By Alex Vaughn
Thirty years ago Sunday, on June 5, 1981, the first cases of what would become known as AIDS were reported. The disease that was centered in San Francisco was first detected in Los Angeles. Those first cases were reported as “Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP).” A UCLA researcher, Dr. Michael Gottlieb, published articles about “otherwise healthy young gay patients experiencing fungal infections and PCP” in the Centers for Disease Control’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
The articles caught the attention of doctors in the Bay Area, who noticed similar symptoms in their patients. San Francisco General Hospital admitted its first AIDS patient in July of 1981.
By October, five months after the first cases were reported, the Centers for Disease Control declared the new disease an epidemic. A year later, the CDC gave the disease a new name – Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). “They finally gave a name to the horror that was about to begin,” said West Hollywood Mayor John Duran, who was diagnosed with AIDS in 1994. “For many of us, it has been all encompassing for most of our adult lives.” The anniversary is top of mind for the hundreds of bicyclists who are spending this week raising money for AIDS research. The 7-day bike ride began in San Francisco Sunday morning and will end in Los Angeles next weekend. Riders say it’s a life-changing effort for the riders. Organizers say the ride is designed to advance their shared interest to end the pandemic and human suffering caused by AIDS. In the past 30 years, 25 million people have died due to AIDS-related illnesses. Right now, more than 33 million people are living with HIV/AIDS. More than two-thirds of the current cases are in Africa, where the epidemic rages out of control despite prevention efforts.
On the anniversary, however, hope is still powerful and, with advancements in medications, there is belief in the future. Michael Beatty is proof of the strides made since the disease was identified three decades ago.
“There was a time in my life I never thought I’d live to see 30,” Beatty told 7 NEWS Reporter Don Champion. He was infected in 1985. His diagnosis came at a time when the disease baffled doctors and scientists alike. Headlines back then referred to the disease as the “gay plague.” The survival rate was zero percent. Things started to change as the development of drugs like AZT helped prolong lives. Years later, in 1995, the approval of protease inhibitors began bringing patients back to life. Hope was born.
Dr. Benjamin Young, medical director at Rocky Mountain Cares, has studied HIV treatment since 1995. He admits that treatment is no longer a problem; instead, it is getting people tested. It’s a problem he blames on stigma. “The act of requesting a test can be seen as an admission of some sin and taboo,” Young said. “It’s a barrier to getting tested. It’s a barrier for doctors asking about getting tested.”
Colorado has played a major role in the fight against HIV/AIDS. The University of Colorado was the site of early research. The Denver Principles, which spell out rights and responsibilities of people living with HIV, were drafted here. The work hasn’t reduced the impact the disease has had on the state. According to Rocky Mountain Cares, between 350 and 500 new cases of HIV have been reported in Colorado every year since 1995. The numbers are one reason Beatty focuses his work on prevention. He works as Program Director of the Denver Element, a group that helps spread the word to gay men in the city.
For Shannon Southall, it’s about spreading the power of prevention to women. They make up more than half of infections worldwide. She tries to share a message that, Southall said, women in America have been slow to embrace, especially women of color. “It means we need to start doing more education. And not only with women that are putting themselves at risk, but also those who don’t realize they’re putting themselves at risk,” she said.
So, will we see a cure in the next 10 years? “That ‘C’ word is a really big one,” Young said. “I’m very cautiously optimistic.”
At 58, Forest Frantz is old enough to remember the fear and the hysteria. “I remember from the very beginning, reading the first article in the early 80’s and being scared to death,” he says. The epicenter may have been 90 miles away from him in San Francisco, but the shockwaves were felt in Sacramento. It was the early 1980’s, Frantz was 28 and gay men were dying horribly painful deaths. “And looking for every lesion, every, everything that could possibly be. I watched people die for all these years.”
Skin lesions marked the earliest cases. ”My friend, we’re talking about thousands of men,” and a promiscuous Canadian flight attendant was branded patient one in the 1993 HBO Movie: And the Band Played On. At the time, the survival rate was zero. Diane Jones was a nurse at San Francisco General Hospital, “What is still happening is that if I sit down with someone and tell them they are HIV positive, they are still reacting the same way they did 30 years ago. Am I going to die? I can’t tell anybody.”
Even today, the social consequences can be severe, and gay advocate Paul Luna says he knows people who’ve lost jobs. ”People can’t say it because they could lose their friends, their family, their jobs? Yes!”
An estimated 1.7 million people have been infected with HIV in the United States since the start of the epidemic, and 600,000 have died. But new infections have dropped by two-thirds over the past three decades.
Ever improving drugs are allowing the infected to live longer. But 30, even 20 years later, young gay men are again promiscuous; many, simply never seeing the consequences, never seeing someone die from AIDS. ”Certainly it was a pressing issue when I came out. The first thing my mother did was break down and cry and said: ‘I don’t want you to die of AIDS,’ says Camera Scot who came out of the closet when he was 19.
Forest Frantz has been HIV positive for 25 years, “Every time a person passed away, you thought of your own mortality.” Frantz says he was infected by his first love, a man who died 3 years ago. ”It brings back a lot of memories because I’ve seen a lot of people that were close to me, really close to me, that are gone.”
More than one million people are living with some form of AIDS today in America. But the Centers for Disease Control states 1-in-5 people don’t know they’re infected.
