The Beginnings of the AIDS Epidemic

        Although the AIDS epidemic was considered a legitimate threat in the US during the 1980s, AIDS itself wasn’t new to the world. Scientists believe that HIV (the virus that causes AIDS) jumped from chimpanzees to humans in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Evidence for this transmission cites the fact that HIV can be traced back to the Simian Immunodeficiency Virus (SIV) which exists among monkeys and apes. While HIV and AIDS had existed for decades before the epidemic in the United States, much was not known about the virus and attention was subdued. However, during the 1970s, there was a spike in cases and by 1980, it had spread to 5 continents. It is estimated that during this short span, a few hundred thousand people could have been infected.

Due to an increase in international travel during this time, HIV naturally made its way to the US (mainly through the port cities of New York City and San Francisco) around 1970. However, attention wasn’t brought to HIV until the early 1980s. The first major report about this new, unknown condition, was when 5 healthy gay men suddenly got Pneumocystis pneumonia, which caught the eye of the CDC since it never infects people without preexisting conditions. As the year went on, hundreds had been infected and almost half had died, but this was mainly among the gay community. This led to the condition being called GRID: gay-related immune deficiency. This ultimately caused a lot of stigma and fear against the gay community and the disease even got the nickname “the gay plague” for several years. However, as the years went on and testing was widely available, people that weren’t homosexual and who followed “moral practices” in the eyes of some started getting the condition. This led to the name being changed to AIDS in 1982 and stigma against the relationship between gay men and AIDS diminished. What helped the cause, even more, was when actors such as Rock Hudson died to AIDS. These new cases propelled the fight against AIDS since it was clear that it affected all social groups and that nobody was safe.

Although the response against AIDS was slow due to the stigma against the homosexual community, once HIV spread among the population, the country saw a rise in organizations that tried to halt the disease such as the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. Through an increase in government funding for the investigation of the disease, more and more information was discovered. Through its spread among the female population, people began to believe that it could be spread through heterosexual sex as well as homosexual sex. Additionally, there were cases around the world where contaminated blood products seemed to be the culprit which helped solidify our knowledge on the disease that is spread through bodily fluids. Even though we were able to pinpoint the disease we were dealing with, the US total for AIDS cases rose to 100,000 at the end of the decade and showed no sign of slowing down. We can always speculate whether a swifter, earlier response could’ve prevented the AIDS epidemic that we still experience today but as for right now, we have a different virus to tackle.


Sources:
https://www.avert.org/professionals/history-hiv-aids/overview
https://www.history.com/topics/1980s/history-of-aids