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  • AIDS History 101

    I'm going to post a series of separate posts here in this thread, quoting at length from a very informative and insightful source about the history of AIDS epidemic of late 1970s - late 1980s. The quoted parts are from this source:

    And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic by Randy Shilts (published 1987, 1988 by St. Martin's Press)

    Feel free to contribute to this thread with your own thoughts.

    In the following excerpt, those who engaged in vigorous efforts to fight the epidemic with inadequate financing have helped organize the first U.S. congressional probe on the epidemic, and one of the individuals bluntly exposed what he believed were some of the reasons for the inadequate response of federal government and medical community. The date below is the day the congressional probe was held.

    (pages 143 - 144)
    "April 13, 1982
    'I want to be especially blunt about the political aspects of Kaposi's sarcoma,' Waxman said. 'This horrible disease afflicts members of one of the nation's most stigmatized and discriminated against minorities. The victims are not typical, Main Street Americans. They are gays, mainly from New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.

    'There is no doubt in my mind that, if the same disease had appeared among Americans of Norwegian descent, or among tennis players, rather than gay males, the responses of both the government and the medical community would have been different.

    'Legionnaire's disease hit a group of predominantly white, heterosexual, middle-aged members of the American Legion. The respectability of the victims brought them a degree of attention and funding for research and treatment far greater than that made available so far to the victims of Kaposi's sarcoma.

    'I want to emphasize the contrast, because the more popular Legionnaire's disease affected fewer people and proved less likely to be fatal. What society judged was not the severity of the disease but the social respectability of the individuals affected with it.'
    A lot of Republicans are not racist, but a lot of racists are Republican.

  • #2
    Lies! AIDS was invented by the CIA to kill black people.

    Comment


    • #3
      Around 1983 or so is when I first heard of AIDS.
      At that time, I'll just say me, but I thnk you could say the world, had no damned idea what it was going to become.
      Herpes? I'll take 2 thank you. A little Syph? Pass it on over.
      Magic Johnson retired over it. I don't think we know to this day if it was necessary.
      Life is not measured by the number of breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.
      "Hating America is something best left to Mobius. He is an expert Yank hater.
      He also hates Texans and Australians, he does diversify." ~ Braindead

      Comment


      • #4
        I don't think he could play NBA-level basketball while on the drugs; they're not that bad anymore but they are a bit hard on your system, and playing NBA-level basketball is pretty tough also.
        <Reverend> IRC is just multiplayer notepad.
        I like your SNOOPY POSTER! - While you Wait quote.

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        • #5
          I guess I just assumed it was over the simple fact he had it, not about the meds, sapping him. That didn't occur to me.
          Life is not measured by the number of breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.
          "Hating America is something best left to Mobius. He is an expert Yank hater.
          He also hates Texans and Australians, he does diversify." ~ Braindead

          Comment


          • #6
            He did come back to play a bit, but wasn't the same.

            Comment


            • #7
              Oh, I think it was also the fact that he had it. That's where the Steve Nash rule came from (by that I mean the rule that caused Nash to miss key moments of a playoff game a year ago) - if you are bleeding, you must leave the court until you are no longer bleeding, no matter what.

              IIRC, didn't he just come back for an all-star game, and an olympics, or something?
              <Reverend> IRC is just multiplayer notepad.
              I like your SNOOPY POSTER! - While you Wait quote.

              Comment


              • #8
                He played for the Lakers for a season, or rather half of it. NBA.com says it was the 95-96 season.

                I remember watching him play a few games. He was quite a bit heavier than in his earlier days and played power forward instead of point. He was still pretty good (15pts, 7asst, 6rebs according to NBA.com), just nothing like he had been before the first retirement.

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                • #9
                  Ohh, I do remember that. The heavier part indeed. That's in part the drugs, I believe...
                  <Reverend> IRC is just multiplayer notepad.
                  I like your SNOOPY POSTER! - While you Wait quote.

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Originally posted by SlowwHand
                    Around 1983 or so is when I first heard of AIDS.
                    At that time, I'll just say me, but I thnk you could say the world, had no damned idea what it was going to become.
                    Herpes? I'll take 2 thank you. A little Syph? Pass it on over.
                    Magic Johnson retired over it. I don't think we know to this day if it was necessary.
                    Sometime in 1982, some scientists and doctors had already come to horrifying theory that whatever the virus was that was affecting gay men, that it was an infectious disease.

                    Had funding and vigorous action been more forthcoming much earlier on, they would have been able to find more evidence to prove that this was an infectious disease much sooner. Just because you do not know what kind of new disease something is, does not mean you sit on your ass and wait for it to become worse and out of hand before finding the answers.

                    But, the first post begs the question as to why Legionnaire's gained such rapid, and vigorous action compared to the new immune deficiency virus epidemic.
                    A lot of Republicans are not racist, but a lot of racists are Republican.

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Oh, for god's sake Mr. Fun...

                      1) Legioinaire's disease was first identified when it hit a large number of people all staying in the same hotel in the same two-day period. Once environmental causes were ruled out (and that took a while), infectious disease was the next obvious answer -- and evevn then it was initially misdiagnosed as swine flu. AIDS, by contrast, was much more diffuse in both time and space, and its very diffusion worked against an infectious disease hypothesis.

                      2) The chief shared symptom was a sarcoma -- as in, cancer. No late-1970s researcher in his right mind would see a cancer and immediately think, "infectious disease."

                      3) All the funding and vigorous research in the world wouldn't have mattered if gay men wouldn't stop f*cking each other indiscriminately, without condoms. Maybe this is your first read of Shilts' book, and maybe you haven't gotten to this part yet, but guess what? Once AIDS was identified as an infectious disease spread through sexual contact, the single biggest problem was convincing gay men to give up barebacking. That took years, and gay men who tried to persuade their bretheren -- Larry Kramer, Andrew Sullivan, even Shilts himself -- were treated like traitors and pariahs in the gay community.

                      Really, if you must wallow in teh politics of victimhood, at least finish the book before you get up on your soapbox.
                      "I have as much authority as the pope. I just don't have as many people who believe it." — George Carlin

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Firefly

                        Mr Fun's post there is easily the most pathetic thing I have ever read on the site. Get bent, and learn something about medicine, being gay doesn't give you a free pass to be retarded.

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Originally posted by Wiglaf
                          Firefly

                          Mr Fun's post there is easily the most pathetic thing I have ever read on the site. Get bent, and learn something about medicine, being gay doesn't give you a free pass to be retarded.
                          No, but being a conservative shill does.

                          That said, Firefly.
                          B♭3

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly

                            3) All the funding and vigorous research in the world wouldn't have mattered if gay men wouldn't stop f*cking each other indiscriminately, without condoms. Maybe this is your first read of Shilts' book, and maybe you haven't gotten to this part yet, but guess what? Once AIDS was identified as an infectious disease spread through sexual contact, the single biggest problem was convincing gay men to give up barebacking. That took years, and gay men who tried to persuade their bretheren -- Larry Kramer, Andrew Sullivan, even Shilts himself -- were treated like traitors and pariahs in the gay community.

                            Really, if you must wallow in teh politics of victimhood, at least finish the book before you get up on your soapbox.
                            I own this book, and this is my third/fourth time reading it. So yes, I am well-informed about the role gay communities played during the early epidemic crisis. One of my next posts here will illustrate some of the idiotic things a number of gay men did during this time period.
                            A lot of Republicans are not racist, but a lot of racists are Republican.

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly
                              ...
                              3) All the funding and vigorous research in the world wouldn't have mattered if gay men wouldn't stop f*cking each other indiscriminately, without condoms. Maybe this is your first read of Shilts' book, and maybe you haven't gotten to this part yet, but guess what? Once AIDS was identified as an infectious disease spread through sexual contact, the single biggest problem was convincing gay men to give up barebacking.
                              On the other hand, those gays who engaged in this behavior are no longer around today. So it was a self correcting problem.

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