Background

The Road to the Discovery of HIV


Background


AIDS Resource Center

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The Guardian 

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California Department of Health Services

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Centers for Disease Control and Prevention


2015, World Science Festival

“We carried the people who had died of AIDS from our membership through the streets of New York in open caskets in funeral processions to make the government and society in general smell, see and be disrupted by our literal dead bodies…  We were saying if you’re going to do nothing about the genocide, you’re going to have step over our bodies and smell our rotting flesh.”

~Eric Sawyer (AIDS Activist)

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1990, Time

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2011, WBFO

In 1981, many homosexual men became ill and died from a mysterious disease, Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS). Because it was a ‘gay man’s disease’, the government and society overlooked this growing crisis. Eventually, heterosexuals became affected as well, creating global panic. Scientists presumed a novel virus was responsible. In September 1982, Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) was identified as the cause of AIDS.


"It was like a 'Twilight Zone' episode where everyone in town just starts disappearing… It was the bank teller at your bank who wasn’t there one day. It was your favorite bartender. It was the guy who did your hair. They just stopped being there.”

~Mark S. King (Blogger/AIDS Activist)

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1983, New York Times

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1983, New York Times

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1983, Australian Lesbian and Gay Archives

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1983, New York Native


"It is bad enough that people are dying of AIDS, but no one should die of ignorance."  

~Elizabeth Taylor (Actress/AIDS Activist)


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