In early 1981, doctors in Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco simultaneously began reporting strange symptoms in some of their gay male patients. All the patients had compromised immune function. At first the strange new disease was termed a "gay cancer," since it primarily struck gay men. The radical right and social conservatives trumpeted the illness as "God's judgement" on gay people. Government did little to further research efforts, and the medical establishment was initially baffled as to the cause, much less the cure, for the disease. Two years into the epidemic, researchers discovered the virus (Human Immunodeficiency Virus or HIV) that caused the disease, but it took yet another two years before the first test to detect HIV was licensed in the United States. By then, nearly 9,000 people had been diagnosed with the disease, and half of them had already died. Seventy percent of the recorded cases were gay and bisexual men, and the gay community was devastated by the epidemic. Once-thriving gay neighborhoods like the Castro in San Francisco or New York City's Greenwich Village became grim communities of the ill, the dying, and the powerfully afraid.
In the face of government inaction and indifference, gay men had to organize themselves to fight the disease, creating AIDS-service organizations like Gay Men's Health Crisis in New York and educating each other and the public about how to prevent infection.
Concerted and prolonged efforts to promote safer sex among gay men have managed to slow rates of HIV transmission in gay communities. Gay activism has promoted the discovery of new AIDS drugs. Today, new combination drug therapies have shown promise in prolonging the lives of people with HIV and AIDS, but they are expensive and relatively unproven. From 1985 on, it became increasingly clear that HIV and AIDS were making inroads into other populations, forcing mainstream society to take greater notice of the epidemic. There is still no cure for AIDS.
Source: Miller
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