World Aids Day
I am reading blog articles about World AIDS Day, people taking the occasion to put forward facts and figures (nearly 50% of AIDS cases worldwide are women, >950 people a day die from AIDS complications in Africa each day) and talk about hope for the future. Here are some of the things I'm thinking about.
AIDS first appeared around 1981 with small clusters of gay men dying from an obscure type of pneumonia. The pneumonia was typically an opportunistic disease, which led to the understanding that the problem was with a severely compromised immune system. Finally, "The Gay Plague" was given a "real" name: Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, or AIDS.
The emerging story was very well covered in the press in those early days, provided it was the gay press you read. Otherwise, the story got very little attention.
One of the best AIDS jokes appeared early on, when there was still widespread belief that only gays, hemophiliacs, and Haitians got the disease — hemophiliacs, by the way, were the only "innocent victims". It went like this: "What's the hardest thing about learning you have AIDS? Trying to convince your mother that you're Haitian."
Most of us who are gay and lived through the time were keenly aware of every minute of every day of every week of every month of every year that passed while "the great communicator" who occupied the presidency at the time failed to mobilize public-health forces to combat the disease, failed even to mention its name.
I remember watching the first episode on TV of a "Quarterly AIDS Report" in which Tom Brokaw solemnly promised they'd be there every 3 months to do a report and give an update until the epidemic was over. The show lasted for two, maybe three installments.
When we speak of "Gay Pride", some wonder very loudly what there is to be proud about. Among the many reasons, this is one: when no one wanted to help, the gay community helped itself. With the unstinting support of our lesbian sisters, we worked to understand and to educate, we took steps that reduced the spread of the virus in our community, we took action to find treatments, we took care of our sick and dying, and we honor our dead.
That's enough to make me proud.
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on Friday, 1 December 2006 at 20.31
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That is reason to be proud, Jeff. I hadn't seen it put quite this way, but I appreciate your feelings of having been let down. There has to be a special place in hell for the self-styled religious types who said, openly or just to themselves, something on the order of "That's what you get …" or "Serves them right."
Here's hoping a genuine cure will be found, as well as effective immunization.
on Saturday, 2 December 2006 at 08.46
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Though there wasn't alot of official, NIH type money early one, there were alot of resources put into AIDS from the research community, partly because it was a new, exciting phenomenon.
Later research money was ramped up to exceed what was spent on any single cancer or heart disease.
AIDS certainly got a lot of media attention. I don't know if more would have helped, except in a marginal way.
I find the gay community's criticism of Reagan a little too extreme, almost as if Reagan were withholding some sort of cure. I think maybe it was partly a way to deflect criticism from the community itself, which had some unsympathetic characters, like bug chasers, and knowingly infected men who refused to curtail their behavior, or use condoms.
on Sunday, 3 December 2006 at 13.37
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No doubt some of the strength of the criticism of Reagan is attributable to the fact that he was greatly disliked by many in the gay community. However, the specific criticism is this: Reagan, as president, could have changed attitudes and directed efforts merely by saying how important it was to work at stopping AIDS. It would have cost no money. But Reagan was absolutely silent on the subject, leaving us to imagine our own reasons why that might be, none of which speak positively on the subject of Reagan as great leader of democracy.
on Monday, 4 December 2006 at 02.10
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Oh, I think if Reagan had exhibited as much bully pulpit oomph in urging on the efforts of private and government researchers, and pressing Congress to be openhanded for R&D, public information and prevention campaigns, as he was in sticking it to the air traffic controllers, it would've helped a lot.