CONTINUITY IN THE AIDS EPIDEMIC AN EXPLORATION OF HOW AIDS REMAINS PREVALENT IN TODAY’S SOCIETIES The early days of the AIDS epidemic seem incredibly distant and foreign to our generation today, for both college students and young adults alike. The first report published on AIDS came after the publication of a Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) description of five cases of Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP) among homosexual men in Los Angeles. The confusion drawn from what the nature of the illness and what caused it was attributed to how PCP was generally exclusively limited to those with cancer or other forms of severe immunosuppression. As the Center for Disease Control continued to receive reports of PCP among other opportunistic infections and cases of Kaposi’s sarcoma, a Task Force was created to conducted epidemiological investigations. Meanwhile, the public refused to acknowledge the severity of this pandemic, believing it to only live amongst homosexual men. Those that acknowledged it referred to it as the “gay plague” or “gay cancer,” considering that AIDS is characterized by the appearance
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of blue-grey skin tumors. When news sources discussed AIDS, they would call it Gay-Related Immunodeficiency Disease (GRID). The public would only grow to realize later that cancer could not be “gay” or “straight,” and that these characterizations would limit our ability to properly address this global epidemic. Since the 1980s, a series of changes have taken place in several topics ranging from attitudes, stigma, treatments, and policies. Our progress in epidemic response and preemptive treatment has been so astronomical that those born after HIV flooded the nation, or those too young to remember it, can hardly picture a time when these policies and practices were not routine. The progress since then has not only been limited to our fight against HIV, but it has also served as a compass for future pandemics. Although our discussion is limited to the continental US, we still acknowledge the role HIV plays in various countries as it is a global pandemic. The advancements made since have also been adopted into other places, but there is still a long way to go. By
analyzing the changes that have occurred since the beginning of the AIDS pandemic, we seek to convey our perspective about the early days and spin some of those themes forward. The history of the response to HIV poses one overarching question: how did an infectious disease transform into a chronic disease? Stigma encompasses one of the most complex and greatest barriers to proper healthcare for individuals living with AIDS. The attitudes that were presented in the 1980s, some of which persist today, stalled the procession in understanding the significance of this epidemic. The disproportionate impact of AIDS on homosexual and bisexual men propagated an anti-gay bias in society, which thereby led to counterproductive responses from healthcare agencies, the public, and the government. Such negative responses included the HIV travel and immigration entry ban in 1987 and the discouragement of homosexual activity in many public schools nationwide. A significant component of the fear surrounding this epidemic was
