AIDS History 101

[MrFun]

And the Band Played On (page 155)
This excerpt centers on Marc Conant in May 1982, a doctor who took the emerging epidemic seriously. This excerpt shows Conant's thoughts on some of the gay men who were spreading the new virus in spite of the emerging information out there, and it also shows Conant's concerns at the time about lack of funding from government. (caps are mine)

"All day, people had been calling him about the cluster study, and every terror Conant had conceived on that April morning A YEAR BEFORE when he had first heard about Ken Horne now seemed realized. He immediaely recognized Patient Zero as the suave Quebecois airline steward who had come into his office the month before. He was the type of man everyone wanted. What everyone had wanted was bringing them death. Quite literally, Conant thought.

There were other worries. The sum total of all Conant's funding pleas was a $50,000 grant from the American Cancer Society. That was just enough to afford one harried secretary to coordinate the increasing numbers of patients using the KS clinic.

Nine months had passed since the National Cancer Institute conference in Bethesda, and still there had not been a single gesture to intimate that the NCI was prepared to release funds.

The United States, Contant thought, had the know-how and resources to conquer this disease. The greatest scientific technology waited in the world's best-funded laboratories. People could be warned through a mass media network that could reach into virtually every citizen's home within a matter of minutes. This wasn't some Third World country, for Christ's sake."

[MrFun]

On another note, it was cute that Firefly made some grossly mistakened presumptions about what I have read and what I have not read.

[Patroklos]

But he wasn't mistaken in the details of his post. You position that gays were somehow the victim of some purposeful conspiracy is not supported by anything.

[MrFun]

I'm not talking about deliberate consipiracy of extermination. But what I am talking about is supported by the facts presented in books such as And the Band Played On, which includes recollections and eyewitnesses who were directly involved with the crisis.

I do not believe the AIDS virus was an invention by Reagan administration or some other part of federal government with deliberate intent to wipe out gays in United States. What I do believe though, is that Reagan administration, scientists, the media, and parts of gay community during that time included people who made the epidemic much worse by their inaction, prejudice, bigotry, and ignorance.

Meanwhile, in face of such indifference, there were still some scientists and gay community leaders who were conscientious enough to take the early epidemic seriously.

[Starchild]

HIV-1, in terms of its biochemistry, is subtly beautiful. There's no way the American government made this. Its too much of a work of art.

[Zkribbler]

Originally posted by Starchild
HIV-1, in terms of its biochemistry, is subtly beautiful. There's no way the American government made this. Its too much of a work of art.

[Q Classic]

Originally posted by Starchild
HIV-1, in terms of its biochemistry, is subtly beautiful. There's no way the American government made this. Its too much of a work of art.

"Do you know why I think the American government couldn't possibly be behind 9/11?"

"Because it worked!"

[DrSpike]

You can cure AIDS with concentrated cash injected into the blood stream. I learnt this from teh internet.

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by DrSpike
You can cure AIDS with concentrated cash injected into the blood stream. I learnt this from teh internet.

QFT. Teh guy who told me this wasn't just sure, he was HIV-positive!

[SlowwHand]

Originally posted by MrFun


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.

I didn't mean to imply that it was handled with the sense of urgency of which it should have been.

[MrFun]

And the Band Played On (page 173)
The excerpt below illustrates how the Reagan administration constantly protested the increased funding bills for research on AIDS passed through Congress and how Reagan administration found ways to drag their feet or obstruct use of the funds.

"At Bob Gallo's lab at the National Cancer Institute's Division of Tumor Cell Biology, about 10 percent of the staff effort went into poking around the devastated lymphocytes of AIDS patients. In his lab at the NCI, Jim Goedert desperately wanted to launch full-scale bench investigations into finding the AIDS virus but ran straight into the brick wall of limited resources. The dilemma would be hard to explain to outsiders, he thought. The money was in the budget. Indeed, Congress had been generally successful at holding the budget line for health against the Reagan budget cutters. The administration, however, was retaliating by not permitting managers like Goedert to hire anybody. So he didn't have the scientists he needed to steer studies, analyze data, and then write it up into papers."

[MrFun]

Originally posted by DrSpike
You can cure AIDS with concentrated cash injected into the blood stream. I learnt this from teh internet.

This is really an obtuse remark. Money by itself is not the solution; it is used toward resources and hiring more staff to conduct research, lab experiments, and tabulating data toward investigating any type of new bacterial or viral disease.

[Wiglaf]

OK, no one talk to him anymore. That is just ridiculous. Airball, whiff, Jesus H. Christ.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by MrFun
On another note, it was cute that Firefly made some grossly mistakened presumptions about what I have read and what I have not read.

It's hard to be "grossly mistaken" when I qualify my assertion with "maybe," Sparky. In fact, it's technically impossible.

But on point: the Reagan Administration's inaction, after HIV was identified as an infectious disease, was inexcusable. But to complain about relative inaction before it was so identified is just Monday morning quarterbacking. You were, what, 5 years old when AIDS was identified? So you have no memory of these events, but some of us were adults and were following the story; hell, I can remember when they were calling it GRID instead of AIDS. It took a long time to even piece together the fact gay men were getting sick in the same way; then, again given the dispersion of cases, it took a long time to piece together that they were making each other sick. That was unfortunate, but reasonable; why should the government have thrown resources at a problem that, at first, didn't seem like a problem (as opposed to a series of isolated events) and, later, didn't seem like an epidemic (that is, didn't seem like it was a spreading infectious disease)? The benefit of hindsight is a wonderful thing, but that's all it is -- hindsight.

This is why Waxman's comment is so stupid. "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." No, it wouldn't have. First, it would have taken forever to determine that individuals dispersed across the country all had similar symptoms; then, it would have taken a long time to put together that what they had in common was Norwegian ancestry or weekend games of tennis. And then it would have been an extraordinary leap to conclude that it was an infection, as opposed to something genetic or environmental, that was killing a bunch of people who seemed not to know each other and had only ancestry or a hobby in common.

I'm a great admirer of Shilts' book, but his polemics around the early days of the disease are ridiculous.

[SlowwHand]

"Sparky". I say that a lot.