HIV & AIDS
The History of AIDS
- At the end of 1979, Dr. Joel Weisman, a Los Angeles physician noticed an increase in cases of a
mononucleosis-like syndrome marked by fever, weight loss, an swollen lymph nodes
- His patients were young and from the budding gay community in California
- The initial diagnosis was cytomegalovirus (CMV) which belongs to the herpes virus
- In 1981, two patients went from bad to worse.
- suffering from lost weight and had respiratory distress
- The symptoms reminded one doctor of a previous patient a few months early:
- the blood of a patient with similar symptoms had shown a reduction in lymphocytes
due to the
almost complete disappearance of helper T-cells
- In both patients, examinations found that pneumonia was now infecting their bodies
- Both patients also had one other thing in common, they were gay.
- Now the thought was, if 94% of the California homosexual community had CMV, why were
only a few dying from it?
-The first official announcement was published on June 5th, 1981 by the Center for Disease
Control which described five severe pneumonia cases between October 1980-May 1981
- Their warning mentioned two key facts: all the patients were young homosexual men
(29-36 years old) and all had pneumonia
- Pneumonia was nothing new and was never serious unless combined with a deficit in the
immune system
- Despite intensive treatment two patients died rapidly and the three other showed no signs of
recovery
- The first death was in March 1981.
- In 1978 this patient was diagnosis was Hodgkin’s disease and was treated with
radiotherapy
- No Hodgkin’s disease was found in his body at autopsy thus, the validity of that
diagnosis was called into question
- Could this patient have been suffering from AIDS in 1978?
- In New York, in 1980, a young homosexual man became very ill with weight loss, fevers, and a
‘slow consumption of the whole body’ but with no specific signs
- He began to travel throughout the country looking for any doctors or medicine that
could help
- Suddenly, Nick lost consciousness and a brain scanned was performed that showed
cerebral lesions from a Toxoplasma gondii infection (which is almost always benign
unless immune depression is exhibited)
- By March 1981, at least 8 cases of an especially aggressive form of these lesions were found
- The lesions were known as Kaposi sarcomas (or KS lesions)
- Survival time was 8-13 years when diagnosed with KS lesions
- KS lesions aren’t that rare but a flag was raised because NORMALLY, KS lesions are found in
older individuals 90% of which are Jewish, middle-eastern descent, dark-skinned, or specific
African tribes
- The 2nd report, July 4 1981, was published citing, KS lesions had been diagnosed in 26 men in
30 months and 8 had died. All were homosexual between the ages of 25-51
- The terms “Gay Cancer” and “Gay Plague” started to spread
rd
- The 3 report August 28th, 1981 108 patients were registered mostly young homosexual or
bisexual men, a few African Americans, and one woman
- 40% of these patients were dead at the time of the report
- By the beginning of 1982, the number of recognized cases was well over 200
- no longer confined to New York or California. 15 states were reporting cases
- Each new case would be traced back to the original epicentres in NY and California
- In December 10, 1981 a paper was published that demonstrated that this ‘immune deficiency
syndrome’ was not a ‘gay’ disease but was ‘community acquired’ as a long-term studies
showed that several individuals were heterosexual but we heroin addicts that shared
needles
Where did it come from in America?
- In 1982, the search was on for ‘patient zero’.
- Through a massive study, they pin pointed the origins to a group of individual in
California
- At the center of this group was one individual GAETAN DUGAS
- Dugas, an Air Canada flight attendant, was an active homosexual who directly or
indirectly infected at least 40 of the 250 patients diagnosed between April 1982
- Found to be a direct sexual partner of 9 of the first 19 diagnoses in California, 22 in NY
and 9 in eight other cities
- The most shocking part for doctors was how he was contagious without the slightest symptom
- Dugas showed KS lesions in June 1980, diagnosed in 1982, & was warned of potential risks to
partners
- Unfortunately, he kept up his active sexual lifestyle until he died in March 30, 1984
- He has said to partners: “I’ve got the gay cancer; I’m going to die and so are you”
- However, Dugas didn’t create the disease, he himself must have contracted it from someone
or somewhere else. Americans wanted to believe that it couldn’t have started in America.
Not just America and at the same time 1979 - 1982:
- In 1980, a young Danish man died of pneumonia in a same manner as the American cases
- It was later revealed that this Danish man stopped over in New York in 1977 and had
relations with one of the diagnosed American men.
- 1981, a 49 year old homosexual man in London, England was diagnosed with pneumonia and
rapid weight loss in a 3 month period
- The man had sexual relations while on a trip to New York nine months earlier
- Then Spain, Germany, France, Belgium, Switzerland, and Denmark had diagnoses that seemed
to fit the illness in America
- EVERY CASE in Europe could be linked back to a relationship with an American
individual
- A massive French study was done that demonstrate a few new points:
1. AIDS could be contracted by blood transfusion (A Frenchman in Sept 1978 in Haiti)
2. The potential for AIDS from parental drug use
3. Four patients had AIDS but had never been to America but had traveled in Africa
- **A Portuguese man served was in the Portuguese Navy during the Angola War and remained
in Africa as a truck driver in the mid 1970s
- He was not gay, but he did had repeated sexual relations with a native one while
travelling from Angola to Zaire to Mozambique
-**Some of his bodily fluids were frozen for future examinations and in the late 1980’s
when scientific techniques could test for AIDS he was found to have the HIV-2 virus**
- Several more AIDS cases were linked to NON-homosexual activity in Africa
- Two waves of a new infectious disease came to Europe
1. From Africa and struck without regard to sexual relations
2. From America and usually transmitted by sexual relationship between male
homosexuals
- In 1983, American researchers called the exposed groups the “4-H club”
- Homosexuals, Haitians, Heroin addicts, and Hemophiliacs (people with thin blood)
- however, they omitted 2 groups: blood-transfusions and babies born from AIDS
mothers
- Where did the name A.I.D.S. come from?
- initially, some referred to it as GRID = Gay-Related-Immune-Deficiency
- A.I.D.S. = Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome
- However, as of 1982 it was referred to as AIDS = Acquired Immunodeficiency
Syndrome
African Origins
- Sometime in the early 1900s, five deadly retroviruses emerged from Africa
- Two them were strains of HIV-2; Three of them were strains of HIV-1
- HIV-1M gave rise to the global AIDS pandemic
- 36 species of African monkeys and apes carry viruses that somehow jumped into humans
- HIV-1 is from the chimpanzee
- Natural-transfer theory purposes that native hunters accidentally cut their hands when
cutting up animals they had just caught allowing the chimpanzee blood to enter the hunter’s
blood
- Things were fine initially as these small tribes kept to themselves so the virus never spread
- However, Africa soon became urbanized with highways and migrations allowing the virus to
spread to more and populations