claire Bond Potter. "Mr. Reagan’s welfare reforms just made the poor poorer," Bond Potter wrote recently in The New York Times.  "When a three-year recession hit in 1980, six million more Americans fell into poverty. By 1989, employment recovered, but a weak social safety net meant that workers were an illness or an accident away from hardship." Under the Reagan administration, public health agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) suddenly faced drastic budget cuts to their research programs.  Such was the situation when, on April 12, 1983, CDC epidemiologist Don Francis raised the issue about the lack of dedicated funding for AIDS research. "The inadequate funding to date has seriously restricted our work and has presumably deepened the invasion of [AIDS] into the American population," Dr. Francis wrote to his supervisor.  "It has sandwiched those responsible for research and control between massive pressure to do what is right and an unmovable wall of inadequate resources." The Reagan's economic policy was based on the theory of supply-side economics. The fiscal 1982 budget proposed by Reagan represented a reduction of $44 billion (5.7%) in all programs except national defense, according to the Institute for Research on Policy.  More than half of the budget reduction came from two areas: income security; and education, training, employment, and other social services. These components of "Reaganomics" created the perfect storm for the millions of people who would be diagnosed with HIV in the next decade and beyond.  By the end of Reagan's first term in office, at least 7,700 people had received an AIDS diagnosis and more than 3,500 had died of the disease. Due to the lack of attention from the White House, non-profit organizations led by members of the LGBTQ communities in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York City and other cities stepped in to provide HIV/AIDS information, support and care.  Gay rights activists undertook initiatives promoting education about safer sex and countering discrimination against AIDS. With no treatment available in these early years, friends and family members could only comfort the dying.

August 28, 1981

CDC Reports that 40% of Identified Cases Die of KS/PCP

Of the 108 known cases of Kaposi's Sarcoma and pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, 107 are male and 94% of those whose sexual orientation is known are gay/bisexual.  About 40% of all patients have already died. Learn More.

The MMWR article, “Follow-Up on Kaposi’s Sarcoma and Pneumocystis Pneumonia,” reported that CDC received information on 70 additional cases of KS and/or PCP since its July 3 edition, making a total of 108 known cases. News of the article alarms the gay community for its indication that the new disease is spreading and that the outcome of those infected was likely to be a quick and brutal death. * * * * * Source: Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, “Follow-Up on Kaposi’s Sarcoma and Pneumocystis Pneumonia,” August 28, 1981

September 15, 1981

Small Medical Conference is First to Address Epidemic

Fifty leading clinicians gather in Bethesda, Maryland for the first conference to address the new epidemic. Learn More.

Cosponsored by the National Cancer Institute and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the medical conference focused on Kaposi’s sarcoma and other opportunistic infections.  Researchers began to develop recommendations for further studies in epidemiology, virology, and treatment. * * * * * Sources: www.HIV.gov, "A Timeline of HIV and AIDS" National Institutes of Health, "In Their Own Words: NIH Researchers Recall the Early Years of AIDS | Timeline (1981-1988)"

September 21, 1981

First AIDS Clinic Opens in San Francisco

The Kaposi's Sarcoma clinic at the University of California's San Francisco Medical Center opens its doors, becoming the first clinic in the world to exclusively treat what would become to be known as AIDS. Learn More.

Overseen by Bay Area dermatologist Dr. Marcus Conant, the Kaposi's Sarcoma clinic was also staffed by oncologist Dr. Paul Volberding, Dr. Constance Wofsy and Dr. Donald Abrams.  Collectively, the physicians guided much of the early response to AIDS in San Francisco. Dr. Conant would go on to create the San Francisco AIDS Foundation (first called the Kaposi's Sarcoma Research and Education Foundation) to address both the need to go into the community, which was still in denial about the disease, and the need to find non-government funding sources. On July 1, 1981, Dr. Volberding saw his first patient with Kaposi’s sarcoma (KS), a rare cancer later linked to AIDS, on his first day working at San Francisco General Hospital. * * * * * Sources: University of California Libraries, "Marcus A. Conant Papers: 1981-1993" American College of Physicians, "Dr. Volberding was at the Forefront of the AIDS Epidemic," December 2017 The New York Times, "Constance Wofsy, 53, Doctor Who Directed an AIDS Program," June 9, 1996 San Francisco Chronicle, "The Good Doctor: He's been in on the AIDS Battle Since the Beginning," August 12, 2001

October 28, 1981

'Patient D' Dies at NIH Facility

The National Institutes of Health reports the death due to severe immune deficiency of a man admitted to its facility in Bethesda, Maryland in June.  He was 35. Learn More.

Known only as "Patient D" in NIH research reports, the patient had been transferred to the NIH Clinical Center from Hartford Hospital, where doctors had been unable to reverse the course of multiple infections spreading through his body.  He had previously been living in New York City. The white, gay man said he had been healthy through adulthood until February 1981, when he began experiencing fatigue and weakness, followed by weight loss and fever.  By the time he was admitted to the NIH in June 1981, Patient D had been diagnosed with neumocystis carinii pneumonia, lymphocytopenia, cytomegalovirus, herpes simplex II, Candida esophagitis, and Mycobacterium avium tuberculosis of the lung, bone marrow, and esophagus. Thomas A. Waldmann, M.D., who at the time was chief of the Metabolism Branch of the NIH's National Cancer Institute, said in a 1990 NIH interview that Patient D was the first patient with AIDS seen at their facility.  He said that he could see that this disease, combined with the patient's identity as a gay man, "had a devastating effect on his relationships to individuals who had been close to him in the past." He noted that, besides the occasional visit from family members, Patient D was largely left alone to die.  Through others on his medical team, he learned that the patient had been abandoned by his partner and others from his social circle in New York. "No one visited this individual, who was in a critical and life-threatening condition, throughout his whole four-month stay," said Dr. Waldmann. The NIH medical team performed every test and issued every treatment they could think of, to no avail, he said. "We were all groping, trying to understand what was going on," Dr. Waldmann recalled.  "In that era, one couldn't be fatalistic, even when someone was in an apparently irreversible state. One had to assume that somehow one might be able to reverse the immunodeficiency and with that bring into control the infectious disease." "We had a great number of people involved in treating all the different systems," he said.  "His disease continued, and the patient finally died on October 28, 1981 of hypotension and respiratory failure, with multisystem involvement." An autopsy of the body revealed an even wider spectrum of infections, including massive necrosis, encephalitis, and degeneration of the brain.  The autopsy states: "This case represents an example of a recently described syndrome of acquired immunodeficiency in previously healthy young male homosexuals." The willingness of Patient D to spend what would turn out to be the last four months of his life in a NIH cancer research center would prove to be valuable to researchers, health officials, and the medical community for years to come. Cells taken from Patient D led to the discovery of the first human retrovirus HTLV-I and ultimately to the discovery of HIV-1 as the cause of AIDS -- one of the major scientific achievements during the last century, said Dr. Waldmann.  In addition, these cells played a critical role in the ability for Waldmann's lab to achieve a major breakthrough in immunology with the production of the monoclonal antibody to the Il-2 receptor, anti-Tac. By subjecting himself to research studies, Patient D provided critical information to the country's top researchers during the very earliest months of the epidemic.  The handful of cases reported at that time to the NIH and Centers for Disease Control had included instances of young, gay men with Kaposi's sarcoma, but the report of Patient D was the first to include malignant lymphoma as a condition. Patient D was also diagnosed with other conditions that were unique to his case at the time, including his deteriorating eyesight and the failure of his body to repond to a tuberculin skin test, despite the fact that he had widespread Mycobacterium avium. As these new conditions were reported widely to the medical community, the case study of Patient D helped to broaden the defnition of the disease early on and served to provide critical information to physicians and health officials across the country. * * * * * Sources: National Institutes of Health, "Dr. Thomas Waldmann Oral History 1990," interview with Dr. Waldmann on March 14, 1990 by interviewers Dennis Rodrigues, NIH Program Analyst, and Victoria Harden, M.D., Director of the NIH Historical Office. Retrovirology journal, "A Historical Reflection on the Discovery of Human Retroviruses" by Anders Vahlne, May 1, 2009 National Institutes of Health | National Library of Medicine, "Anti-IL-2 Receptor Monoclonal Antibody (anti-Tac) Treatment of T-cell Lymphoma," by Thomas Waldmann, M.D., 1994

November 30, 1981

Ken Horne Dies of Kaposi's Sarcoma in San Francisco

After falling ill in 1979 with unusual conditions related to a suppressed immune system, Ken Horne dies in San Francisco at the age of 38. Learn More.

In April 1980, the Centers for Disease Control received a report on Horne, who was diagnosed with the then-rare disease of Kaposi’s sarcoma.  In 1981, the CDC would retroactively identify Horne, who was a gay man, as the first American patient of the AIDS epidemic. Horne had grown up in Oregon and, when he was 21, he moved to San Francisco in 1965 to study ballet.  Within a few years, he abandoned his dance career and took an office job with the local transit system. He’d also discovered the city’s vibrant gay social scene and became a regular at the leather bars. By the fall of 1980, he’d become ill with the first reported case in San Francisco of what would eventually be called HIV/AIDS.  He was 37 years old. Dr. James Groundwater, a dermatologist, was puzzled by the symptoms Horne presented to him in November 1980.  Horne told him that for two years, he was experiencing fatigue, diarrhea and nausea.  More alarming was Horne's enlarged lymph nodes and the purple spots on his skin, one on his left thigh and another near his right nipple.  Dr. Groundwater took photos of the lesions and  biopsied of one of them.  He also drew some of Horne's blood to be tested. About a week later, Horne was back in Dr. Groundwater's office to hear about the results of the tests.  The dermatologist told him that something was wrong with his white blood cells and his immune system seemed compromised.  Horne's lesions represented something more mysterious; results were inconclusive.  He needed more tests. Over the next four months, Horne's condition worsened.  He suffered daily now from severe headaches and fever, and new lesions appeared on his face and back.  On March 30, 1981, Horne was admitted to St. Frances Hospital in San Francisco, where he was given a lumbar puncture.  The results showed he had cryptococcosis, an infection acquired by inhalation of contaminated soil.  This made no sense to Dr. Groundwater. In the San Francisco AIDS Oral History Project, Dr. Groundwater recalled sending the biopsy of Horne's lesion to as many as ten pathologists, trying to crack the mystery of the purple spots. "In the early days of the AIDS epidemic, very few dermatologists, dermatopathologists even, had seen much Kaposi's sarcoma. This was very rare. And so they missed the diagnosis. They read it as hemangioma and proliferating angioendotheliomatosis, et cetera,"  he said.  "But finally, I think it was Dick Sagebiel, a dermatopathologist over in the melanoma clinic at Mt. Zion, who was the first one who made the diagnosis of Kaposi's sarcoma on these lesions." On April 9, Dr. Richard Sagebiel would give Dr. Groundwater the first "reading" of the biopsy that made any sense of Horne's deteriorating condition.  But this just opened up a bunch of new questions.  KS trypically affected elderly men, usually of Jewish or Italian descent, and the condition was easily treatable. Weeks later, things started to fall into place when Dr. Groundwater was attending dermatology rounds at the University of California San Francisco.  Clinic chief Marcus Conant, MD, asked attendees if any of them had seen any unusual cases of Kaposi's sarcoma. "At that moment, the realization was born that a new epidemic had arrived in San Francisco," wrote Randy Shilts in his masterpiece of investigative reporting, And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic Drs. Groundwater and Conant exchanged information; they had known eachother since the late 1960s, when Groundwater did his residency at UCSF.  Dr. Conant said that Dr. Alvin Friedman-Kien in New York had some cases of KS in young gay men. "So I called Alvin Friedman-Kien," Dr. Groundwater said in the San Francisco AIDS Oral History Project.  "At that point, Alvin had, I think, six, seven, or eight cases of these young gay males with Kaposi's sarcoma." On April 24, Dr. John Gullett, a key member of Ken Horne's medical team at St. Francis Hospital, called the Centers for Disease Control to report the case of KS, making Ken Horne the first reported victim of the new disease. Over the next seven months, doctors ordered the usual treatments for Horne's KS, cytomegalovirus, and cryptococcal meningitis — but nothing was working. "He went through one horrendous experience after another with these various opportunistic infections," Dr. Groundwater said.  "But I think when he began to lose his vision from the cytomegalovirus retinitis, he gave up the battle.  When he went blind, he died within a couple of weeks.  I think he gave up." Ken Horne died of AIDS-related illness on November 30, 1981 at St. Francis Hospital at the age of 38. * * * * * It is now believed that the first HIV/AIDS patient in North America was Robert "Bobby" Rayford, a Black teenager from the Old North neighborhood of St. Louis, Missouri.  Fifteen-year-old Rayford was hospitalized in 1968 with shortness of breath, swelling in his lower body and other infections that he reported experiencing for about two years. First suspecting that he had contracted an exotic illness, Rayford’s doctors were surprised to learn that the teenager had never traveled outside of the Midwest. They proceeded to administer numerous tests on Rayford's blood and tissue, but were unable to determine an overall diagnosis or effective treatment.  He died of pneumonia in 1969 at St. Louis City Hospital.  An autopsy revealed small, cancerous, internal tumors throughout his body -- Kaposi’s sarcoma. Almost 20 years later, a western blot postmortem test on Rayford’s tissue samples confirmed HIV. Also relevent is the illness and death of Grethe Rask, a Danish physician and surgeon who spent years working in the Congo.  Over several years, she suffered from a number of opportunistic infections and severe immunodeficiency, and then died of pneumonia on December 12, 1977 in Copenhagen.  A 1987 blood test determined that she was infected with HIV. An early "cluster" case was that of Arne Vidar Røed, a Norwegian truck driver and former sailor, and his wife and child.  While still a teenager, Røed worked in the kitchen of a Norwegian ship, travelling to Nigeria, Ghana, Cote D'Ivoire, Liberia, Guinea and Senegal.  When he returned to Norway in 1965, he married and became a father to two children. Beginning in 1968, Røed suffered from joint pain, lymphedema, and lung infections, conditions which traditional medicine and treatments failed to resolve.  He died in April 1976.  His wife, who had come down with similar symptoms, died the following December.  Their eight-year-old daughter died, too.  Although the disease was not identified until long after their deaths, all three are believed to be the first confirmed HIV cases in Europe.  This was also the first documented cluster of AIDS cases before the AIDS epidemic of the early 1980s. * * * * * Sources: Photo of quilt panel from the AIDS Memorial Quilt www.History.com | A&E Television Networks, "AIDS Crisis Timeline," June 14, 2021 University of California Libraries, "The San Francisco AIDS Oral History Series | The AIDS Epidemic in San Francisco: The Response of Community Physicians, 1981-1984," interview with James R. Groundwater, M.D. by interviewer Sally Smith Hughes in 1996 National Park Service, "Robert Rayford" The Weekly View, "Robert Rayford: America's First AID S Victim" by Al Hunter, May 8, 2014 University of Copenhagan School of Global Health newsletter, "After Hard Working Days, She Rested by the Beautiful Ebola River," July 22, 2020 Discover magazine, "The Sea has Neither Sense nor Pity: The Earliest Known Cases of AIDS in the pre-AIDS Era" by Rebecca Kreston, October 22, 2012

December 1981

Pediatric AIDS Cases Surface in New York City

At Albert Einstein Medical College in New York, pediatric immunologist Dr. Arye Rubinstein treats five Black infants showing signs of severe immune deficiency, including pnuemocytis carinii pneumonia. Learn More.

The mothers of at least three of the children disclosed that they used drugs and/or engaged in sex work.  Dr. Rubinstein recognized that the children were showing signs of the same illnesses affecting gay men, but his diagnoses were initially dismissed by his colleagues. "This would ultimately prove to be the moment when AIDS emerged in the Black community, driven among men, women, and children by sexual contacts, injecting drug use, and mother-to-child transmission," writes Michael Broder in his article for Positively Aware. By 1987, pediatric AIDS cases would be on the rise, especially in New York and especially among minority groups.  Many babies would be orphaned, creating insurmountable challenges for social workers seeking foster care placements for them. Although medical experts estimated the number of infected infants in the city to be as many as 3,000, the City of New York has only 241 recorded cases of pediatric AIDS by the end of 1987.  Of these cases, the racial breakdown was 59% Black, 32% Hispanic and 8% White. * * * * * Sources: Positively Aware magazine, "The Dawn of AIDS in 1981" by Michael Broder, May 30, 2021 The New York Times, "For Child With AIDS, Hospital Is Home" by Bruce Lambert, December 24, 1987

December 5, 1981

Pamphlet on KS Distributed to Conference Attendees

In an attempt to alert the medical community to the yet-unnamed disease afflicting young gay men, three dermatologists from San Francisco and New York City distribute a pamphlet on Kaposi's sarcoma to attendees of a dermatology conference. Learn More.

Drs. Marc Conant, Alvin Friedman-Kien, and James Groundwater stationed themselves at the entrance of the annual meeting of the American Academy of Dermatology and distributed to incoming attendees a pamphlet they hastily put together about Kaposi's sarcoma, a rare form of skin cancer that was being diagnosed in previously healthy young men in San Francisco and New York City. Held on Dec. 5-10, the conference drew thousands of dermatologists in the United States and Canada to San Francisco to hear the latest developments in their medical field.  The pamphlet was likely the first information that most conference attendees received about Kaposi's sarcoma (KS) and its role in the yet-unnamed disease of AIDS.

"At that point in time, not many people knew about this problem, and it wasn't getting a whole lot of attention," Dr. Groundwater later recalled for the San Francisco AIDS Oral History Project.  "I don't think the seriousness of it was widely appreciated -- the potential for major problems in the future."

Dr. Groundwater said he wrote the copy for the brochure and used photographs of a patient's KS lesions so dermatologists could see how the disease manifested.  The patient was Ken Horne, the first KS case to be reported to the Centers for Disease Control.  Horne had died on November 30, 1981, just days before the conference. * * * * * Source: University of California Libraries, "The San Francisco AIDS Oral History Series | The AIDS Epidemic in San Francisco: The Response of Community Physicians, 1981-1984," interview with James R. Groundwater, M.D., conducted by Sally Smith Hughes, Ph.D. in 1996

December 10, 1981

Bobbi Campbell Starts Publishing 'Gay Cancer Journal'

Bobbi Campbell, a San Francisco nurse, becomes the first Kaposi’s sarcoma patient to go public -- and in print -- with his diagnosis. Learn More.

Campbell began publishing a series of articles about his KS diagnosis for the San Francisco Sentinel, the first titled “I Will Survive: Nurse’s Own ‘Gay Cancer’ Story.” Calling himself the “KS Poster Boy,” Campbell continued to share his experiences in the column “Gay Cancer Journal.”  His AIDS activism would go on to include being pictured in San Francisco’s first AIDS poster, organizing the first candlelight vigil to raise AIDS awareness, and eventually becoming one of the first openly gay men to appear on the cover of a major news magazine when he posed for Newsweek with his lover Bobby Hilliard. Starting with a case of shingles in February 1981, Campbell suffered from a series of unusual illnesses, including Leukopenia later that summer.  After a hike with his boyfriend in September 1981, he noticed KS lesions on his feet.  He was formally diagnosed as having KS by dermatologist Marcus Conant, M.D., in October 1981.  This would be Dr. Conant’s first diagnosis of a patient with what would become known as AIDS. After joining the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence in early 1982, Campbell cowrote the first San Francisco safer sex manual, Play Fair!, using his nun persona, Sister Florence Nightmare RN.  The booklet was among the very first to use plain sex-positive language and humor to give practical advice.

In February 1982, Campbell and Dan Turner, who had just himself been diagnosed with KS, attended what would be the founding meeting of the KS/AIDS Foundation (which later became the San Francisco AIDS Foundation).  Campbell also became involved with the Shanti Project, which moved from its original focus of supporting people with terminal cancer, to providing emotional support to people diagnosed with AIDS. Campbell also helped start the People with AIDS Self-Empowerment Movement (PWA), arguing that people with AIDS should expect to participate actively in the response to the AIDS crisis. The PWA Movement rejected the term “AIDS victim.” With others, Campbell drafted the Denver Principles, the defining manifesto of the PWA Movement.  Inspired by the Lavender Menace radical feminists storming the National Organization for Women convention stage in 1970, Campbell and other activists decided to do something similar at the closing session of the Second National AIDS Forum. As each of the 11 men read out one of the 11 statements of Denver Principles, they did so with a banner stating "Fighting for Our Lives."  These words became the slogan of the PWA Movement. Campbell gave one of his last speeches at the National March for Lesbian and Gay Rights, occuring while the 1984 Democratic National Convention was in San Francisco.  Campbell told the crowd that he had hugged his boyfriend on the cover of Newsweek, and then kissed Hilliard on stage “to show Middle America that gay love is beautiful." In a powerful speech, Campbell denounced the Christian right for their practice of using scripture to justify their homophobia, and he slammed the Reagan administration for its lack of action.  He held 15 seconds of silence for “the 2,000 who had died of AIDS at that point and for those who will die before this is over.” Two weeks later, Campbell appeared on CBS Evening News in a live interview with Dan Rather.  While the rumors and fear of AIDS had reached the general public, the facts had not, so Campbell was placed in a glass booth, and technicians refused to come near him to wire up his microphone for the interview. Soon after his TV appearance, he was admitted to a hospital and placed on life support.  With Hillard and his parents by his side, Campbell died on August 15, 1984, exactly a month after his DNC speech.  He was 32 years old. * * * * * Sources: San Francisco Sentinel, "I Will Survive!" by Bobbi Campbell, R.N. Newsweek magazine, cover photo of Bobbi Campbell and Bobby Hilliard, August 8, 1983 The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, Inc., "Sistory" Bobbi Campbell Speech, 1984 National March for Lesbian and Gay Rights (YouTube) CBS News Dan Rather Interview with Bobbi Campbell, June 12, 1982 (YouTube)

December 20, 1981

'Dreamgirls' Opens on Broadway

Dreamgirls makes a splashy debut on Broadway with stars Jennifer Holliday and Sheryl Lee Ralph, who both begin raising money for AIDS research and other programs after experiencing the loss of some of their cast mates to the disease. Learn More.

The successful debut of Dreamgirls marked career breakthroughs for Holliday and Ralph, but it also marked the start of a time of great loss. In addition to cast members, Dreamgirls Director Michael Bennett would die of AIDS-related illness on July 2, 1987 at the age of 44.  He would be diagnosed with AIDS in 1986 and choose to keep his illness a secret from all but a few close friends. "Friends and cast members just got sick and died," Ralph would later write in the Huffington Post.  "They were sick today and dead tomorrow....  Then the deadly silence would set in because nobody wanted to talk about it, much less do anything about that disease, that shhhhh, gay disease. The silence was deafening." Ralph would go on to found the DIVA Foundation, which raises awareness about HIV/AIDS.  DIVA stands for Divinely Inspired Victoriously Aware. "It got to the point I couldn't cross one more name out of my phone book, back when folks had such a thing called a phone book, when you would actually write a name in a book. That many people [died]," Ralph said in a 2008 Star Tribune interview. Also, Holliday would dedicate much of her life to HIV/AIDS advocacy and activism.  In 2017, Holliday would release a song to benefit Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. "I’ve been an advocate for AIDS assistance, because it took the lives of male chorus members and the creative team of Dreamgirls," Holliday told the Broadway Blog. "The gay community has really been a vital part of my whole existence. It’s been a vital program under the AIDS Healthcare Foundation and the Black Leadership AIDS Crisis Coalition. They let people know that housing is available and want to serve people who need a place to stay." * * * * * Sources: The New York Times, "Stage: 'Dreamgirls,' Michael Bennett's New Musical, Opens" by Frank Rich, December 21, 1981 www.RonFassler.org, "The Death and Life of Michael Bennett" by Ron Fassler, July 2, 2018 HuffPost, "Thirty Years of 'Dreamgirls' and AIDS in America" by Sheryl Lee Ralph, June 14, 2011 CBS News Richmond, "Sheryl Lee Ralph Raises AIDS Awareness with DIVAs," December 4, 2019 StarTribune, "Original 'Dreamgirl' Sings a Song of AIDS Awareness" by C.J., February 6, 2008 Playbill, "Jennifer Holliday Releases Single to Benefit Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS" by Andrew Gans, January 26, 2017 The Broadway Blog, "Jennifer Holliday on 'Dreamgirls,' Being an LGBTQ Icon, and Turning 60" by Ryan Leeds

December 31, 1981

45% of Patients Die by Year-End

At the close of 1981, a cumulative total of 270 cases of severe immune deficiency are reported among gay men, and 121 of those individuals have died. Learn More.

By this time, some researchers began to call the condition GRID (Gay-Related Immune Deficiency).  This terminology would have a negative influence on both the medical profession and the public, causing people to perceive the epidemic as limited to gay men. This early misconception of the disease would have serious long-term consequences as it becomes evident that anyone could be infected with HIV, including women, heterosexual men, hemophiliacs, people who inject drugs, and children. * * * * * Source: www.HIV.gov, "A Timeline of HIV/AIDS"

January 4, 1982

Gay Men's Health Crisis Opens in NYC

Gay Men’s Health Crisis becomes the first community-based AIDS service provider in the U.S. Learn More.

The informal meeting that Larry Kramer held in his NYC apartment in 1981 to address the "gay cancer" was credited with being the genesis of the Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC). Nathan Fain, Larry Kramer, Larry Mass, Paul Popham, Paul Rapoport, and Edmund White officially established GMHC in early 1982.  It began with creating simple lines of communication for the community and medical personnel:  an AIDS hotline, a newsletter, a space to meet, and the landmark Buddy program to assist PWAs (People with AIDS) with their day-to-day needs. Later in the same year, GMHC would open its first office on West 22nd Street in Manhattan. GMHC would become New York's leading AIDS service organization, serving approximately 10,000 people each year living with and affected by HIV/AIDS in the five boroughs of New York City.  GMHC would continuously provide HIV and STI testing, food and nutrition programs, housing support, workforce development, legal assistance, advocacy for benefits and health insurance, mental health and emotional support, substance use counseling, and more. Today, over 60% of GMHC clients are people of color, nearly 75% identify as LGBTQ+, and over 80% are people living at or below the Federal Poverty Line. * * * * * Sources: Gay Men's Health Crisis, "History" and "At A Glance"

January 1982

Dancer-Choreographer Antony Valdor Dies

Antony Valdor, a dancer, choreographer and teacher known throughout North America, dies of AIDS-related illness at the age of 49. Learn More.

Valdor, a principal dancer with Théâtre du Châtelet who was fluent in French, toured Europe extensively.  After dancing with Les Grands Ballet U.S., Marquis de Cuevas and London Ballet Theatre. he became technical coach for Les Grands Ballets Canadiens. In the late 1960s, he was ballet master for San Francisco Ballet, and produced one of the company's most popular events, Ballet69, an innovative series of dance performances in the summer of 1969. He choreographed several pieces for SF Ballet, for the National Academy of Arts Ballet and co-choreographed ballet pieces with Gemze de Lappe. He toured the U.S. as guest teacher and choreographer with many ballet companies and dance academies. Born Robert Dishman in Los Angeles, Valdor studied with Olga Preobrajens, Alexandra Danilova, Robert Joffrey, and Jose Limon, among others.  He was a Navy veteran, serving for four years. His first performances after being released from military service was in the summer of 1955 with the Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera dancing in their summer musical series. Valdor is memorialized in the project Dancers We Lost: Honoring Performers Lost to HIV/AIDS.

January 1982

Stonewall President Kenneth Schnorr Dies

Kenneth Schnorr, president of the Stonewall Democratic Club in Los Angeles, dies of AIDS-related illness at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.  He was 35. Learn More.

Schnorr would be among the first in the U.S. to die of AIDS.  After being found unconscious in his car in December 1981, he was hospitalized and Cedars-Sinai's top-notch medical team was perplexed with his rapidly declining health. West Hollywood activist Ivy Bottini, who was Schnorr's friend, would tell the story of Schnorr's illness and death in her 2018 memoir The Liberation of Ivy Bottini. Bottini recalled receiving a phone call from Schnorr's mother, who was sitting bedside with him at Cedars. "He's full of black and blue marks.... I don't know what to do," Schnorr's mother told her. Bottini asked to talk with Schnorr, and quickly realized that he had lost his hearing.  She eventually was able to speak with Schnorr's doctor, Joel Weisman, M.D., who would go on to open one of the first medical clinics to treat HIV/AIDS.  When Dr. Weisman was unable to give Bottini a clear picture of what was going on, she felt a growing dread that Schnorr's condition was an indication of a larger issue. Schnorr died about a week after entering the hospital.  Bottini was among the members of the Stonewall Democratic Club who attended Schnorr's funeral. “After Ken died, something said to me there is more to this than we see,” Bottini said. “So, for some reason, I just picked up the phone and called the CDC.  I had never done that before.  ‘Look, this just happened to my friend. Do you have any answers?'  The hesitancy at the other end of the line, the hemming and the hawing before they would say anything — I just knew it was bad.” The CDC official told her the black and blue marks was a symptom of Kaposi sarcoma, which was usually found in elderly Jewish men. “And that was the explanation,” she said. “I thought, ‘No, this doesn’t make sense, because Ken was one of three first guys diagnosed with Kaposi in town, in West Hollywood, in LA, and that started me on working to find out what the hell was going on.” After many phone calls and the realization that the government was failing to act on the crisis, Bottini called Dr. Weisman to invite him to update the community at a town hall she was organizing at West Hollywood’s Plummer Park.  She was hoping he would share any information he had and would provide his theory on how this new illness was transmitted.  She herself suspected that it was being passed during sex, through bodily fluids. "That’s the only thing that made sense to me," Bottini said.  "Because if it was airborne, women would be getting it, everybody would be getting it, and that wasn’t happening.” On the night of the town hall, Fiesta Hall in Plummer Park was jam-packed. “It was all guys — and (Bottini’s then-girlfriend) Dottie Wine and I," Bottini recalled.  "And Joel talked about transmission and he believed it was bodily fluids, too.  And I thought, ‘I’m not crazy.’” Schnorr's legacy was that he may have saved many lives by inspiring Bottini and others to search for answers and share that information with the greater community in the earliest days of the epidemic. * * * * * Sources: Photo of quilt panel from the AIDS Memorial Quilt The Liberation of Ivy Bottini by Judith V. Branzburg (Bink Books, 2018) Watermark, "Tribute to 'Give 'em Hell' Lesbian Feminist Pioneer Ivy Bottini" by Karen Ocamb, March 3, 2021

February 19, 1982

Billy Kovinsky is First Canadian Known to Die of AIDS

William "Billy" Kovinsky dies of AIDS-related illness, becoming the first known case of HIV/AIDS in Canada.  He was 43 years old. Learn More.

About a month later, Canada Diseases Weekly Report would print an article about the case, alerting medical officials that HIV had come to Canada. As far back as August 1979, Kovinsky sought medical treatment for illnesses that overwhelmed his immune system.  According to his doctor, John Doherty, M.D., Kovinsky came to his office in March 1981, and the doctor found he had enlarged lymph nodes and abnormal levels of immune globulins. During a follow-up visit a month later, Kovinsky's immune globulins were normal again.  Then in May 1981, he went to a different doctor and received a blood test, which found that his white blood count was “extremely low.” His sister Anna Levin told Canada's Xtra magazine that she vacationed with Kovinsky in Florida around that time, and saw that his health was in decline. “He was very thin and gaunt and suffered from sweats,” Anna recalled. When Kovinsky returned to Canada in June 1981, he submitted to a series of tests at the University Hospital in London, which showed “leukopenia, atypical lymphocytosis and an elevated sedimentation rate,” according to Dr. Doherty's case report.  He was admitted to the hospital for eight days and then discharged without a diagnosis or treatment plan. Kovinsky continued to search for an answer to his health problems, but doctors had little to offer him.  He became very depressed and attempted suicide in August 1981 by taking an overdose of pills, according to Dr. Doherty. After a two-day hospital stay, he was sent to Toronto for four weeks of psychiatric treatment.  In December 1981, Kovinsky was diagnosed with thrush, an infection which covered the entire lining of his esophagus, from mouth to stomach. On January 5, 1982, Kovinsky checked himself into the hospital for the last time.  A battery of tests were performed on him, according to the case report, including an “open chest upper lobe biopsy.”  His sister Anna said she visited Kovinsky at his hospital bed three times a week.  His friends Phyllis and Jack would also come by and try to cheer him up. He had his own room, and Anna recalled that he was treated very well by the staff at the hospital. Kovinsky died just six weeks later at the age of 43. Dr. Doherty told the Canadian Medical Association Journal that he reported Kovinsky's case to Canada's Laboratory Centre for Disease Control, and the very next day investigators came to his office for more information.  On March 27, 1982, Canada Diseases Weekly Report carried a short article on the case, and soon, it would be clear that Dr. Doherty had reported the first known case of AIDS in Canada. “I still remember this case vividly, because I knew the guy really well,” Dr. Doherty recalled for the Journal in 2002. “Billy was just a really nice guy who led two lives," said his sister Anna to the Windsor Star.  "One was his public life where he was a supposedly heterosexual guy and had all heterosexual friends. The other one was a life that nobody knew about. I’m sure it was very difficult, exceptionally difficult."

March 3, 1982

U.S. Public Health Service Hosts AIDS Conference at CDC

U.S. Public Health Service hosts a conference on AIDS at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. Learn More.

At the conference, researchers debate whether the opportunistic infections were being caused by one or more transmissible or immune-suppressing agents. * * * * * * Source: National Institutes of Health, "Timeline (1981-1988)"

April 8, 1982

GMHC Holds First Major AIDS Fundraiser, Others Follow

A fundraising event hosted by the newly formed organization Gay Men's Health Crisis draws over 2,000 attendees to the Paradise Garage in New York City and raises more than $30,000. Learn More.

"Showers: A Benefit to Aid Gay Men with Kaposi's Sarcoma and Other Gay Related Immunodeficiencies" was considered a major success as both a fundraiser for people in need and as a way to address the gay community about the health crisis. The mega-dance party featured live performances by Evelyn "Champagne" King, the Ritchie Family, and the New York City Gay Men's Chorus.  It also included a promise from GMHC President Paul Popham that his fledgling organization could be relied upon to be a clearinghouse for the latest information on the "medical emergency" facing the community. During his address to attendees, Popham announced that more than 150 people had already died of Kaposi's sarcoma and other immunodeficiency diseases, and "about that many more are very ill and may leave us, too." At the time, federal funding was not yet available for reserach or disseminating information about the new fatal illnesses slowly spreading among members of the gay community.  The GMHC was among the first organizations to begin soliciting donations from its own community to put into place research funding streams, compassionate care programs, and awareness/information campaigns. Not only did the event provide GMHC with seed money for its service programs, it also attracted "a flood of new volunteers," according to David France in his book How to Survive a Plague. "The multiple successes of the fundraiser dramatically shifted the AIDS consciousness of gay New Yorkers," wrote David Román in his book Acts of Intervention: Performance, Gay Culture and AIDS.  "It boosted the morale of a city under siege, and put into motion a series of smaller, more localized fundraisers throughout Manhattan." Among those fundraising events in 1982 were Maneuvers' "tea dance benefit" for the St. Mark's Clinic, a benefit performance by the cast of the Broadway show Dreamgirls, and various events at Don't Tell Mama. Meanwhile, the San Francisco community was busy planning its own large-scale fundraiser.  On June 13, 1982, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and Hollywood star Shirley MacLaine hosted the Dog Show and Parade event, which benefitted the Kaposi's Sarcoma Clinic at the University of San Francisco Medical Center. In Chicago, performance benefits at venues like the Riverside Club and Park West helped to provide the funding needed to launch the Action AIDS program at the Howard Brown Memorial Clinic. While the federal government and the White House seemed to be stymied by this new disease spreading in the country's largest cities, local LGBTQ communities were spinging into action.  The age of the big-city AIDS benefit had begun. * * * * * * Sources: How to Survive a Plague by David France (Penguin Random House, 2017) Acts of Intervention: Performance, Gay Culture and AIDS by David Roman (Indiana University Presss, 1998)

April 12, 1982

Award-winning Broadway Actor Lenny Baker Dies

Lenny Baker, who won the 1977 Tony Award for Best Actor in a featured role (musical), dies of AIDS-related illness in a hospital in Hallandale Beach, Florida at the age of 37. Learn More.

Born Leonard Joel Baker in 1945 in Boston, he began his acting career in regional theater and spent several summers at the O'Neill Center's National Playwrights Conference in Waterford, Connecticut.  He told an interviewer in 1977 that the center was instrumental in his career, partly because he saw performances of the National Theater for the Deaf there. ''It's perhaps because of watching them work,'' Baker said, ''that I can be so brazen with comic uses of my body.'' After moving to New York City in 1969, Baker acted in Off-Broadway stage productions until making his Broadway stage debut in 1974 in The Freedom of the City.  Baker won a Tony award and the Drama Desk Award as Outstanding Actor  in 1977 for his performance in the musical I Love My Wife. Baker also acted in films and television shows, including Paul Mazursky's Next Stop, Greenwich Village (1976), for which he was nominated for a Golden Globe award.  His other film credits included The Hospital (1971) and The Paper Chase (1973). Following Baker's death, a memorial service was held at The Public Theater, located at 425 Lafayette Street in New York City. * * * * * * Sources: Photo of quilt panel from the AIDS Memorial Quilt The New York Times, "Lenny Baker, 37, Stage Actor" by Eleanor Blau, April 13, 1982 IMDb, "Lenny Baker biography"

April 13, 1982

First Congressional Hearings on AIDS Begin in Hollywood

Congressman Henry Waxman, whose district includes the gay community of West Hollywood, convenes the first congressional hearings on AIDS at the Los Angeles Gay Community Services Center. Learn More.

“I want to be especially blunt about the political aspects of Kaposi’s sarcoma,” said Rep. Waxman, according to the Washington Blade.  “This horrible disease afflicts members of one of the nation’s most stigmatized and discriminated-against minorities…. There is no doubt in my mind that if the same disease had appeared among Americans of Norwegian descent or among tennis players -- rather than among gay males -- the responses of the government and the medical community would have been different.” Rep. Waxman made an effort to involve the gay community of his district by holding the hearing at the LA Gay Community Services Center (now the Los Angeles LGBT Center).  But the media largely overlooked the event, and the coverage that did appear was within the LGBTQ press. The San Francisco newspaper The Sentinel published a very short blurb three days later, titled “House Holds Cancer Hearings.”  The paper would quote an unnamed subcommittee staffer saying the Centers for Disease Control “should not have to nickel and dime" for research funding. The short article appeared next to a column written by gay nurse Bobbi Campbell, who wrote about going to the Shanti Project to get emotional support for his KS. Speaking at the hearing, Dr. James Curran, head of the Center for Disease Control’s Task Force on Kaposi’s Sarcoma and Opportunistic Infections, estimated that tens of thousands of people were already infected by the disease. On the 40th Anniversary of the CDC's first report on what would become known as AIDS, reporter Karen Ocamb wrote the Washington Blade article "AIDS @40: White House laughs as gays try to save themselves," recalling the House hearing chaired by Rep. Waxman. "Like so many others in California, lesbian feminist Ivy Bottini had high expectations for the federal government to finally intervene in the growing AIDS crisis after the first congressional committee hearing on the mysterious new disease," Ocamb wrote.  "She was upset.  Her friend Ken Schnorr had died just before the hearing and Bottini had to explain to Ken’s distraught mother that he had not been abused at the hospital — the purple bruises on his body were KS lesions." Ocamb goes on to cite perhaps one of the most egregious examples of the Reagan administration’s homophobic callousness toward people with AIDS, which happened just weeks after Reps. Waxman and Phillip Burton (D-San Francisco) introduced a bill to fund AIDS research. On Oct. 15, 1982, White House Press Secretary Larry Speakes was holding a press conference, during which reporter Lester Kinsolving asked Speakes about the new disease called AIDS.  After indicating that he didn't know what AIDS was, Speakes dismisses the question and makes light of it, saying, "I don’t have it. Do you?" When this response elicits chuckles from the members of the press corps, Speakes continues in this vein ("There has been no personal experience here, Lester") to draw more laughter. "The exchange goes on like that.  For another two years," Ocamb wrote. * * * * * * Sources: Washington Blade, "AIDS at 40: White House Laughs as Gays Try to Save Themselves" by Karen Ocamb, June 23, 2021 The Atlantic, "The Heroic Story of How Congress First Confronted AIDS" by Joshua Green, June 8, 2011

May 6, 1982

Hibiscus - Founder of Cockettes & Angels of Light - Dies

To the shock and dismay of many fans in San Francisco and New York City, The Advocate announces: "Founder of Cockettes, Hibiscus, Dead of GRID." Learn More.

Hibiscus was famous on both coasts for founding and performing with the flamboyant theatrical groups The Cockettes and Angels of Light.  He died of AIDS-related illness (then called "Gay-Related Immune Deficiency") at St. Vincent's Hospital in New York at the age of 32, becoming one of the earliest casualties of the epidemic. Born George Edgerly Harris III in Bronxville, N.Y.,  he was the child of theater performers who relocated the family to a home on El Dorado Avenue in Clearwater Beach, Fla.  Before long, George Jr. had founded his first theatrical group, the El Dorado Players, which performed in the family's garage.

"He was fascinating even as a small child," his mother Ann Harris told The New York Times Magazine in 2003.  "All the other kids followed him and acted out his fantasies. He did Camelot one time and had the kids on bicycles with the handlebars as the horses' heads. Another time he directed Cleopatra, and used the garden hose as the serpent and our cats as Cleopatra's gifts to Caesar. He was very much the little producer."

When his family returned to New York in 1964, George Jr. reprised the El Dorado Players, augmenting the troupe with children he met in Greenwich Village.  He took acting and singing classes at Quintano's School for Young Professionals, and soon he was cast as an extra in a milk commercial, a deaf-mute in a television series and an antiwar protester in an Off Broadway play called Peace Creeps, co-starring Al Pacino and James Earl Jones.

The latter role would be strangely prescient.  On October 21, 1967, an 18-year-old George Jr. would be photographed placing a flower in a gun barrel pointed at him while taking part in an anti-war demonstration at the Pentagon.  The photo, widely circulated in the media, became iconic of the anti-war movement and generational divide in the country.

Washington, D.C. was just a stop-over, through, of a trip he was taking to San Francisco with friend Irving Rosenthal, the author of the homoerotic novel Sheeper and the onetime lover of William Burroughs.  Inspired by an image in a Cocteau novel, he changed his name to Hibiscus, and started wearing the glittery makeup, diaphanous robes and floral headpieces that would become his signature. He joined Rosenthal's commune, KaliFlower, which was dedicated to distributing free food and creating free art and theater.  This was the fertile environment in which Hibiscus founded The Cockettes. Hibiscus and other KaliFlower members first performed at the 1970 New Year's Eve Show at the Palace Theater, an old Chinese movie house in North Beach.  They called themselves The Cockettes, a bawdy allusion to the Rockettes, and danced a cancan to the Rolling Stones' song Honky Tonk Women. Under the leadership of Hibiscus, the group's act quickly evolved into bigger, wilder, and more lavish productions, and The Cockettes’ shows fast became not-to-be-missed events.  New shows were created every few weeks, with Paste on Paste, Gone with the Showboat to Oklahoma, and Tropical Heatwave/Hot Voodoo being some of the early productions. Pearls Over Shanghai became the Cockettes first show featuring an original script, music and lyrics, and was an instant hit with fans.  Some members of the Cockettes, like Sylvester and Devine, began to garner their own fan followings.  During this time, Hibiscus found he could express his sexual identity with fearless abandon. ''He came out of the closet wearing the entire closet,'' says Nicky Nichols, a fellow Cockette.

When some members of The Cockettes began insisting that they begin charging for their shows, Hibiscus refused and found himself expelled from the group he founded.  Unperturbed, Hibiscus formed a new theatrical group called the Angels of Light Free Theater. Their shows included Flamingo Stampede and The Moroccan Operette, which Hibiscus described as being ''like Kabuki in Balinese drag.''

Among the people he convinced to perform with the Angels of Light was poet Allen Ginsberg, who appeared in drag for the first time. Hibiscus found another collaborator in his new boyfriend, Jack Coe, also known as Angel Jack, who eventually moved to New York with Hibiscus in 1972, around the same time that the Cockettes disbanded.

Upon his return to NYC, he recruitd his mother and three sisters (Jayne Anne, Eloise and Mary Lou) into an east coast version of the Angels of Light. “I wrote almost all the music for the Angels of Light,” said his mother, Ann. “George would say, ‘Oh, I need a sheik scene, with a sheik in it,’ and then I would come up with a song.”

The group performed at the Theatre for the New City, where John Lennon was known to jump on the stage and sprinkle glitter on Hibiscus.

In the early 1980s, he and his sisters and brother formed the glitter rock group "Hibiscus and the Screaming Violets," supported by musicians Ray Ploutz on bass, Bill Davis on guitar and Michael Pedulla on drums.  But he had to stop performing in 1981 due to his escalating illness.

It's testament to the power of his personality and creativity that the spirit of Hibiscus dominates the 2002 Cockettes documentary, even though the film's focus is on the group.  Decked out in gender-bending drag and tons of glitter, the flamboyant ensembles of both The Cockettes and Angels of Light are considered to be the inspiration for later theater productions like The Rocky Horror Picture Show and acts like The New York Dolls.

* * * * * * Sources: Photo of quilt panel from the AIDS Memorial Quilt

The New York Times Magazine, "Karma Chameleon" by Horacio Silva, August 17, 2003 The Washington Post, "Flowers, Guns and an Iconic Shapshot" by David Montgomery, March 18, 2007 The Cockettes, A Film by David Weissman and Bill Weber, 2002 (trailer) Hibiscus and the Angels of Light, video (YouTube)

May 1982

LA Activist Ivy Bottini Creates Informational Network

Lesbian feminist Ivy Bottini, upset by the AIDS-related death of her friend Ken Schnorr, starts asking questions of the medical community and founds the AIDS Informational Network in Los Angeles. Learn More.

Bottini called the CDC to ask about the black and blue bruises that covered Schnorr’s body.  The CDC refered Bottini to Dr. Michael Gottlieb at the University of California Los Angeles, who co-authored the CDC's first report on HIV/AIDS. Bottini and Dr. Gottlieb became friends and met every Friday at Crest Coffee shop on Sunset Boulevard in Silver Lake to discuss AIDS.  Fueled with trustworthy information, Bottini formed what would become to be known as the AIDS Informational Network, an informal group of leaders who discussed the crisis. She organized a community town hall at Fiesta Hall in West Hollywood with Dr. Joel Weisman, Schnorr’s physician.  More than 300 gay men attended (Bottini and her friend Dottie Wine are the only women in the packed hall), and for years afterward, Bottini heard from men who claim that this event saved their life. * * * * * * Sources: The Liberation of Ivy Bottini by Judith V. Branzburg (Bink Books, 2018) Watermark, "Tribute to 'Give 'em Hell' Lesbian Feminist Pioneer Ivy Bottini" by Karen Ocamb, March 3, 2021

May 9, 1982

Genesis for San Francisco AIDS Foundation is Launched

Bay Area dermatologist Dr. Marcus Conant and gay activist Cleve Jones found the Kaposi’s Sarcoma Research and Education Foundation, which later becomes the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. Learn More.

The foundation's goal was to provide information on Kaposi’s Sarcoma to local gay men.  Frank Jacobson, Richard Keller, Bob Ross, and Dr. Paul Volberding were also organization founders. In the first year, the organization existed in a very small office on Castro and 18th Street, seeing a limited number of clients and operating a single-telephone information and referral Hhotline. The organization was operated entirely by volunteers. It wasn’t long before the organization gained recognition locally and nationally as a trusted source of information.  As the epidemic grew, the organization expanded with funding from local and state sources and grassroots community fundraising. They were able to hire paid staff. In 1983, the organization split into national and local chapters, and in 1984 the local chapter renamed itself the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and officially separated its affiliation from the National Kaposi’s Sarcoma Research & Education Foundation. Still active today, the San Francisco AIDS Foundation continues to promote health, wellness, and social justice for communities most impacted by HIV, through sexual health and substance use services, advocacy, and community partnerships.  SFAF currently serves more than 25,000 a year. * * * * * * Source: San Francisco AIDS Foundation, "Our 40 Years of History: From 1982 to 2022"

May 11, 1982

Stigmatizing Label 'GRID' is Coined

The New York Times publishes the first media mention of the term “GRID” (Gay-Related Immune Deficiency), deepening public perceptions that HIV/AIDS is solely related to homosexuality. Learn More.

Under the headline "New Homosexual Disorder Worries Health Officials," the Times introduced its readers to "a serious disorder of the immune system" that had proved fatal in 136 people to date. "It was colloquially referred to as GRID – 'Gay Related Immune Deficiency' or 'Gay Related Immune Disease,' as if there was something intrinsic about being gay that made people susceptible to it," wrote Carla Tsampiras in The Conversation. While the Times article identified 13 cases of the disease in heterosexual women, it went on to state, "Most cases have occurred among homosexual men, in particular those who have had numerous sexual partners, often anonymous partners whose identity remains unknown." Even once the disease was renamed HIV/AIDS, the stigmatization continued.  Early research elicited categories of people, referred to as “high-risk groups,” who were apparently at increased risk of having AIDS.  They were informally known as "the Four-H Club" -- homosexuals, Haitians, hemophiliacs and heroin users.  Later, "hookers" were added to the list. "As a result, AIDS avatars -- such as The Homosexual, The Prostitute, and The Drug Abuser -- were created, drawing on long histories of social and medical prejudice and othering of certain groups of people," said Carla Tsampiras, Senior Lecturer in Medical Humanities at the University of Cape Town.  "The avatars drew on existing stereotypes and reinforced them, reflecting existing prejudices or social attitudes relating to sexuality, sexual orientation, race, class and gender." * * * * * * Sources: The New York Times, "New Homosexual Disorder Worries Health Officials" by Lawrence K. Altman, May 11, 1982 The Conversation, "AIDS: What Drove Three Decades of Acronyms and Avatars?" by Carla Tsampiras, June 4, 2015

May 31, 1982

Front-Page Story on AIDS Appears in Mainstream Press

The Los Angeles Times publishes the story "Mysterious Fever Now an Epidemic" on its front page, marking the first time the disease receives top coverage in the mainstream media. Learn More.

* * * * * * Source: Los Angeles Times, "Anti-Gay Bias? : Coverage of AIDS Story: A Slow Start" by David Shaw, December 20, 1987

June 12, 1982

CBS News Reports on AIDS among Gay Men in Cities

In one of the earliest broadcast news stories about AIDS, reporter Barry Peterson interviews gay men diagnosed with Kaposi's Sarcoma. Learn More.

The news segment opens with AIDS activist Bobbi Campbell talking about his shock at the age of 29, when he was told he had a deadly form of cancer.  Then, the segment shows Campbell being examined by his doctor, Marcus Conant, M.D. Next, New York-based AIDS activist Larry Kramer talks about how the disease is killing more people than toxic shock syndrome and Legionnaire's disease -- two bacterial infections receiving a lot of media attention at the time.  When the reporter asks Campbell why no one is addressing the AIDS epidemic, Kramer replies, "Well, I think it's because it's a gay cancer." James Curran, M.D., speaks on behalf of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, telling CBS News that now is the time to conduct AIDS research to determine how the disease was being transmitted.  The reporter notes that "there is almost no money being spent so far" for AIDS research. The reporter closes the segment with this statement:  "For Bobbi Campbell, it is a race against time.  How long before he and others who have this disease finally have answers, finally have the hope of a cure?" Campbell would die of AIDS-related illness on August 15, 1984, about 26 months after the report aired on CBS News. It would be almost 12 years later (1996) before highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) would become widely available to people living with HIV/AIDS, finally offering the hope of survival.  Deaths from AIDS-related illness fell almost immediately in the industrialized world, and the way we think about HIV and AIDS changed forever. Sources: CBS News / YouTube Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program

June 18, 1982

Researchers Connect AIDS Transmission to Sex

The Centers for Disease Control publishes an MMWR article that is the first to suggest sexual transmission as the source of Karposi's sarcoma and other opportunitic infections in gay men.     Learn More.

The MMWR article describes a potential sexually transmitted agent as being the link to outbreaks of KS, Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP), and other infections recently found among young gay men. The report describes a study of 19 case subjects from June 1, 1981 to April 12, 1982 involving biopsy-confirmed KS and/or PCP among previously healthy male residents of southern California.  Following a report of possible personal connections among the KS/PCP case subjects in Los Angeles and Orange counties, interviews were conducted with the eight subjects still living and with seven of the close friends of 11 subjects who had died. Through these interviews, the CDC was able to collect data on sexual partners for 13 of the 19 subjects. The study considered "sexual contact" to be established if the KS/PCP case subjects was reported to have "exposure" to another person that was either substantiated or not denied by the other person involved in the relationship (or by a close friend of that person). Within five years of the onset of symptoms, nine of the KS/PCP case subjects had had sexual contact with others who had KS or PCP.  They consisisted of seven case subjects from LA County who had sexual contact with other patients from LA County, and two case subjects from Orange County had sexual contact with one patient with KS who resided outside California. Four of the nine KS/PCP case subjects had been exposed to more than one patient who had KS or PCP. Three of the nine KS case subjects developed their symptoms after sexual contact with persons who already had symptoms of KS.  One of these three subjects developed symptoms of KS about nine months after sexual contact, another subject developed symptoms 13 months after contact, and a third subject developed symptoms 22 months after contact. The other four KS/PCP case subjects in the group of 13 had no known sexual contact with reported cases. However, one KS case subject had an apparently healthy sexual partner in common with two persons with PCP; one KS case subject reported having had sexual contact with two friends of the non-Californian with KS; and two PCP case subjects had most of their anonymous contacts (greater than or equal to 80%) with persons in bathhouses. The editorial note to the report included these points:

• An estimated 185,000-415,000 homosexual males lived in LA County in 1982.
• If one assumes each homosexual male in LA County has between 13 and 50 different sexual partners per year during 1977-1982, "the probability that seven of 11 patients with KS or PCP would have sexual contact with any one of the other 16 reported patients in LA County would seem to be remote."
• With this same assumption, "the probability that two patients with KS living in different parts of Orange County would have sexual contact with the same non-Californian with KS would appear to be even lower."
• Thus, observations in LA and Orange counties imply the existence of an unexpected cluster of cases.

The CDC then puts forth the hypothesis that infectious agents are being sexually transmitted among homosexually active males. "Infectious agents not yet identified may cause the acquired cellular immunodeficiency that appears to underlie KS and/or PCP among homosexual males. If infectious agents cause these illnesses, sexual partners of patients may be at increased risk of developing KS and/or PCP," the CDC report posits. The CDC proposes another hypothesis:  "Sexual contact with patients with KS or PCP does not lead directly to acquired cellular immunodeficiency, but simply indicates a certain style of life. The number of homosexually active males who share this lifestyle may be much smaller than the number of homosexual males in the general population." The CDC goes on to suggest the possibility of exposure to "some substance (rather than an infectious agent)" leading to immunodeficiency among homosexual males that share a particular style of life. The report cites a New York City-based report suggesting a connection between amyl nitrite (commonly referred to as "poppers") and an increased risk of KS.  This hypothesis would later be scientifically disproved. * * * * * Sources: Mortality and Morbity Weekly Report, "A Cluster of Kaposi's Sarcoma and Pneumocystis carinii Pneumonia among Homosexual Male Residents of Los Angeles and range Counties, California," June 18, 1982

June 27, 1982

Play Fair! First to Advocate for Safe Sex Practices

The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence creates Play Fair! -- the first "safer sex" pamphlet to address the growing AIDS epidemic. Learn More.

The Sisters distributed 16,000 copies of Play Fair! during the San Francisco Gay & Lesbian parade in June 1982. Written by Sister Florence Nightmare and Sister Roz Erection, who outside the Order were known as registered nurses Bobbi Campbell and Baruch Golden, Play Fair! was among the first guides promoting safe sex and raising awareness around sexually transmitted diseases. The Sisters originated in 1979 with three gay men who wanted to combine radical politics, street theater, and high camp, according to Will Kohler.  Having obtained nuns' habits from a community theater production of The Sound of Music, these men (a.k.a., Sister Vicious Power Hungry Bitch, Sister Missionary Position, and Sister Roz Erection ) turned heads as they strolled Castro Street on Easter Sunday. By 1982, the Sisterhood had many members and promoted a lively campaign around sex-positivity through a combination of fundraising, community outreach and events.  With growing anxiety and concern around the spread of Kaposi's sarcoma and other immune disorders among gay men, it was inevitable that the Sisters would incorporate AIDS awareness into its mission. For over 40 years, the order of queer and trans nuns has been spreading its ministry across San Francisco, the U.S., and the world.  Each professed nun takes a religious name (usually irreverent and hilarious).  For example, cities, events and venues have been ministered to by Sisters Psychedelia, Hellen Wheels, Innocenta, Rhoda Kill, Lotti Da, and Hysterectoria. Although originally founded as an "Order of Gay Male Nuns," the group now includes gay, lesbian, bisexual, heterosexual, and transgendered men and women. Many of their rituals are influenced by Eastern religious practices and beliefs, as well as by Roman Catholicism. Their doctrine stresses universal joy and the expiation of guilt. Members of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence who have died are referred by the Sisters as "Nuns of the Above." * * * * * * Sources: The Sisters Of Perpetual Indulgence, "Sistory" The Abbey of St Joan, "Play Fair" Back2Stonewall, "Gay History – April 15, 1979: San Francisco’s Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence Founded," April 16, 2022 The Culture Trip, "Meet the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, San Francisco’s Order of Queer Nuns" by Deanna Morgado, July 3, 2019 GLBTQ Archive, "Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence" by Robert Kellerman, 2002

July 4, 1982

Terrence Higgins - Hansard Reporter in UK - Dies

Terrence Higgins dies at St. Thomas Hospital in London, becoming one of the first people to die of an AIDS-related illness in the United Kingdom.  He was 37 years old. Learn More.

Born in 1945 in the Wales town of Haverfordwest, Higgins left for London as a teenager.  He worked as a reporter for Hansard, the House of Commons' official record, and in the evenings as a nightclub barman and DJ.  In the late 1970s, he would often travel to work in New York and Amsterdam.

In 1980, he was forced to put his traveling on hold due to persistent and, at the time, unidentifiable illnesses.  In the summer of 1982, he collapsed while at work at the Heaven nightclub in London and was hospitalized.  Soon after, he died of the AIDS-related illnesses Pneumocystis pneumonia and progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy.

After Higgins' death, his partner, Rupert Whitaker, and his friends Martyn Butler, Tony Calvert, Len Robinson and Chris Peel founded the Terrence Higgins Trust to raise funds for research and awareness of the illness that was then only known as "Gay-Related Immune Deficiency" (GRID). Terrence Higgins Trust was the first service organization in the United Kingdom to respond to the HIV epidemic. * * * * * * Sources: BBC News, "Terrence Higgins' Legacy, 30 Years After Death" by Neil Prior, July 5, 2012 Terrence Higgins Trust, "How It All Began"

July 9, 1982

32 Haitian Immigrants Diagnosed with Opportunistic Infections & KS

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports a "cluster" of opportunistic infections and Kaposi's sarcoma among Haitians who recently entered the U.S. Learn More.

In the summer of 1982, life-threatening opportunistic infections and Kaposi's sarcoma were reported among 32 Haitian migrants to the United States.  The CDC stated in its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report that most were heterosexual men with no known risk factors who had migrated from Haiti within the past two years. The MMWR also mentioned that the CDC received reports of KS cases in Port-Au-Prince, and the combined reports indicated "an epidemiologically distinct pattern of illness" that occurred via heterosexual transmission. Years later, in its report "AIDS: The Early Years and CDC's Response," the CDC conceded that by publicly reporting these cases as "Haitian entrants," the CDC inadvertently contributed to the stigma associated with "AIDS labeling."  This stigma would be endured by thousands of Haitian migrants fleeing poverty and political persecution in the 1980s and 1990s. From April 1, 1980 through June 20, 1982, 19 Haitian patients were admitted to Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami with evidence of opportunistic infections (including Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, cryptococcal meningitis or fungemia, toxoplasmosis, and esophageal candidiasis) and one patient also had Kaposi's sarcoma.  Seventeen were men and two were women.  At the time the CDC released its MMWR, 10 of the 19 Haitian immigrants in Florida had already died.  Their average age was 28 years old. From July 1, 1981, through May 31, 1982, 10 Haitian residents of Brooklyn, New York -- all men, aged between 22 and 37 years old -- were diagnosed with opportunistic infections (including Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, cryptococcal meningitis or fungemia, toxoplasmosis, and esophageal candidiasis).  Five of the 10 immigrants in Brooklyn had already died. The remaining three cases were reported from health officials in California, Georgia, and New Jersey. The CDC warned medical officials and doctors who care for Haitian patients to "be aware that opportunistic infections may occur in this population."

July 16, 1982

CDC Identifies Hemophilia-AIDS Connection

CDC reports three cases of hemophiliacs diagnosed with pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, a common AIDS-related illness. Learn More.

The CDC's MMWR article is the first report of the AIDS-related condition of immunosuppression in patients with hemophilia who have no other known risk factors for AIDS. By the time the MMWR article is published, two of the three subjects have died. * * * * * * Source: Mortality and Morbidity Weekly Report, "Epidemiologic Notes and Reports Pneumocystis carinii Pneumonia among Persons with Hemophilia A," July 16, 1982

1982

AIDS Becomes Focus of New Gay Cable Network in New York City

Louis "Lou" Maletta launches the Gay Cable Network on Manhattan cable channel 35, starting with the program Men in Films and then expanding its programming to include news about the AIDS crisis. Learn More.

The Gay Cable Network broke new ground by providing television programming from a gay perspective, and often featured news about AIDS that was broadcast nowhere else in the country.  While the network existed on Manhattan cable in New York City, Maletta also made his programs available to other cities like San Francisco, Cincinnati and Atlanta, which broadcast his taped programs. Maletta's first program, Men & Film, featured strategically edited gay pornographic material that "just barely passed even early cable access censorship standards," according to Back2Stonewall,  Maletta would announce at the start of each show that his goal with the program was to “put the male body back on the map.” Within months, Maletta expanded his programming to include news, sports and entertainment, and the network became a forum for a range of issues facing the gay community. In a 2009 interview with Gay City News, Maletta said he realized he needed to provide gay-centric programming about the AIDS crisis after he witnessed a 30-year-old friend become "someone who looked 90 six months after being diagnosed.” Maletta arranged for officials from New York City’s health department and Gay Men’s Health Crisis to provide updates on HIV/AIDS healthcare and research developments. Maletta’s Gay Week in Review was sponsored by the Human Rights Campaign, and Naming Names was produced weekly by the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, according to Gay City News.  Maletta himself covered arts and entertainment in a show called Be My Guest, which featured celebrities including Harvey Fierstein, Derek Jarman, Vito Russo, Patrick Stewart, Tony Kushner, Quentin Crisp, and Divine. The network's news program, Pride and Progress, eventually became Gay USA, a show co-hosted by Ann Northrop and Andy Humm that outlived the network and today is distributed nationally by Free Speech TV. Gay USA covered the Democratic and Republican national conventions from 1984 to 2000 with reporters interviewing political leaders from Dick Cheney and George W. Bush to Jesse Jackson and Ann Richards. The news program also covered AIDS demonstrations outside the conventions, as well as numerous rallies in Washington and New York City. “It was critical to the LGBT rights movement,” Kenneth Sherrill, a political science professor at Hunter College, told The New York Times. “Mainstream television wasn’t rushing to cover the movement, and public access cable provided entrée for social and political groups that were traditionally excluded. Lou Maletta’s programming allowed voices of the gay community to speak for themselves.” Maletta videotaped his programs at first out of his apartment on West 15th Street, which he shared with Luke Valenti, his domestic partner of 37 years, according to Gay City News.  Later, Maletta operated out of Manhattan buildings that doubled as sex clubs late at night. "There was nothing quite like bringing a candidate for public office in for an interview with an erotic mural looking down at them from off-stage and lubricant residue still on the chairs," Humm of Gay USA wrote.  "But no one walked out and many sought the chance to be on the shows, including Ed Koch and David Dinkins when they ran against each other for mayor in 1989." In 2001, Maletta would shut down the network.  He died in upstate New York about 10 years later of liver cancer at the age 74. “He had a tremendous vision and unlike most people, he acted on it and made it happen. Because he was such a rebel and way before his time, he didn’t reap the benefits, which could make him cranky and difficult. But he is a really important figure in our community,” said Northrup of Gay USA. “Lou had this grand vision of a 24-hour gay cable network,” Humm of Gay USA told The New York Times. “That didn’t happen for him.” Still, Maletta's legacy continues with the endurance of Gay USA and the introduction in 2005 of Logo, a gay-oriented 24-hour cable channel, wrote NYT reporter Dennis Hevesi. In 2009, the entire archives of the Gay Cable Network were acquired by New York University’s Fales Library for restoration, and preservation. “It’s more than 6,000 hours of film about civil rights and human rights,” said Allen Zwickler, who brokered the deal with NYU.  Zwickler's brother Phil was a documentarian and GCN correspondent before he died of AIDS-related illness in 1991 at the age of 36.  “It is so incredible that it had to be preserved.”

July 1982

Activists Launch Hotline at Center in Los Angeles

After activists Nancy Cole Sawaya, Max Drew, Matt Redman, and Ervin Munro attend a community meeting featuring a speaker from the Kaposi Sarcoma Research and Education Foundation, they create a hotline to serve the panicked LA community. Learn More.

The emergency meeting with the representative from San Francisco was held at the LA Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center (now called the Los Angeles LGBT Center).  The four activists decided to set up the telephone hotline in the only space available to them: a closet at the Center. Sawaya, Drew, Redman and Munro, along with eight additional volunteers, would undergo training by Dr. Joel Weisman and then take turns answering the telephone and reading information from a carefully prepared fact sheet.  Word quickly got out about the hotline, which would start to receive more than 20 calls a day. In December 1982, the Los Angeles chapter of the Kaposi Sarcoma Foundation would host “Christmas Present,” a $25 event at a private home in Bel-Air to raise money for the hotline.  Music is provided by Mother Lode DJ Stewart Barkal, and refreshments are donated by local restaurants, coordinated by Truffles owner Steve Wilson. Sawaya, Drew, Redman and Munro would go on to found AIDS Project Los Angeles (APLA), which would become the oldest and largest organization in Southern California providing educational and support services for people living with HIV/AIDS. * * * * * Sources: AIDS Project Los Angeles, "History"

1982

San Francisco Dancer Larry Hinneman Dies

Larry Hinneman, a dancer with the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company in San Francisco, dies of AIDS-related illness. Learn More.

The exact date of Hinneman's death is not known, nor is his age at the time of his death. * * * * * * Source: San Francisco Chronicle, "AIDS at 25" by Steven Winn, June 8, 2006

September 24, 1982

CDC Introduces the Term 'AIDS'

In a report to the medical community, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention coins the term "AIDS" -- Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. Learn More.

The MMWR article also includes the first case definition for AIDS: “A disease at least moderately predictive of a defect in cell-mediated immunity, occurring in a person with no known cause for diminished resistance to that disease.” Today, AIDS is defined as a set of symptoms (or syndrome) caused by the HIV virus. A person is said to have AIDS when their immune system is too weak to fight off infection. This is the last stage of HIV, when the infection is very advanced. * * * * * * Source: Mortality and Morbidity Weekly Report | Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, September 24, 1982

September 28, 1982

AIDS Research Bill Introduced (and Dies) in Congress

Congressmen Phillip Burton and Ted Weiss introduce the first legislation for the allocation of funding for AIDS research. Unfortunately, the resolution dies in committee. Learn More.

It will be almost one year later, in July 1983, when the first dedicated funding for AIDS research and treatment is approved by Congress. * * * * * * Source: www.HIV.gov, "A Timeline of HIV and AIDS"

October 15, 1982

Question about AIDS Draws Laughter at White House Briefing

At White House Press briefing, a reporter asks Press Secretary Larry Speakes: "Does the President have any reaction to the announcement -- from the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta -- that AIDS is now an epidemic and has over 600 cases?" Speakes: "What's AIDS?" Reporter: “It’s known as the ‘gay plague.’” Everyone laughs. “I don’t have it,” Speakes replies. “Do you?” Learn More.

The transcript of the press briefing, which is in the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, is a sharp reminder of how governmental officials and journalists viewed the LGBTQ community. On Dec. 1, 2015, Vanity Fair debuted a short documentary by Scott Calonico about this now-infamous exchange. President Reagan would not mention AIDS until 1985, and then it would be in response to a reporter’s question at a press conference.  He would not give a major speech about the epidemic until mid-1987 — at which point 20,849 people in the U.S. would already be dead. * * * * * * Sources: The Washington Post, "How Attitudes toward AIDS have Changed, in the White House and Beyond" by Juliet Eilperin, December 4, 2013 Washington Blade, "AIDS at 40: White House Laughs as Gays Try to Save Themselves" by Karen Ocamb, June 23, 2021 Vanity Fair, "The Reagan Administration's Unearthed Response to the AIDS Crisis is Chilling" by Richard Lawson, December 1, 2015

October 1982

California AIDS Hotline is Launched in San Francisco

In a collaboration between the San Francisco AIDS Foundation (SFAF) and the San Francisco Department of Public Health, the California AIDS Hotline begins taking calls in an effort to provide information and dispel rumors. Learn More.

Staffed by SFAF volunteers, the hotline quickly gained recognition locally and nationally as a trusted source of information.  The hotline operators received intensive training that included 16 hours of classroom sessions, practice calls, and resource-finding techniques. Training topics included immunology, virology, epidemiology, risk reduction, harm reduction theory, risk assessment, injection drug use, testing, information access, media reporting and theories, crisis and suicide calls, sex roles and power, role playing and practice calls, according to SFAF.  The training also instructed volunteers on communication skills and cultural competency. The hotline developed an "Encyclopedia" which was an accumulation of articles, brochures and memos arranged by subject.  Hotline workers would consult the Encyclopedia for the latest information on topics like oral sex, opportunistic infections, alternative treatments, community resources and AIDS research. In the first few years of the hotline's operation, the San Francisco AIDS Foundation (SFAF) was still known as Kaposi’s Sarcoma Research and Education Foundation, which was founded in April 1982 (the organization would rename itself SFAF in 1984). Mark Leger began volunteering at the AIDS Hotline in the mid-1980s, so he could stay updated on AIDS research, treatment, education and politics. "I do it because I think education is the best way to stop the spread of the disease," Leger told the San Francisco magazine Processed World in December 1986. Most people called the hotline to find out where they could get anonymously tested for HIV, according to Leger.  Questions around safer sex techniques and IV drug use were also common. "At my last shift, I fielded more than 20 calls during a three-hour shift. By the end, I felt like an overworked Bell operator, checking myself from being too snappy, not always succeeding," Leger said. "My life was a lot less busy when I started working at the hotline. I should stop. But I'm still answering calls."

October 21, 1982

Jimmy Howell - Bay Area Dance Teacher - Dies

Dancer and teacher James "Jimmy" Howell dies of AIDS-related illness in San Francisco at the age of 47. Learn More.

Howell was a psychologist in Yakima, Washington, who moved to New York and then Los Angeles to dance and teach with the Joffrey Ballet.  He then moved to San Francisco and started his own dance studio. Howell performed his last ballet, Journey of the Soul, earlier in the year.   A videotape of the ballet was shown at a celebration of his life. * * * * * * Sources: Photo of quilt panel from the AIDS Memorial Quilt Bay Area Reporter, "Gay Victim Dances Over Death" by Konstantin Berlandt, November 11, 1982

November 5, 1982

AIDS Precautions Created for Medical Personnel

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lays out the first set of precautions for clinical and lab staff working with people with AIDS symptoms. Learn More.

CDC’s report, “Current Trends Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS): Precautions for Clinical and Laboratory Staffs,” introduced precautions for medical personnel working with people exhibiting signs of AIDS. The report noted that "airborne spread and interpersonal spread through casual contact do not seem likely." Those providing care to people with AIDS were advised the following:

1. 1. Extraordinary care must be taken to avoid accidental wounds from sharp instruments contaminated with potentially infectious material and to avoid contact of open skin lesions with material from AIDS patients.
   2. Gloves should be worn when handling blood specimens, blood-soiled items, body fluids, excretions, and secretions, as well as surfaces, materials, and objects exposed to them.
   3. Gowns should be worn when clothing may be soiled with body fluids, blood, secretions, or excretions.
   4. Hands should be washed after removing gowns and gloves and before leaving the rooms of known or suspected AIDS patients. Hands should also be washed thoroughly and immediately if they become contaminated with blood.
   5. Blood and other specimens should be labeled prominently with a special warning, such as "Blood Precautions" or "AIDS Precautions." If the outside of the specimen container is visibly contaminated with blood, it should be cleaned with a disinfectant (such as a 1:10 dilution of 5.25% sodium hypochlorite (household bleach) with water). All blood specimens should be placed in a second container, such as an impervious bag, for transport. The container or bag should be examined carefully for leaks or cracks.
   6. Blood spills should be cleaned up promptly with a disinfectant solution, such as sodium hypochlorite (see above).
   7. Articles soiled with blood should be placed in an impervious bag prominently labeled "AIDS Precautions" or "Blood Precautions" before being sent for reprocessing or disposal. Alternatively, such contaminated items may be placed in plastic bags of a particular color designated solely for disposal of infectious wastes by the hospital. Disposable items should be incinerated or disposed of in accord with the hospital's policies for disposal of infectious wastes. Reusable items should be reprocessed in accord with hospital policies for hepatitis B virus-contaminated items. Lensed instruments should be sterilized after use on AIDS patients.
   8. Needles should not be bent after use, but should be promptly placed in a puncture-resistant container used solely for such disposal. Needles should not be reinserted into their original sheaths before being discarded into the container, since this is a common cause of needle injury.
   9. Disposable syringes and needles are preferred. Only needle-locking syringes or one-piece needle-syringe units should be used to aspirate fluids from patients, so that collected fluid can be safely discharged through the needle, if desired. If reusable syringes are employed, they should be decontaminated before reprocessing.
   10. A private room is indicated for patients who are too ill to use good hygiene, such as those with profuse diarrhea, fecal incontinence, or altered behavior secondary to central nervous system infections. Precautions appropriate for particular infections that concurrently occur in AIDS patients should be added to the above, if needed.

* * * * * Source: Mortality and Morbidity Weekly Report, "Current Trends Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS): Precautions for Clinical and Laboratory Staffs," November 4, 1982