30 Years In, We Are Still Learning From AIDS

[w8liftinglady]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/31/health/31aids.html

At first it seemed an oddity: a scattering of reports in the spring and early summer of 1981 that young gay men in New York and California were ill with forms of pneumonia and cancer usually seen only in people with severely weakened immune systems.

ADVOCACY A protest at New York's City Hall in 1985. In Council hearings on AIDS-related bills, gay residents said they had become victims of discrimination and hysteria.
In hindsight, of course, these announcements were the first official harbingers of AIDS — the catastrophic pandemic that would infect more than 60 million people (and counting) worldwide, killing at least half that number.

But at the time, we had little idea what we were dealing with — didn’t know that AIDS was a distinct disease, what caused it, how it could be contracted, or even what to call it.

As AIDS has become entrenched in the United States and elsewhere, a new generation has grown up with little if any knowledge of those dark early days. But they are worth recalling, as a cautionary tale about the effects of the bafflement and fear that can surround an unknown disease and as a reminder of the sweeping changes in medical practice that the epidemic has brought about.

more at site...

[xchrom]

1. Recommend

[w8liftinglady]

2. my nursing career began with AIDS

My first "brave" deed was allowing a gay man's partner to remain at his bedside while he died "against hospital policy for all but next of kin"
For many of my gay friends, the gay community WAS their next of kin.

[Very_Boring_Name]

3. Isn't it amazing how the person you've been with for years isn't allowed in but

the family who disowned you is?

[xchrom]

4. My partner was abandoned by his folks.

The many years I tended him - Oy.
Thank you for your time and effort.

[beyurslf]

5. It is amazing to me that my kids have never known a world without AIDS,

To them, Magic Johnson is some has-been guy famous for having AIDS, and they don't know who Ryan White was.

[William769]

6. K&R.

:cry: