The disease impacting LGBTQ more? I can’t say that for sure one way or another. It’s unlikely. But the utter lack of work around AIDS was due to a general belief that it was specific to the LGBTQ community, more specifically gay men.
When AIDS was first being discovered it had a completely different name. GRID. Now, AIDS stands for Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome so what does GRID stand for? Gay-Related Immune Deficiency. From the very fucking birth of AIDS, it was seen in an homophobic lens. Due to that believe, both research/work done into it was considered a low priority as well as warning other groups.
But another impact of it being believed to be a gay disease was that gay men were overwhelmingly the early pushers of looking into it. Gay Mens Health Crisis was established in 1982, if I remember correctly, because no one else was doing fuckin anything. Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence (another gay activist group) also started publishing the first ever pamphlets about AIDS too, pushing safe sex, and even started hooking up the first AIDS fundraisers also in 1982.
Like… there was no information out there about the disease in the early days that weren’t made by someone in or connected to the LGBTQ community. Literally fucking none. Not to downplay the work that PoC communities had to do as well. AIDS wasn’t just the “gay” disease, for a long time it was the “white gay” disease. Yet the fuck again, PoC communities were left to dry and had to start their own activist groups to distribute information internally about the fact that, no, the virus doesn’t care about your skin color.
I highly recommend looking into both the lives and works of Michael Callen, Larry Kramer and Edmund White (who very recently passed away) who more or less defined the early push for awareness of AIDS and the dangers therin. Not alone, not by any means, but it’s a good place to start and even just being aware of one of them will really shock you.
They say like we stand on the shoulders of giants. It’s true. Those men (and so many more) are giants and we owe them everything. But they stand on a mountain of corpses made from indifference and hatred.
Sure fuck Reagan but I’m honestly bewildered at the…creative…rewriting of history in your comment.
The CDC received just 5 reports between October of 1980 and May of 1981 (7 months) and then published it’s first article about it in June of 1981. On September 15th of '81 the CDC held its first conference on the issue, barely 90 days after it published its first paper.
Like… there was no information out there about the disease in the early days that weren’t made by someone in or connected to the LGBTQ community. Literally fucking none.
This is literally not true. By the end of 1982, which was very early days for AIDS in the United States, the CDC had already punched out numerous papers, sponsored conferences, and correctly named the disease. The CDC and the NIH kept doing those things too.
There’s so much history and work missing from your comment that I don’t have the time to go through it alll -BUT- you can find out for yourself by going to timeline section of the HIV.GOV website. There you can go through the years and find the links to newspaper articles, the CDC & NIH Studies, the conferences, and all the rest.
Was Reagan a massive shitball on this issue? Yes, absolutely no question. Did America do enough to help people? No it did not.
Were people outside the LGBTQ community working on the problem from the early days? Unquestionably they were and the history is there to prove it.
This is literally not true. By the end of 1982, which was very early days for AIDS in the United States, the CDC had already punched out numerous papers, sponsored conferences, and correctly named the disease. The CDC and the NIH kept doing those things too.
Your line “by the end of 1982” is doing an enormous amount of heavy lifting and actively ignoring my line saying “in the early days”. Moreover I feel like you misunderstood what I meant. I was talking about public facing and accessible information. Medical curiosity newspaper articles do not count and nor do Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports. While this is information released to the public, no one is reading MMWR to find out what they should be paying attention to. They get that information from the news and journalists who they trust to disseminate that information as well as their officials who they trust to make sure the information is reliable. But as for those ‘early days’? This is what I meant. Informational source is the HIV.GOV link that you posted.
July 2 '81: The Bay Area Reporter, a weekly newspaper for the gay and lesbian community in San Francisco, publishes its first mention of “Gay Men’s Pneumonia.” The short item encourages gay men who are experiencing progressive shortness of breath to see their physicians.
CDC then releases a Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report which, as far as I’m concerned, doesn’t really meet the requirements of an informative pamphlet. It’s just several pages of statistics. Then in August
August 11 '81: Acclaimed writer and film producer Larry Kramer holds a meeting of over 80 gay men in his New York City apartment to discuss the burgeoning epidemic. Kramer invites Dr. Friedman-Kien to speak, and he asks the group to contribute money to support his research because he has no access to rapid funding. The plea raises $6,635—essentially the only new money, public or private, that will be raised to fight the epidemic for the remainder of the year.
After that there are more MMWRs that are dropped as well as some doctors opening up but zero mentions of informational things released to the public until
December 10 '81: Bobbi Campbell, a San Francisco nurse, becomes the first KS patient to go public with his diagnosis. Calling himself the “KS Poster Boy,” Campbell writes a newspaper column, “Gay Cancer Journal,” on his experiences living with KS for the San Francisco Sentinel. He also posts photos of his KS lesions in the window of a local drugstore to alert the community to the disease and encourage people to seek treatment.
January 4 '82: Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC), the first community-based AIDS service provider in the United States, is founded in New York City. In May, volunteer Rodger McFarlane sets up a GMHC information and counseling hotline on his home phone—he receives 100 phone calls from worried gay men the first night.
And then we get to the FIRST actual informational hearing on the matter directed towards the public
April 13 '82: U.S. Representative Henry Waxman convenes the first congressional hearings on AIDS at the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center in Hollywood, California. At the hearing, Dr. James Curran, head of the Center for Disease Control’s (CDC) Task Force on Kaposi’s Sarcoma and Opportunistic Infections, estimates that tens of thousands of people may already be affected by the disease.
From then on it picks up a little bit as well as having the GRID reference. But then we get to this entry.
June 27 '82: A gay activist group in San Francisco publishes the first pamphlet on “safer sex” and distributes 16,000 copies at the International Lesbian & Gay Freedom Day Parade.
So like I said. There was no real information out there in the early days that wasn’t actively pushed to the community by the queer community itself. I stand by that fact.
Edit: I changed the language a bit because this came off a bit bitchier than I intended. Sorry
Edit 2: I forgot to add this but you brought it up. That September 1982 Legislation push? Yeah…
September 28 '82: Rep. Phillip Burton and Rep. Ted Weiss join together to introduce the first legislation to allocate funding for AIDS research. The resolution dies in committee. Congress will not approve the first dedicated funding for AIDS research and treatment until July 1983.
Slightly frustrating that you give me shit for rewriting history and then link to legislation that was given two to the back of the head without mentioning that fact.
The disease impacting LGBTQ more? I can’t say that for sure one way or another. It’s unlikely. But the utter lack of work around AIDS was due to a general belief that it was specific to the LGBTQ community, more specifically gay men.
When AIDS was first being discovered it had a completely different name. GRID. Now, AIDS stands for Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome so what does GRID stand for? Gay-Related Immune Deficiency. From the very fucking birth of AIDS, it was seen in an homophobic lens. Due to that believe, both research/work done into it was considered a low priority as well as warning other groups.
But another impact of it being believed to be a gay disease was that gay men were overwhelmingly the early pushers of looking into it. Gay Mens Health Crisis was established in 1982, if I remember correctly, because no one else was doing fuckin anything. Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence (another gay activist group) also started publishing the first ever pamphlets about AIDS too, pushing safe sex, and even started hooking up the first AIDS fundraisers also in 1982.
Like… there was no information out there about the disease in the early days that weren’t made by someone in or connected to the LGBTQ community. Literally fucking none. Not to downplay the work that PoC communities had to do as well. AIDS wasn’t just the “gay” disease, for a long time it was the “white gay” disease. Yet the fuck again, PoC communities were left to dry and had to start their own activist groups to distribute information internally about the fact that, no, the virus doesn’t care about your skin color.
I highly recommend looking into both the lives and works of Michael Callen, Larry Kramer and Edmund White (who very recently passed away) who more or less defined the early push for awareness of AIDS and the dangers therin. Not alone, not by any means, but it’s a good place to start and even just being aware of one of them will really shock you.
They say like we stand on the shoulders of giants. It’s true. Those men (and so many more) are giants and we owe them everything. But they stand on a mountain of corpses made from indifference and hatred.
Sure fuck Reagan but I’m honestly bewildered at the…creative…rewriting of history in your comment.
The CDC received just 5 reports between October of 1980 and May of 1981 (7 months) and then published it’s first article about it in June of 1981. On September 15th of '81 the CDC held its first conference on the issue, barely 90 days after it published its first paper.
In April of 1982 US Representative Henry Waxman sponsors a public conference on the issue. The NYT is the one that popularizes the term “GRID” in it’s article from May 5th of 1982. but the CDC re-names it on September 24th of 1982.
On September 28th of 1982 Rep. Phillip Burton and Rep. Ted Weiss introduced the first Federal Legislation to directly fund AIDS research.
This is literally not true. By the end of 1982, which was very early days for AIDS in the United States, the CDC had already punched out numerous papers, sponsored conferences, and correctly named the disease. The CDC and the NIH kept doing those things too.
There’s so much history and work missing from your comment that I don’t have the time to go through it alll -BUT- you can find out for yourself by going to timeline section of the HIV.GOV website. There you can go through the years and find the links to newspaper articles, the CDC & NIH Studies, the conferences, and all the rest.
Was Reagan a massive shitball on this issue? Yes, absolutely no question. Did America do enough to help people? No it did not.
Were people outside the LGBTQ community working on the problem from the early days? Unquestionably they were and the history is there to prove it.
Your line “by the end of 1982” is doing an enormous amount of heavy lifting and actively ignoring my line saying “in the early days”. Moreover I feel like you misunderstood what I meant. I was talking about public facing and accessible information. Medical curiosity newspaper articles do not count and nor do Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports. While this is information released to the public, no one is reading MMWR to find out what they should be paying attention to. They get that information from the news and journalists who they trust to disseminate that information as well as their officials who they trust to make sure the information is reliable. But as for those ‘early days’? This is what I meant. Informational source is the HIV.GOV link that you posted.
CDC then releases a Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report which, as far as I’m concerned, doesn’t really meet the requirements of an informative pamphlet. It’s just several pages of statistics. Then in August
After that there are more MMWRs that are dropped as well as some doctors opening up but zero mentions of informational things released to the public until
And then we get to the FIRST actual informational hearing on the matter directed towards the public
From then on it picks up a little bit as well as having the GRID reference. But then we get to this entry.
So like I said. There was no real information out there in the early days that wasn’t actively pushed to the community by the queer community itself. I stand by that fact.
Edit: I changed the language a bit because this came off a bit bitchier than I intended. Sorry
Edit 2: I forgot to add this but you brought it up. That September 1982 Legislation push? Yeah…
Slightly frustrating that you give me shit for rewriting history and then link to legislation that was given two to the back of the head without mentioning that fact.