AIDS Resource Center
The Road to the Discovery of HIV
Background
The Guardian
California Department of Health Services
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)
1990, Time
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)
1983, New York Times
1983, New York Times
1983, Australian Lesbian and Gay Archives
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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