The Early Days of AIDS, by C. Everett Koop, MD ScD #HIV #AIDS

I’m betting there’s very few people in this room that remember when AIDS was called GRID (gay-related immune deficiency).  It was targeting gay men, and lots of us were dying.  My own mother, in her infinite wisdom back then had my own dishes, silverware, and drinking glass that I was to use exclusively.  You know – just in case.  No offense, sweetheart….

A horrible disease with a horrible name.  About the only good thing I know around this disease is that they changed the name damn.

C. Everett Koop, the former Surgeon General of the US was there, and talks about the early days, the goverment’s response (and lack thereof), and how things progressed in the early 80′s:

But, for reasons of intra-department politics that I can still not understand fully, I was cut off from AIDS discussions and statements for the next five years. My exclusion from AIDS was just another facet of Washington politics, especially the disturbing interplay between politics and health, which—no surprise— still goes on today. I had to be content to learn about AIDS on my own, from the newspapers, internal documents of the public health service, reports from CDC such as Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, and discussions with colleagues. I did manage to make a statement – not proven for several years. I said something like this: “CDC has reported 5 patients with pneumocystis, all of whom have already died and later reported 26 more with Kaposi’s sarcoma. All patients were previously healthy homosexuals. Knowing what I do about forced sodomy in jails and prisons, what are you planning to do—solitary confinement? —Put patients with the same diagnosis in a common cell?” They laughed at me. Two years later when we knew a little more, a municipal jail in the U.S. reported something well over 50 percent of paroled persons were discharged home with what we then called a positive HIV blood test.

The rest of his article is at the link above, and worth every minute you’re going to spend reading it.

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