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Randy Shilts' theory that AIDS came to the US during the bicentennial celebration the summer of 1976.

Was reading some stuff about Shilts, and he claimed that sailors from aroud the globe who gatherered in NYC that summer brought AIDS here. His theory was based on anecdotal evidence. I think it's an interesting theory and not implausible. Do you guys, especially those of you who were of age when the first cases were diagnosed, have an opinion of Shilt's theory? Thanks.

by Anonymousreply 379May 4, 2020 6:40 AM

It's certainly plausible, given the timeline. I don't really think we'll know the definitive truth about how AIDS started and exactly how it spread.

by Anonymousreply 1January 8, 2013 2:30 AM

I think it's about as plausible as any, but that's not saying I support it. Trying to track the chain of a pathogenic infection using historical supposition and conjecture is about as scientific as plotting the rotation of the planets by watching my dog's tail wag.

by Anonymousreply 2January 8, 2013 2:31 AM

In the absence of data, it's an intriguing idea. However, the evidence based on DNA sequence suggests that HIV came to the US around 1969. 1976 is probably outside of the range.

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by Anonymousreply 3January 8, 2013 2:31 AM

Someone fucked a monkey

by Anonymousreply 4January 8, 2013 2:33 AM

There was only that one case in 1969 (teenage hustler in St. Louis) and then nothing. I would assume that there was research done on unexplained deaths before 1979 and nothing was found.

The bicentennial celebration theory, while basically a literary device, is still plausible.

by Anonymousreply 5January 8, 2013 2:35 AM

What about patient 0 the Canadian steward?

by Anonymousreply 6January 8, 2013 2:35 AM

Randy's book was brilliant but I think he was using the 1976 Bicentennial as a journalistic hook to hang his facts on. It's a good one.

But it's a hypothetical.

by Anonymousreply 7January 8, 2013 2:37 AM

r6 - he died in 1984. And for the record, Shilts did not say that Dugas brought AIDS to the US.

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by Anonymousreply 8January 8, 2013 2:39 AM

The 1969 date for HIV arriving in the US is based on how fast DNA of the virus accumulates changes (evolution) and the degree of difference between strains. It's the best scientific evidence we have.

HIV was around in Africa long before then.

by Anonymousreply 9January 8, 2013 2:41 AM

Because all the gay men from around the world who came to the US in 1974 or 1975 weren't infected?

Let's not try to romance history.

by Anonymousreply 10January 8, 2013 2:42 AM

Gaetan (rhymes with Satan) Dugas. Patient Zero. "Someone gave this to me." Ugh.

by Anonymousreply 11January 8, 2013 2:43 AM

If the incubation period between HIV and full blown AIDS is 5-10 years, the bicentennial theory makes some sense. Guys started getting ill in clusters in 1981.

by Anonymousreply 12January 8, 2013 2:44 AM

In the summer of 1978, I met and fell in love with someone who said he had a disease that was making him lose weight. He was afraid it was contagious, and he went through the process of teaching both of us about what we would come to call safe sex a few years later.

He eventually stopped participating in sex -- three-ways he arranged turned into his watching me have sex with other men, eventually. I couldn't really take that, finally, and I left. I moved to another city -- not because of him, but in a way, it was good to get out of town.

He got sicker, and moved back home with his parents.

He never became a quilt panel, to the best of my knowledge.

I definitely believe AIDS existed before 1981.

by Anonymousreply 13January 8, 2013 2:46 AM

The prevailing theory is that HIV was introduced to the US a few times (see the Robert R case in 1969) before it took hold and spread.

The incubation period from infection to full-blown AIDS was about 10 years from the start. People started dying en masse in 1981/82. So it follows that the first widespread infections happened in the early '70s.

The Bicentennial was a too-elegant literary device for Shilts, as was Patient Zero. Both wrong.

by Anonymousreply 14January 8, 2013 2:47 AM

I believe there was an English sailor who had all of the symptoms in the 1950's.

by Anonymousreply 15January 8, 2013 2:52 AM

My personal theory was the airline deregulation act may have contributed to the spread because for the first time, air travel that was once out of the price range for most people suddenly became affordable. It was especially true for the fare on long distance, international flights. The act was signed in 1978.

by Anonymousreply 16January 8, 2013 2:55 AM

When the airlines allow male flight attendants?

by Anonymousreply 17January 8, 2013 2:58 AM

Norwegian, r15.

I can't remember the date.

BTW, I'm reading the Origins of AIDS right now. The author is claiming it spread in Africa due to reusing syringes and prostitution, coupled with political upheaval.

by Anonymousreply 18January 8, 2013 2:58 AM

David Carr was the English sailor who died of pneumonia/immune deficiency in 1959. But it's unclear whether he died of HIV, or his preserved tissue was contaminated in the lab with a later HIV strain.

Regardless, it's been established that HIV-1 was being spread in Africa in the '60s.

by Anonymousreply 19January 8, 2013 2:59 AM

r16, if that's true, that is the saddest example of the law of unintended consequences.

by Anonymousreply 20January 8, 2013 2:59 AM

There were two sailors.

Arvid Noe was the Norwegian soldier who died in 1976. Probably infected by an African prostitute a decade earlier. His wife and child also died. Tissue from all three tested HIV+ in the '80s.

by Anonymousreply 21January 8, 2013 3:01 AM

The incubation period can be anywhere from 8 months to who knows how long.

by Anonymousreply 22January 8, 2013 3:04 AM

1969 is uncomfortably close to the Woodstock music festival...

by Anonymousreply 23January 8, 2013 3:07 AM

8 months, r22? I've never heard that short a time frame before. I know that people with already weakened immune systems, such as IV drug users, tend to progress to AIDS sooner than other, but 8 months sound a little too soon.

by Anonymousreply 24January 8, 2013 3:07 AM

r14 I think it is plausible. The epidemic was helped along by the gay community. It was the live free (to have anonymous sex) or die attitude of many in the late '70s that turned this disease into a global pandemic. Shilt, like Larry Kramer, was very critical of the "gay culture."

by Anonymousreply 25January 8, 2013 3:08 AM

What year were the gay New York bath-houses at their raunchiest swing? 1980 looked pretty wild in "Cruising."

by Anonymousreply 26January 8, 2013 3:10 AM

[quote]8 months sound a little too soon.

If I recall the book correctly, the sick people who got the virus from blood transfusions got sick(er) rather quickly.

by Anonymousreply 27January 8, 2013 3:11 AM

Cruising portrayed the gay world as ritualistic and sick. It is not a proper barometer of the times.

by Anonymousreply 28January 8, 2013 3:14 AM

Think of the cases of transfusion AIDS. It took about a year in some people. I'm sure there's a curve, with 8 months being at the very low end. But if we say 1976 is a starting date and people started showing up around 1979 with symptoms, then the theory could work.

by Anonymousreply 29January 8, 2013 3:19 AM

r26 --

You know, one of the reasons we protested "Cruising" at the time it was being made was because we were worried that, with so little positive gay images being created at the time, people in the future might look back and think that the movie represented reality.

It didn't.

And -- I hate to bring this up -- but "Band Played On" was a hateful book in which Shilts settled score after score with his old enemies. In the AIDS activist community at the time it was discredited and reviled.

But, of course, the straight community took it to their heart ... which should tell you something about Shilts and his theories.

by Anonymousreply 30January 8, 2013 3:20 AM

It originated in the jungles of Africa. At some point a gorilla or orangutan ate two smaller monkey varieties, each of which had a viral infection. When combined, they became the AIDS virus. Then human hunters killed and ate the larger primate, and from there it spread to other humans via sexual contact. This all would've happened back in the 1930s, if not earlier. Once infected humans traveled out of their rural villages into densely populated city centers, the infection rate really picked up.

Even if the flight attendant hadn't contracted it and willfully spread it to others ("I have the Gay Cancer, and now you do too"--asshole), from the moment the hunter killed the large primate all those decades ago it was just a matter of time before it spread worldwide. In that sense, it doesn't matter when it first reached American shores. If it'd happened a decade earlier or a decade later, different people would be dead but the medical community still would have needed years to identify the disease before it could begin to formulate treatment and prevention protocols.

by Anonymousreply 31January 8, 2013 3:22 AM

Um, I'm in the gay community and his reporting holds up.

by Anonymousreply 32January 8, 2013 3:25 AM

r30 I think you're in denial or at least too afraid to face the reality of what gay culture in the '70s. This was post-Stonewall and it was a decade of gay sexual revolution.

by Anonymousreply 33January 8, 2013 3:28 AM

Why did it explode so virulently in the gay community and not really in the straight world? Many hets were as sexually promiscuous as gay men during the 70s, so certainly you'd think they were just as susceptible. Total fluke/luck of the draw? Just so sad to think about.

by Anonymousreply 34January 8, 2013 3:28 AM

I always wondered why Shilts said little about the Gay Olympics (mid-82) as while it wasn't as big in general numbers as the bicentennial, it did bring a relatively huge concentration of Gay men from all over the world at a time when many were still debating transmission routes.

I was there -- it was a huge and glorious fuck-fest, with early GRID activists left alone in their with their pamphlets and warnings pretty much ignored.

It was the same a year later in 1983 at Christopher Street West in LA -- the poor doctor huddled in his booth pretty much ignored as were those manning the Gay Scientist booth with much of the same information while all the boys were running off together.

by Anonymousreply 35January 8, 2013 3:29 AM

Gorillas don't eat monkeys; Orangutans are only found in Borneo.

by Anonymousreply 36January 8, 2013 3:29 AM

[quote]And -- I hate to bring this up -- but "Band Played On" was a hateful book in which Shilts settled score after score with his old enemies. In the AIDS activist community at the time it was discredited and reviled.

Agreed. Shilts certainly had his biases motivated by bitterness.

In his defense, the science simply wasn't there, in terms of HIV's origin, at the time ATBPO was published.

Now it's there. Patient Zero has been debunked. The Bicentennial-ships theory is not considered scientifically reputable. It's probably impossible to pinpoint HIV's spread in the US with that kind of granularity anyway — there was so much travel and free love happening for the entire decade.

by Anonymousreply 37January 8, 2013 3:30 AM

There were cases among Portuguese soldiers who had been deployed in Guinea Bissau in the mid-70's.

by Anonymousreply 38January 8, 2013 3:33 AM

R34 the vag does not tear as easily as the anus. It's a blood borne disease. At that time anal was not as popular with the hets.

by Anonymousreply 39January 8, 2013 3:33 AM

[quote]Why did it explode so virulently in the gay community and not really in the straight world? Many hets were as sexually promiscuous as gay men during the 70s, so certainly you'd think they were just as susceptible. Total fluke/luck of the draw?

Not a fluke. It's science.

Anal sex is a more efficient mode of transmission than vaginal sex. Almost all anal sex causes tears and bleeding, enabling semen to go directly into the bloodstream. Vaginal tissue is more resilient, and heterosexual men don't experience the pooling of fluid that causes easy infection.

by Anonymousreply 40January 8, 2013 3:35 AM

Even though the death toll was high didn't you all think it would be much greater? I thought it was going to be the bubonic plague of it's time killing a large percentage of the population and causing a societal collapse. Though it was a slow start I think science, medicine, and the government did a pretty good job in containing it. At least if you compare it to what it could have been.

by Anonymousreply 41January 8, 2013 3:36 AM

r39, if that's the case, then why is it primarily contracted through hetero transmission in Africa?

by Anonymousreply 42January 8, 2013 3:37 AM

[quote]Now it's there. Patient Zero has been debunked.

Actually, no. Shilts accurately described Dugas as ".. Patient Zero of AIDS, because he was linked directly or indirectly with 40 of the first 248 reported cases of AIDS in the U.S." I believe someone at the CDC actually started that. He was linked to clusters in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

[quote]The Bicentennial-ships theory is not considered scientifically reputable. It's probably impossible to pinpoint HIV's spread in the US with that kind of granularity anyway — there was so much travel and free love happening for the entire decade.

Again, no one knows, but it is plausible. It probably came earlier in several places. But it's also likely that it was a great time to have it spread.

by Anonymousreply 43January 8, 2013 3:39 AM

I'm not an expert, but a friend who's a biostatistician and who worked for the Harvard Center for AIDS research explained once to me mathematical (statistical) reasons why viruses tend to spread and kill their host organisms more quickly during the early stages of an epidemic such as AIDS but it's been a while so I only have a vague recollection of that explanation.

by Anonymousreply 44January 8, 2013 3:42 AM

R34 Actually, the Haitian community was hit really bad in the early years and that was spread from mostly heterosexual contact. Apparently the town in the US with the highest per capita HIV and AIDs cases is a town in Florida that is primarily composed of Haitian immigrants.

I think two things may have contributed to the spread in the gay community. First, lets face it, gay men have more sexual partners than your average straight person, but the pool for prospective partners is much, much smaller. Back in my bar hoping days, even in NYC, I would often see the same faces at different bars as the years went by. Second, drug abuse was as it still is, a big problem in the gay community. Abusing drugs lowers one immunity hence making one more susceptible.

by Anonymousreply 45January 8, 2013 3:43 AM

I don't think we'll ever know but here are some more stats:

Four of the earliest known instances of HIV infection are as follows:

1.A plasma sample taken in 1959 from an adult male living in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

2.A lymph node sample taken in 1960 from an adult female, also from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

3.HIV found in tissue samples from an American teenager who died in St. Louis in 1969.

4.HIV found in tissue samples from a Norwegian sailor who died around 1976.

Offsite Link
by Anonymousreply 46January 8, 2013 3:43 AM

Shilts' speculation is exactly that. Nothing in his so-called reporting would be considered a peer reviewed scientific study.

by Anonymousreply 47January 8, 2013 3:46 AM

R44 viruses mutate, their earliest strains are the most virulent.

by Anonymousreply 48January 8, 2013 3:46 AM

[quote]Shilts' speculation is exactly that. Nothing in his so-called reporting would be considered a peer reviewed scientific study.

His reporting is fine -- and he never presented his speculation as anything but that. He never pretended to be a scientist.

by Anonymousreply 49January 8, 2013 3:53 AM

[quote]he was linked directly or indirectly with 40 of the first 248 reported cases of AIDS in the U.S.

Which does not mean he infected them, which was the "Patient Zero" theory.

In the patient zero study, the average length of time between sexual contact with Gaetan Dugas and the onset of symptoms was 10.5 months. At the time of the study it was not known that the average length of time between initial infection and AIDS is ten years.

A November 2007 article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences dismisses the Patient Zero hypothesis and claims that AIDS transited from Africa to Haiti in 1966 and from Haiti to the United States in 1969.

by Anonymousreply 50January 8, 2013 3:55 AM

r49, further to that point, even scientists qualify their statements.

Dr. Pepin (Origins of AIDS) is very careful about clearly stating theories as speculative, even as he says he uses them to shape his hypotheses about AIDS' origin.

by Anonymousreply 51January 8, 2013 4:04 AM

An AIDS timeline, from its origins in 1930s Africa to now:

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by Anonymousreply 52January 8, 2013 4:04 AM

[quote]At the time of the study it was not known that the average length of time between initial infection and AIDS is ten years.

That statistic is an average and not reliable. As stated earlier, a lot of these guys partied...a lot. Weakened immune systems. They could easily started getting sick within a year or two of infection.

by Anonymousreply 53January 8, 2013 4:04 AM

Wasn't Haiti one of the earliest gay tourist destinations?

by Anonymousreply 54January 8, 2013 4:07 AM

More info:

A 1998 analysis of the plasma sample from 1959 suggested that HIV-1 was introduced into humans around the 1940s or the early 1950s.

In January 2000, the results of a new study suggested that the first case of HIV-1 infection occurred around 1931 in West Africa. This estimate (which had a 15 year margin of error) was based on a complex computer model of HIV's evolution.

However, a study in 2008 dated the origin of HIV to between 1884 and 1924, much earlier than previous estimates. The researchers compared the viral sequence from 1959 (the oldest known HIV-1 specimen) to the newly discovered sequence from 1960. They found a significant genetic difference between them, demonstrating diversification of HIV-1 occurred long before the AIDS pandemic was recognised.

The authors suggest a long history of the virus in Africa and call Kinshasa the “epicentre of the HIV/AIDS pandemic” in Central Africa. They propose the early spread of HIV was concurrent with the development of colonial cities, in which crowding of people increased opportunities for HIV transmission. If accurate, these findings imply that HIV existed before many scenarios (such as the OPV and conspiracy theories) suggest.

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by Anonymousreply 55January 8, 2013 4:08 AM

R54, Haiti was THE tourist destination for gay men for decades. The poor, young men rented themselves out.

Much like you have UK white women going over to Cuba and Jamaica i.e "milk bottles."

by Anonymousreply 56January 8, 2013 4:16 AM

Well, the cases came out of NYC so it's possible.

by Anonymousreply 57January 8, 2013 4:23 AM

Haiti became a hotspot long before AIDS hit the US. Haiti had a very large portion of the male population that worked in the Congo then returned to Haiti year after year. That is how it spread to Haiti. Not because gay men were shooting their loads up the asses of unsuspecting Haitians. It wasn't all our fault.

by Anonymousreply 58January 8, 2013 4:26 AM

I think r54 was implying that some US gay men got it when they visited Haiti and brought it back with them. One of many probable ways it was introduced in the US.

by Anonymousreply 59January 8, 2013 4:30 AM

What about the theory that the virulent strain was created in the lab by the U.S. Army and was deliberately spread as a practical study of germ warfare (and an experiment in social engineering)?

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by Anonymousreply 60January 8, 2013 4:44 AM

What about the Oral Polio Vaccine AIDS hypothesis?

by Anonymousreply 61January 8, 2013 10:45 AM

AIDS was started in Afrika by Afromos who had sex with chimps.

by Anonymousreply 62January 8, 2013 10:49 AM

r61

Why must you 'mos always bring oral or anal or scat or urine into every discussion?

by Anonymousreply 63January 8, 2013 10:50 AM

this thread is astounding in its ignorance, you fools know not ONE person who had AIDS in the United States before 1978. And Hepatits B vaccinations commenced in the United States in 1978.....

by Anonymousreply 64January 8, 2013 11:23 AM

Yes, AIDS started in America.

by Anonymousreply 65January 8, 2013 11:25 AM

I dimly recall reading about a blood drive that was undertaken in the early 70s to create a Hep b vaccine and that gay men in SF were the primary donors. I recall seeing a huge vat of serum created from that blood which was the vaccine which was then injected into hundreds of those same donors to test that vaccine. All in the early 70s.

by Anonymousreply 66January 8, 2013 11:26 AM

yes it started in America, in its military laboratories

by Anonymousreply 67January 8, 2013 11:27 AM

I still sort of support the theory about the early polio vaccines. There was evidence that early versions of the vaccine were tested on Haitian immigrants who were working in Zaire in Africa, and they came back with it, and it continued on to the USA.

I also think there's more than one Patient Zero. I think of the Patient Zero theory in terms of each cluster having a Patient Zero. These clusters were in various population centers. Since he traveled so much it's plausible to me Dugas was Patient Zero for more than one cluster.

We haven't talked about the similarities between HIV and feline leukemia or the similarities with the Ebola virus in Africa. The other theory I read is that the Ebola virus mutated and traveled.

by Anonymousreply 68January 8, 2013 11:52 AM

Ebola isn't even CLOSE to AIDS. On the other hand Ebola and Marburg are virtually indistinguishable. In fact the only way to be sure is to test for antibodies.

Marburg produces one kind of antibodies and Ebola produces another kind.

Marburg was first brought over from Africa in the 1960s in monkeys to labs in Germany and Yugoslavia.

Marburg and Ebola are not even closely related to HIV.

by Anonymousreply 69January 8, 2013 11:57 AM

[quote]Why did it explode so virulently in the gay community and not really in the straight world? Many hets were as sexually promiscuous as gay men during the 70s

Please. Nobody on the planet has ever been as promiscuous as gay men in the 70s. There may have been an infinitessimally small percentage of the straight population that had sex with multiple partners in a day. I knew gay men who had sex with four or five people on multiple days per week, for years and years.

Even today, I've seen stats showing that if gay men just halved the number of sex partners they have each year, AIDS would basically be stopped in its tracks.

by Anonymousreply 70January 8, 2013 12:15 PM

I wonder how the hets who lived for Plato's Retreat fared?

by Anonymousreply 71January 8, 2013 12:19 PM

[quote]Even today, I've seen stats showing that if gay men just halved the number of sex partners they have each year, AIDS would basically be stopped in its tracks.

I was one of the guys back in the '80s who were telling people to "just stop having sex!" I was called every name in the book, especially "homophobic" and its equivalents. It still hurts. And, no, it doesn't make me feel any better to think that many of the guys who told me to get lost or called me a drama queen are dead now.

by Anonymousreply 72January 8, 2013 12:50 PM

'59, '69, '76

What does it matter? It came, it killed.

How will knowing who, when, where change anything?

by Anonymousreply 73January 8, 2013 1:03 PM

When (progression) and where (demographics) definitely matter, R73. I shouldn't have to tell you why.

by Anonymousreply 74January 8, 2013 2:02 PM

"Patient Zero has been debunked"

How has it been "debunked?" There WAS a flight attendant named Gaetan Dugas. He WAS rampantly promiscuous, and since he could travel for free he really got around. After he got his AIDS diagnosis he continued to go to bathhouses and behaved the way he'd always done. When told by health professionals that he could spread the virus through sex, he absolved himself of all culpability, saying of his sex partners "it's their duty to protect themselves." His thinking was sociopathic: "I got it. They can get it, too." No doubt he played a large part in spreading AIDS, especially in New York, where he liked to hang out because of the uninhibited gay scene there. So...how has the behavior of Gaetan Dugas been "debunked?"

by Anonymousreply 75January 8, 2013 2:08 PM

I know the Degas connection is probably speculation at best, but just to ponder the idea that your average flight attendant with no agenda harm anyone was responsible for millions of ill and dead people worldwide is tough to wrap one's mind around. It's almost inconceivable.

by Anonymousreply 76January 8, 2013 2:27 PM

because he wasnt the first one, hence he is not Patient Zero

by Anonymousreply 77January 8, 2013 2:27 PM

[quote]I know the Degas connection is probably speculation at best, but just to ponder the idea that your average flight attendant with no agenda harm anyone was responsible for millions of ill and dead people worldwide is tough to wrap one's mind around. It's almost inconceivable.

Don't ever take a virology class if you want to ever again get a good night's sleep.

by Anonymousreply 78January 8, 2013 2:31 PM

[quote][R61]Why must you 'mos always bring oral or anal or scat or urine into every discussion?

You are an idiot. Even google won't help you.

by Anonymousreply 79January 8, 2013 2:33 PM

[quote]"Patient Zero has been debunked" How has it been "debunked?"

Read R50 again.

by Anonymousreply 80January 8, 2013 3:05 PM

Degas' behavior helped illustrate how the virus was being passed over distance, and as noted above, he was the "zero" in many clusters, but the general public had taken that to mean he brought the virus to the US, whereas Shilts, on his very first page, says it could have been the Bicentennial.

With so many of the early victims being sailors who had been to Africa, MDs who had been to Africa, and laborers who had been to Africa, taking sailors as a likely cause for many of the early cases is not far fetched.

by Anonymousreply 81January 8, 2013 3:11 PM

[quote]Shilts, on his very first page, says it could have been the Bicentennial.

Shilts's discussion was premised on his observation that the Bicentennial year was the last that his friends recalled that everyone they knew was healthy. Correlation is not causality.

I can't believe we are still giving credence to theories in a book published in 1987.

1987! As in 26 years ago. As in six years after AIDS started appearing.

Literally billions have been spent on research into HIV's origin and spread since then. Do some reading. Educate yourselves. The ignorance being expressed on this thread is depressing.

by Anonymousreply 82January 8, 2013 3:20 PM

Again, the CDC dubbed him "Patient Zero". It didn't mean he brought it to the US. It means that he provided a link between the outbreaks of a then unknown disease in several cities. Shilts made no claim beyond that. The focus on him in the book was a way to link the stories between the NY, LA and SF cases and as an example of the kind of promiscuity that a lot of people were engaging in. If you read the book, he also details the stories of others much less promiscuous who still got it. r75 has basically stated it correctly but leaves the impression that he personally infected a lot of people. It only takes a few of the right people to have it grow exponentially, as VOTN points out.

by Anonymousreply 83January 8, 2013 3:25 PM

Seriously, were urban gay men really that much more promiscuous than their urban straight counterparts in the 70s? My uncle came of age in the '70s. He was straight out of Saturday Night Fever, and according to him was fucking one chick after another. It was just the time...the sexual revoluation was in full swing for gay and straight men, especially those living in big cities. It could've easily exploded in the straight world as it did in the gay world, if not for the fact that it just happened to have started with a gay man. Luck of the draw, I suppose.

by Anonymousreply 84January 8, 2013 3:31 PM

The CDC did not dub him Patient Zero. They called him Patient O, as in "Out of California."

Shilts misinterpreted this in his early reporting, the (homophobic) mainstream media ran with it, and it's evolved into apocrypha at the expense of later discoveries.

Again, you kids need to do some reading.

by Anonymousreply 85January 8, 2013 3:33 PM

They tried to make it "Straights can get it too" but it wasn't that sort of virus. It needed direct access to the bloodstream -- something not often seen in straight sex.

by Anonymousreply 86January 8, 2013 3:35 PM

r82 - I don't understand your post. You quote "Shilts, on his very first page, says it could have been the Bicentennial." and then state that "correlation is not causality." Very true, but that's a non sequitur.

His account is a very accurate chronicle of what was happening during those six years. The reporting of the politics of federal agencies, cities, the gay community etc was contemporaneous and spot on.

What theories stated in the book are not credible? You are correct that there is a lot of ignorance in this thread, but it's not from them book.

by Anonymousreply 87January 8, 2013 3:38 PM

[quote]The CDC did not dub him Patient Zero. They called him Patient O, as in "Out of California."

No. It's Patient 0, as in "zero". If you're reading the wiki article, that's a zero, not an "O".

by Anonymousreply 88January 8, 2013 3:41 PM

[quote] They tried to make it "Straights can get it too" but it wasn't that sort of virus. It needed direct access to the bloodstream -- something not often seen in straight sex.

Please go and spread your wisdom in places like Botswana and Swaziland where every third adult is HIV+. I am sure they will be delighted to learn they couldn't possibly have it since the virus is only being spread among gay men. Or, perhaps, those places are hotbeds of promiscuous gay sex and I just wasn't aware of that.

by Anonymousreply 89January 8, 2013 3:42 PM

[R41] Though it was a slow start I think ... the government did a pretty good job in containing it.

That statement made my tainted blood boil.

by Anonymousreply 90January 8, 2013 3:42 PM

The Shilts haters are right on schedule. To many of us it was pretty clear that the bathhouses were spreading AIDS. Any suggestion of that was cause for great uproar. First the baths, then the bars etc. Sides were drawn. Shilts was right, the baths were AIDS dispensaries.

by Anonymousreply 91January 8, 2013 3:42 PM

AIDS is spreading among heterosexuals in Africa for several reasons, including:

Ritual female circumcision and genital injury, which causes a direct route for semen into the bloodstream, and exposes their partners to blood;

The fact that most men are uncircumcised. Foreskin is relatively fragile tissue that allows for fluid absorption during intercourse, and also traps fluid afterward;

Untreated STDs, which create genital injury and more pathways for disease transmission;

More exposure to blood in general, from the sharing of razors to tribal rites that involve blood.

by Anonymousreply 92January 8, 2013 3:51 PM

[quote]Please go and spread your wisdom in places like Botswana and Swaziland where every third adult is HIV+. I am sure they will be delighted to learn they couldn't possibly have it since the virus is only being spread among gay men.

For Mr Spoiling for a Fight r89, let me pat your angry little pee pee in the way you mother always does and alter r86 to say: "something not often seen in straight WESTERN sex."

by Anonymousreply 93January 8, 2013 4:05 PM

Any personal observations pinpointing when your friends first began to become ill? Sorry if this is too painful for some of you to discuss, but this era of gay history fascinates me. I was still a little queerling when AIDS came on the scene and was never as personally affected as those guys on the front lines in the early days.

by Anonymousreply 94January 8, 2013 4:16 PM

Where do any epidemics come from? Where did smallpox originate? What about typhus? Cholera? We know how they are spread. We know hygiene has something to do with some disease. We know some diseases are more prevalent in certain parts of the world. Do we know where they started?

Who cares?

As long as you know what the disease is, how it is spread, how to avoid spreading it and what may possibly treat it, you're good. What difference does it make if it escaped from a monkey population? They used to think influenza came fom the alignment of the stars. Then they thought it came from swine. Now they say it comes from birds. What are we going to do, kill all the birds? Kill all the monkeys, all the cows, all the Haitians, all the sailors, all the gays, all the prostitutes, all the carriers of hemophilia and hepatitis?

by Anonymousreply 95January 8, 2013 4:51 PM

R66: I recall that those blood samples were frozen and retested in the '80's. Based on the samples, results showed that upwards of 4% of the gay men in SF had been exposed to HIV in 1978.

The "O" in Patient Zero does stand for "out" (of California), not the numeral Zero. Bill Darrow, the epidemiologist quoted by Shilts later admitted his mistake in referencing this.

by Anonymousreply 96January 8, 2013 4:55 PM

All the dentists?

by Anonymousreply 97January 8, 2013 4:56 PM

[quote]Then they thought it came from swine. Now they say it comes from birds

That's not what is meant when things are called swine flu or avian flu.

by Anonymousreply 98January 8, 2013 5:00 PM

hmmm let's see how many of those 1000 who got Hepatitis B vaccinations in New York City in 1978 ended up with AIDS.

oh yeah that's right DOJ has those figures, for some reason it is considered a national security issue and they wont tell us

by Anonymousreply 99January 8, 2013 5:05 PM

From 1981:

"A controlled, randomized, double-blind trial in 1,083 homosexual men from New York confirmed that a highly purified, formalin-inactivated vaccine against hepatitis B prepared from HBsAg positive plasma, is safe immunogenic, and highly efficacious. Over 95% of vaccinated subjects developed antibody against the surface antigen. Vaccine-induced antibody persisted for the entire 24-month follow-up period. The attack rate of all hepatitis B virus infections (excluding conversions of anti-HBc alone) was 3.2% in vaccine recipients compared with 25.6% in placebo recipients (p less than 0.0001). In those who received all three doses of vaccine, of 40 micrograms each, the protective efficacy rate was close to 100%. The vaccine protects against acute hepatitis B, asymptomatic infection, and chronic antigenemia. There is reason to assume that the vaccine is also partially effective when given postexposure."

lol I bet it was successful

by Anonymousreply 100January 8, 2013 5:10 PM

[quote]Based on the samples, results showed that upwards of 4% of the gay men in SF had been exposed to HIV in 1978.

And among those who participated in the '78 hepatitis vaccine trials in NYC, the number was around 20%.

by Anonymousreply 101January 8, 2013 5:10 PM

prove it r101

by Anonymousreply 102January 8, 2013 5:11 PM

"Foreskin is relatively fragile tissue that allows for fluid absorption during intercourse, and also traps fluid afterward"

R82 is correct. Also, foreskin has extra glands - some of which make the infamous lubricant (the greatest component of the odor and taste we all love) and others which have extra white blood cells and other immunological agents (Langerhans cells). The latter facilitates infection, since HIV co-opts the immune system.

by Anonymousreply 103January 8, 2013 5:11 PM

Whatever happened to the doctor who Matthew Modine played in the movie?

by Anonymousreply 104January 8, 2013 5:12 PM

of course the rate in Africa is high, they injected MILLIONS of blacks with HIV through vaccinations

by Anonymousreply 105January 8, 2013 5:14 PM

the easiest way you can tell that HIV/AIDS in Africa was a sudden event/onslaught is the fact that AIDS in Africa not only was unknown but DIDNT exist in the 1970's. The first cases of AIDS in nearly all african countries didnt occur until the early to mid 1980's

by Anonymousreply 106January 8, 2013 5:15 PM

[quote]Whatever happened to the doctor who Matthew Modine played in the movie?

Don Francis started a biotech company called VaxGen that made unsuccessful clinical trials of an HIV vaccine called AIDSVAX (I think a few posters here were part of the trial). VaxGen got bought out by another company, and he left.

by Anonymousreply 107January 8, 2013 5:21 PM

Whatever became of ebola? Did it come and go? For a while there we were terrorized with news reports of Africans bleeding from their eyeballs.

Did it just stop, mutate, or is it being ignored?

by Anonymousreply 108January 8, 2013 5:25 PM

There's an on-going Ebola outbreak in Uganda.

It pops up every few years in Central Africa.

by Anonymousreply 109January 8, 2013 5:28 PM

Thank you R109, what is your understanding of that virus?

by Anonymousreply 110January 8, 2013 5:30 PM

"In 1969, when this all began, a Russian trained doctor Wolf Szmuness, was appointed the head of the New York City blood bank the world's largest blood bank. Keep in mind that he was a communist doctor and it was the middle of the Cold War. In 1978 Szmuness started recruiting young, white, gay and homosexual men for an experimental hepatitis B vaccine program. In order to participate the men had to be under age 40, which you will see why this is important in a minute, and they had to be in good health and have no previous exposure to hepatitis B. In the first study conducted in New York City 10,000 gay and bisexual men were recruited. By the end of the study in 1984, 56% of these test subjects had full blown AIDS. This is important because when conducting trials test subjects are divided in to two groups. Roughly half of test subjects are kept as controls while the other half receive the test substance, which explains why only 56% of the men had developed AIDS. Two larger tests were conducted at Los Angeles and San Francisco in 1980, and several smaller tests in St. Louis, Miami, and Denver. Note that every single original case of AIDS in the US were in participants of these vaccine programs and all of these cities were the original AIDS “hot spots” These facts were pointed out in several articles published in the medical journal Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

Another interesting fact that can also be verified with a little research is that the men recruited for the experimental hepatitis vaccines had to be under the age of 40 to participate. And according to the ORIGINAL definition of AIDS set by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the CDC claimed that a person could not have AIDS if they were over the age of 40. Kind of interesting that they would say this being that they supposedly did not know much of anything about AIDS when it first appeared. "

by Anonymousreply 111January 8, 2013 5:31 PM

If Aids is spread easily through female genital mutilation, which I believe is true, than how come Arab Muslim women are not dying of Aids en masse?

I know they mostly die of breast cancer due to they're wearing burkas and not getting any sunlight on their bodies (no vitamin D) but they are subject to torn vaginal tissue like African women as well.

by Anonymousreply 112January 8, 2013 5:33 PM

Arab (Muslim) men are almost always circumcised, R112. Perhaps that had something to do with the lower rates for Arab women, as opposed to Sub-Sarahan women.

by Anonymousreply 113January 8, 2013 5:38 PM

Gorillas don't eat monkeys, but chimpanzees hunt and eat monkeys, and chimps and other primates are routinely hunted and eaten by humans. And, not to be racist about it, since cannibalism does happen occasionally throughout various human populations, but sub-Saharan Africa is sort of known for it.

by Anonymousreply 114January 8, 2013 5:39 PM

then again Arab muslims never allowed the West to give them vaccinations en masse, they arent stupid like the Africans

by Anonymousreply 115January 8, 2013 5:43 PM

[quote]Thank you [R109], what is your understanding of that virus?

Like HIV, it spreads through fluid contact. As it occurs naturally, it's not something you can catch by inhalation. It's thought that bats are carriers, and they serve as reservoirs--which actually makes sense, because it's the same class of virus as rabies. Generally, with proper sanitation and hygiene, it's hard to get an outbreak, but when you get into remote villages in Africa, it gets dicey.

by Anonymousreply 116January 8, 2013 5:46 PM

"Cruising" was sort of revolutionary in that it (along with the more mainstream Village People) promoted the mainstream image of gay men as handsome, physically powerful, and unashamed of their sexuality. It exchanged the stereotype of the furtive, effeminate ectomorph with the guy in the leather cap and handlebar mustache. Whether or not that was an improvement I don't know.

by Anonymousreply 117January 8, 2013 5:50 PM

Thanks R116, and lest we never forget the dangers of rabies. It still a killer in many countries, and was lethal in America not that long ago.

Rabies was the scourge of mankind for centuries.

by Anonymousreply 118January 8, 2013 5:50 PM

Sorry about the childish epithet posted by a bigoted tool. I WAS talking about obsolete cultural stereotypes, though, not my own personal convictions, SHEESH.

by Anonymousreply 119January 8, 2013 5:52 PM

Does anyone know what percent of the gay population in NYC in the 80s died of AIDS?

by Anonymousreply 120January 8, 2013 5:53 PM

[quote]Thanks [R116], and lest we never forget the dangers of rabies. It still a killer in many countries, and was lethal in America not that long ago.

It's still lethal in the US if untreated.

Even though I don't work in a vets office or often get bitten by bats, I have an irrational fear of rabies. In all of human history, there are only 8 people known to have survived an untreated rabies infection.

by Anonymousreply 121January 8, 2013 5:57 PM

Wasn't untreated rabies the reason some people were considered possessed by devils in the bible?

And yes, I have read that maybe one or two people still die in America each year from rabies, and they are usually old men loner- types who live in the Ozarks and such.

I think about the Emily Rose Exorcism case and it looks like a rabies condition to me. They were rural people but at some point a doctor would have checked her out, no?

Rabies, animal bites and parasitic worms have kept me from devoting myself to dog and cat activism. I love the animals so much but can't afford to get sick.

by Anonymousreply 122January 8, 2013 6:12 PM

R120: in San Francisco, approximately 20,000 died of AIDS. I don;t know what percentage of the gay population that is (terrible at math).

I read that approximately 100,000 New Yorkers (all boroughs) died of AIDS (through the '90's).

by Anonymousreply 123January 8, 2013 6:51 PM

Rabies is almost always fatal. There have been less than ten cases in the entire history of the world where someone got it and didn't die. And of those they all survived with massive amounts of brain problems afterwards.

by Anonymousreply 124January 8, 2013 6:51 PM

Further to r123's point, something that many fail to recognize is the number of deaths is easily comparable to any of the major wars of the last century. When you consider that most of these deaths were concentrated in the small gay community, it's a wonder we're not all a lot more damaged than we are. It sometimes feels like I have lived through some kind of war.

by Anonymousreply 125January 8, 2013 7:09 PM

duh it was a war, they declared war on blacks and gays

by Anonymousreply 126January 8, 2013 7:25 PM

I distinctly remember someone telling me about a friend, who had "the gay cancer" in Greenwich Village in 1974.

by Anonymousreply 127January 8, 2013 7:32 PM

Is William Friedkin gay/bi? He directed "Boys in the Band" and "Cruising" at a time when other straight directors wouldn't have gone near them. And I know he's a huge Streisand fan. Maybe he and Sherry Lansing have some kind of arrangement.

by Anonymousreply 128January 8, 2013 7:34 PM

Wasn't there some gossip being bandied about while Lansing was head of Fox that she was so cheap she stole toilet paper rolls from ladies restrooms?

by Anonymousreply 129January 8, 2013 7:56 PM

I remember someone referring to AIDS as WOGS - Wrath of the Gods.

by Anonymousreply 130January 8, 2013 7:57 PM

Was Lansing the beginning of the end for the Fox legacy of finer film or did she ever give us some real gems?

by Anonymousreply 131January 8, 2013 8:02 PM

I remember Sherry Lansing having no toilet paper in her stall and I myself, had to wipe my ass with a ten dollar bill. Upon announcing my fate, Sherry asked if I could change a ten with two fives.

by Anonymousreply 132January 8, 2013 8:04 PM

All the early cases have been debunked as laboratory contamination or other diseases involving reduced immunity - except for the Norwegian sailor and his wife. He actually first got sick in 1964. The first death that seemed to be related to the general outbreak was of a Danish lesbian NGO worker in the Congo in 1977. There were instances of mass death from wasting diseases affecting humans such as at a Congo chimp research station in 1957, but there were no recorded mass outbreaks in central Africa before the mass outbreak of HIV in New York City beginning in 1978 after the Hepatitis B vaccine trials, which were then rolled out to six other cities. Indeed, it appears that South Africa, not Central Africa, was the primary disease vector in Africa. It was also in Southern Africa that the Haitian and Cuban mercenaries probably picked it up.

In the Hep B trial, the cohort were to be sexually active gay men ONLY. The program was run by Polish Jew who had been interred in a Soviet gulag and was received help defecting from the Polish cardinal who later became pope. How he got to be head of the New York City blood bank in just a few years has never really been explained. He died of cancer in 1982, but he had already been given a festive welcome back in the Soviet Union, an honor not otherwise accorded to recent defectors in the Brezhnev era.

Computer modelling of HIV's variability, to try to take in back to the 1930s or earlier is not science but fantasy.

The irreducible fact is that in 1969 the US government asked for $10 million to create a virus attacking the immune system, and they were given the money. They estimated it could be up and running in 10 years. I don't know why there is such a hysterical need on this board to pretend that this isn't the likeliest explanation for what happened (or that it was done by an enemy of the U.S. working on their own program). You all just seem kind of dumb.

by Anonymousreply 133January 8, 2013 8:11 PM

Cheryl is now stealing from Tallulah.

by Anonymousreply 134January 8, 2013 8:11 PM

R133: The federal government is incapable of keeping anything secret.

by Anonymousreply 135January 8, 2013 8:13 PM

r106 that is untrue.

Even professionals who are proponents of a relatively recent origin, i.e., spillover/mutation from SIVcpz to humans acknowledge that upheaval and colonial rule make it impossible to be definitive.

Even with phylogenetics, there are still huge gaps in the record.

by Anonymousreply 136January 8, 2013 8:15 PM

1.) I went to work at NYU medical center in 1985. We were made to understand that if we did not get the Hep B vaccine, we would not get off probation. NYU developed the Hep B vaccine from primarily gay men in the village and in 1985, the vaccine was live. We were injected with live virus three times. If we showed fear we were asked, "Do you want to work here or not? It's up to you." I had moved to NYC and had my housing through NYUMC. It was at the end if orientation that they started injecting us. After orientation we were on probation for 3 to 5 months.

If I lived in NYC I would have said no. But I was a new arrival; didn't know anyone or anything. Was broke after college. Poor family. I needed a job and a place to live. So I got the live Hep B virus three times.

2.) Rabies could be greatly reduced with bait programs. They have been used in Europe and have helped bring down the number of rabid raccoons, dogs etc. Drop baits with tje vaccine in it over forests and known areas.

3.) Largest carrier of rabies in the US today? Kitty cats.

by Anonymousreply 137January 8, 2013 8:18 PM

R133 If you understood anything about biology and science, you would understand how stupid the "goverment created AIDS" meme is.

by Anonymousreply 138January 8, 2013 8:21 PM

R135 is just an idiot.

The federal government of the US keeps secets successfully for decades.

by Anonymousreply 139January 8, 2013 8:26 PM

R139 Really? Name some. Seriously. Lets hear what "secrets" the government kept for years.

by Anonymousreply 140January 8, 2013 8:29 PM

Radiation sprayed on local income housing.

Offsite Link
by Anonymousreply 141January 8, 2013 8:34 PM

Yes, R139, I'd love to hear more.

by Anonymousreply 142January 8, 2013 8:40 PM

Can someone define "secrets" to r140 ? Please?

by Anonymousreply 143January 8, 2013 8:42 PM

Forget the Catholic Church and the damages claims from abuse victims, can you imagine how much would be at stake if it could ever be proved that the AIDS virus was in fact produced by the U.S. Army and knowingly introduced into the gay and black communities?

It created a global holocaust on a scale even bigger than the Nazis. The "Mengeles" and "Himmlers" responsible for it would be hunted to their graves and the U.S. Treasury would be bankrupted trying to make reparation.

by Anonymousreply 144January 8, 2013 8:46 PM

R133's post is somewhat compelling. The complete lack of any backup citations plus the name-calling really weakens it though.

There was that Tuskegee thing where black men were intentionally infected with syphilis and left untreated in order to study the disease. If AIDS is a latter-day manifestation of that kind of governmental hate-crime, then some bitches better start researching and making a legal case.

by Anonymousreply 145January 8, 2013 8:46 PM

If you look at it like a statistics/math problem, the idea of pinpointing exactly when the epidemic arrived on US soil is absurd.

Some of the sexually active gay men in the mid to late 1970s who ended up with AIDS, had thousands of sex partners. Thousands. Some of them were internationally well traveled. So, sure it could have started on US soil via the Bicentennial sailors convention. Or it could have been some gay guy named Francois or Dave or Miguel or Vanos or whatever, who brought it here 1:1 from wherever he got it from, and then he barebacked 200 men in the following year and 20 of them seroconverted, and those 20 men barebacked a total of 2000 men in the following year and 200 of them seroconverted, and they barebacked 20000 men in the following year and 2000 of them seroconverted.

by Anonymousreply 146January 8, 2013 8:47 PM

Jesus R141. That's chilling. I wish it were more surprising. The government can absolutely keep a secret. Look at all that Operation Northwoods shit. They don't love us, they aren't even indifferent to us. They look at us as farmer looks at his cows. Sell 'em at auction if they start costing you too much money.

by Anonymousreply 147January 8, 2013 8:47 PM

It's likely no coincidence that Lyme disease came from Southern Connecticut just opposite the military's animal disease research station.

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by Anonymousreply 148January 8, 2013 8:47 PM

Are you all implying intent or just a major fuck up in the NYC Hep B vaccine situation? It sure seems like rounding up sexually active gay men to harvest blood products for vaccines could certainly have introduced HIV into the distribution, but I get the impression that some want to say it was either added or somehow introduced to the gay men.

I'd say that was absurd except for the introduction of LSD to unknowing victims that we know happened in the sixties.

by Anonymousreply 149January 8, 2013 8:51 PM

Still waiting to hear about all these secrets the government has been keeping from us. So far the only thing that has been presented are links to one article that clearly say there is no proof to back up the claim.

by Anonymousreply 150January 8, 2013 8:54 PM

Tests on army and civilian unwitting people were routine.

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by Anonymousreply 151January 8, 2013 8:57 PM

The Tuskegee syphillis experiment was kept secret for forty years.

by Anonymousreply 152January 8, 2013 8:57 PM

A link on the HIV issue

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by Anonymousreply 153January 8, 2013 9:02 PM

R150 is a fucking idiot. Here are some documents about secret illegal programs the government has been running.

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by Anonymousreply 154January 8, 2013 9:06 PM

Look at the religious nuts who still inhabit the government. They still call AIDS a punishment from God. Remember when Reagan's press secretary LAUGHED when asked about AIDS for the first time? He laughed and said "I don't have AIDS, hahaha Do you? Hahahaha"

by Anonymousreply 155January 8, 2013 9:12 PM

Since 2001 the US military has spent $60 BILLION on "biodefense." They say they have "nothing to show for it," which means either the money was stolen or they have created offensive bioterror weapons of amazing power that they now want to hide.

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by Anonymousreply 156January 8, 2013 9:16 PM

Subway testing, done with live bacteria in the 1950's, is back!

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by Anonymousreply 157January 8, 2013 9:17 PM

This article is the best link yet about unethical medical experimentation in the U.S.

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by Anonymousreply 158January 8, 2013 9:20 PM

One particularly disastrous experiment from that article:

"In 1955, the CIA conducted a biological warfare experiment where they released whooping cough bacteria from boats outside of Tampa Bay, Florida, causing a whooping cough epidemic in the city, and killing at least 12 people"

by Anonymousreply 159January 8, 2013 9:30 PM

So if the development of AIDS is a government conspiracy, why haven't whistleblowers come forward? Why isn't it an item in the article at R158?

Tens of thousands of military, researchers and government officials would know about such a program over the years. Many of them would have loved ones who were unintentionally killed by a manmade virus gone awry, or would have other reasons to be disgruntled with the government. Not one of them leaked the story to the press?

I don't buy it.

by Anonymousreply 160January 8, 2013 9:41 PM

R160 you're an idiot. None of these experiments required more than a few people to implement. Tens of thousands of people knew about the atomic bomb. A virus in a lab can be disseminated by about three people.

by Anonymousreply 161January 8, 2013 9:50 PM

Here's another heinous one from that same article

"In 1957, with funding from a CIA front organization, Dr. Ewan Cameron of the Allan Memorial Institute in Montreal, Canada began MKULTRA Subproject 68. His experiments were designed to first "depattern" individuals, erasing their minds and memories—reducing them to the mental level of an infant—and then to "rebuild" their personality in a manner of his choosing. To achieve this, Cameron placed patients under his "care" into drug-induced comas for up to 88 days, and applied numerous high voltage electric shocks to them over the course of weeks or months, often administering up to 360 shocks per person. He would then perform what he called "psychic driving" experiments on the subjects, where he would repetitively play recorded statements, such as "You are a good wife and mother and people enjoy your company", through speakers he had implanted into blacked-out football helmets that he bound to the heads of the test subjects (for sensory deprivation purposes). The patients could do nothing but listen to these messages, played for 16–20 hours a day, for weeks at a time. In one case, Cameron forced a person to listen to a message non-stop for 101 days. Using CIA funding, Cameron converted the horse stables behind Allen Memorial into an elaborate isolation and sensory deprivation chamber which he kept patients locked in for weeks at a time. Cameron also induced insulin comas in his subjects by giving them large injections of insulin, twice a day for up to two months at a time. Several of the children who Cameron experimented on were sexually abused, in at least one case by several men. One of the children was filmed numerous times performing sexual acts with high-ranking federal government officials, in a scheme set up by Cameron and other MKULTRA researchers, to blackmail the officials to ensure further funding for the experiments."

by Anonymousreply 162January 8, 2013 9:53 PM

Nothing has changed. Many medical Doctors are sadists and killers by nature.

"In August 2010, the U.S. weapons manufacturer Raytheon announced that it had partnered with a jail in Castaic, California in order to use prisoners as test subjects for a new non-lethal weapon system that "fires an invisible heat beam capable of causing unbearable pain"

by Anonymousreply 163January 8, 2013 9:55 PM

I'll say it again. A virus can change and mutate itself. People who put their theories out there need to be aware of this fact. Nobody is to blame. Nobody is out to exterminate a group of people.

A VIRUS IS CAPABLE OF MUTATING ITSELF

by Anonymousreply 164January 8, 2013 10:03 PM

There's a fascinating book about that one R162

by Anonymousreply 165January 8, 2013 10:03 PM

What R164 said.

And: If the military were planning to develop AIDS as a secret to be known only by "three people in a lab," military officials would not have TESTIFIED BEFORE CONGRESS about the plan and seeking funding for it, getting their comments published in the Congressional Record:

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by Anonymousreply 166January 8, 2013 10:14 PM

R162: Someone is burning in hell.

by Anonymousreply 167January 8, 2013 10:33 PM

Right R164. Do you remember when Zappa went on about AIDS being curated in a lab by the government? Like people don't know gays have slept with straight people especially back in the day. So tired of celebs and other people taking a platform to speak about such things. Any first year med student KNOWS a virus can change and mutate itself. There's no conspiracy theories regarding AIDS. People forget that straight people have relatives and friends who are gay. People blabbing on about gays have a gay ancestor down the line somewhere. Everyone is a product of a homosexual at some point. Everyone has an ancestor who was raised by a non-biological parent at some point. This reminds me of people who judge those who were adopted. At some point, in the last couple of hundred years they're from someone who was adopted. Just ignore these delusional people. They're holding us all back. Let's march on without them.

by Anonymousreply 168January 8, 2013 10:58 PM

[quote] A virus in a lab can be disseminated by about three people.

Not really. It's a hell of a lot harder to start a lethal epidemic than you think. Ask the Japanese who repeatedly bombed china with various plagues in WWII. Altogether only about 200,000 died and this included people who were directly killed by handing out poison candy, by water supplies that were deliberately contaminated, poisoned wells, agriculture sprayed with poison and bacteria and viruses; cities that were bombed with plague, smallpox, anthrax, botulism, cholera, dysentery. Contaminated clothing and food supplies were dropped throughout the countryside. Contaminated grenades were also use.

200,000 isn't a large number of Chinese for all the trouble the Japanese went to. We killed more Japanese in two bombing raids than Japan killed in China through countless attempts to sicken and poison the population from the air, ground and the water.

Take some epidemiology courses in college. When you look into real epidemics, you will see how so many factors are involved in creating an epidemic and how unpredictable things are.

by Anonymousreply 169January 8, 2013 11:01 PM

Whatever. After receiving the live hep b vax developed on gay men from the village in the late 70s/early 80s, I have neither Hep B nor HIV.

by Anonymousreply 170January 8, 2013 11:05 PM

YOU MEAN TO SAY THERE ARE SO MANY SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERIES AND THESE SHITS FOR SCIENTISTS C.A.N.N.O.T. FIND A CURE FOR THIS FUCKING DISEASE YET????????????? THE PHARMA JUST WANT TO HAVE SICK PEOPLE BUYING DRUGS THAT TAKE CARE OF THE SYMPTOMS AND NOT THE DISEASE TO KEEP THEM GETTING RICH!!!

by Anonymousreply 171January 9, 2013 12:14 AM

Your shouting aside, it's not easy to "cure" viral diseases, particularly one caused by a lentivirus like HIV. The best cure for a virus is a vaccine.

Most antiviral drugs work by interrupting the viral life cycle. That means that the person is still infected with the virus, but the development of new viral particles is arrested and the virus burns itself out. HIV's trick is that it inserts itself into the person's own DNA. Even on HAART therapy, a person still has infected cells, and in order to actually cause the infected cells to be cleared by the body, you'd have to design a drug that would selectively go after only the infected cells, leaving the uninfected ones alone. Otherwise, you're just going to end up causing the condition you're trying to prevent.

by Anonymousreply 172January 9, 2013 12:35 AM

Viruses can and do mutate by themselves. But at no period in history have we seen a comparable cascade of new viruses. True, the world is more populous and connected than before, but the biggest change is the global biological arms race, dwarfing other factors into insignificance.

by Anonymousreply 173January 9, 2013 12:44 AM

You made no reaction to the number - $60 billion - that has been spent in the last decade by the USA on biowar "defense." You do realize that's probably as much as has been spent on HIV research in thirty years?

by Anonymousreply 174January 9, 2013 12:46 AM

[quote] But at no period in history have we seen a comparable cascade of new viruses.

Is that really so surprising? The life expectancy is longer than ever in history. We are no longer killed by natural predators (wolves, grizzly bears, malaria carrying mosquitos...) and we no longer die from stepping on rusty nails, blood infections from bad dental hygiene, famine, etc. Cancers are diagnosed earlier and many of them are treatable, as is heart disease. No population can increase beyond sustainable levels; we are due for some major epidemic.

by Anonymousreply 175January 9, 2013 1:14 AM

[quote]But at no period in history have we seen a comparable cascade of new viruses.

For most of history we didn't even know virus existed. That's like saying the moons of Jupiter aren't real because for most of our history we never saw them.

by Anonymousreply 176January 9, 2013 1:26 AM

dmn

by Anonymousreply 177January 9, 2013 8:38 AM

I remember there was an uproar when it was learned that he was HIV positive. It could have been when he died, which was apx six years after he wrote ATBPO. I know he did another book about gays in the military just a few years after, so it seemed he was in hurry to get work out, and didn't want to say why.

by Anonymousreply 178January 9, 2013 11:19 AM

I believe the federal gov't can do things that are detrimental, that they can be stupid, and the Tuskegee experiments are deplorable and shameful.

But I do not believe the U.S. gov't deliberately, and with malice and forethought developed the AIDS virus and/or caused it to be injected and spread thru a specific population. That is just nonsense. They may have inadvertently caused it's spread thru ignorance, but not deliberately.

If you want to hold the federal gov't to account, lets look at the hundreds of thousands, the millions who died of AIDS in America and the fact that our gov't did nothing to research the spread of the disease nor commit resources towards a cure.

Ronald Reagan couldn't even say the name of it. Our behavior was despicable and disgraceful in the 80's & for a large part of the 90's. That,IMO, is where the culpability lies.

When you look at how people were treated, police and EMS workers who refused to assist, nurses and doctors who refused to treat. We went thru hell.Even in restaurants and bars, wait staff treated us like we were vermin. Literally. Anyone who was gay was considered a plague carrier.

The lack of information and the criminal stupidity and negligence is where I zero in on the federal gov't. I don't need any cooked up conspiracy theories complete with Russians spies and communists. Sheesh.

by Anonymousreply 179January 9, 2013 12:31 PM

"cooked up"? Not cooked up. They asked for money to develop a virus that attacks immunity and they were given the money. That's not a theory, that's a fact. The only question is if they ever did it or if HIV coincidentally came along in the same time frame. What part of that don't you believe?

by Anonymousreply 180January 9, 2013 12:45 PM

So I guess Shilts is alluding to gay men starting to get sick from 1977 onward.. It would be interesting to verify this with people who were in NYC, SF, LA then. Were people coming down with mysterious ailments and illnesses around '77 - 80?

by Anonymousreply 181April 25, 2014 2:35 AM

R181, see R13.

by Anonymousreply 182April 25, 2014 3:05 AM

[all posts by tedious, racist idiot removed.]

by Anonymousreply 183April 25, 2014 3:11 AM

Why all the nit picking against Shilts and his book?

by Anonymousreply 184April 26, 2014 4:07 AM

Didn't have time to re-read all the threads & note each post #, but I'm going to try to add my 2 cents on a few items noted upthread...

I think this is one of the most interesting & intelligent threads I've ever seen on DL.

I fully concur that the epidemic started several years before the "official" 1981 recognition by the US gov't.

There were young gay men dying in NYC of inexplicable "cancers" & "pneumonias" in the late 70s. I know, I was there, I saw it. A friend who was only in his early 20s at the time, got a bad fever & then pneumonia & was dead within a week. The hospital told his family that they had no idea what killed him, as he died so quickly . This was 1979. Within the next 2 yrs, several other acquaintances (all gay men), also died of similar mysterious & quick infections.

I know it was 1979 b/c in 1980, I moved out of the US & I was already aware that "something" was going on. I was glad to be getting far away from it. Silly in retrospect, but at the time, no one knew anything but rumor. We were told it was feasible we could get "it" from mosquito bites, someone else's sweat, or poppers.

While the Bicentennial theory is plausible, I'm not sure anyone can provide proof of that connection, 35+ yrs later. But I admit, it's a very interesting theory & would have been a vector for a foreign, primarily sexually-transmitted virus to access NYC's gay population, when they met up with a zillion horny, foreign sailors.

I'm much more inclined to believe the Hep B vaccine as a seminal event in the rapid spread of HIV in the late 70s/early 80s. Several posters upthread have the right reasons as to why. My personal reasons to believe it, come from first-hand knowledge.

A number of the major NYC bars & dance clubs at that time, actually hosted medical personnel to set up booths & "outreach" to convince gay men to get vaccinated.

I very clearly remember this happening at the Ice Palace on 57th St, as I spoke to one of the staff. Knowing that the vaccine came from the blood of gay men, I declined. I know many ppl who did not & almost all of them died at least 25 yrs ago.

An upthread post displays the verbatim report at the time. Obviously, no one was looking to screen that blood for HIV, so I'd find it hard to believe that the serum used for Hep B, was not tainted & then passed by vaccination, to many thousands of unknowing participants.

by Anonymousreply 185April 26, 2014 1:53 PM

R185, maybe it's the fact that I never took the Hep B vaccine that saved my life. I lived in Portland, OR, during the time you describe, after having lived in NY and LA since 1975. I remember sitting in my Portland living room, talking with a NY friend during the Reagan assasination attempt TV blackout (March 30, 1981), and he told me about friends who had parasites, which I'd heard of before, but which he now called CGDs ("Chic Gay Diseases").

One of the guys he was talking about died before I moved back to NY later in 1981.

I found out in 1993 that I'd been exposed to Hep B, but I've never been hepatitis-symptomatic. I've never been HIV+, either, in spite of doing everything you needed to do, during just the right time, frequently and with great vigor. I've survived most people I knew. I no longer have a single friend born in my year.

I never talked about the Hep B virus with any of them. AFAIK, I am now hearing about that for the first time as a causal factor in AIDS.

by Anonymousreply 186April 26, 2014 2:48 PM

1976, while not a reliable date for when the virus entered, is a good indicator of when the virus gained a reasonable and irreversable foothold. The best piece of evidence regarding virus spread is found in the samples takes for a hep b study. Later analysis of the samples showed that in 79 10% of the participants were already harbouring the virus.

It is to be noted, that 10 year disease progression is an average. 10% of people develop aids after less than 5 years after infection. In the context of very few cases being reported before 81 and exponentially more afterwards, 1976 would appear plausible for virus establishment. But it is unrealistic to link it to any one event.

by Anonymousreply 187May 18, 2014 3:53 PM

*Continuing I am half way through in reading Shilts's book and I think he is pretty unassuming. He never describes Patient 0 as the man to bring HIV to the States. Patient 0 is significant because he is at the center of the cluster study, connecting all AIDS sufferers.

The 1976 Bicentennial is described more as a possible gateway than a definite one. And there is an element of truth in linking it to the onset of HIV, since undoubtedly, it does show a way the virus could have traveled, as does the Patient 0 case.

by Anonymousreply 188May 18, 2014 4:34 PM

He talked about the Bicentennial, but said nothing about 1982 and the first Gay Games (disallowed from being called "The Gay Olympics" by the efforts of the USOC and the Kennedy Family's "Special Olympics) where no one was being careful...

by Anonymousreply 189May 18, 2014 5:28 PM

The first documented case in the US was 1978, there have been none before that have not been debunked. Shilt's "theory" was a whim, not based on any facts. The notion that HIV started in the 1930s is also based on ridiculous extrapolations and junk science. HIV, like almost every other disease to break into human populations in the last fifty years, was made in a lab. It may have relatives in nature, but every single country on earth is running a biological weapons program. Even, I daresay, Costa Rica.

by Anonymousreply 190May 18, 2014 7:05 PM

I took the first Hep B vaccine. But then I read it was only 30% effective and I needed a second to get it to 50% effective. And on top of that it may have been the source of the HIV epidemic. So I said, to hell with this. These fucking doctors don't know 5% of what they pretend to know.

by Anonymousreply 191May 18, 2014 7:09 PM

A friend of mine is in Israel now and will be flying home soon to the US. I've been reading about the MERS virus and the quarantines at the US airports. Since I was around during the early AIDS crisis, this scenario is giving me the creeps. My gut reaction is to stay away from my friend once he gets here until I know he's not sick.

by Anonymousreply 192May 18, 2014 7:23 PM

Did Arvid Noe sleep with African prostitutes?

by Anonymousreply 193May 18, 2014 7:50 PM

[all posts by tedious, racist idiot removed.]

by Anonymousreply 194May 18, 2014 7:53 PM

AIDS has existed for millennia in Africa. Air travel caused it to spread, first to Haiti in 1959, and then into the United States in 1969.

THe 1969 patient-zero infected two friends, then THEY infected two friends...

by Anonymousreply 195May 18, 2014 8:09 PM

Nonsense R195. Complete ignorance of how the world works.

by Anonymousreply 196May 18, 2014 8:22 PM

HIV latency period habitually overstated in the American press.

Offsite Link
by Anonymousreply 197May 18, 2014 8:23 PM

[quote]He talked about the Bicentennial, but said nothing about 1982 and the first Gay Games (disallowed from being called "The Gay Olympics" by the efforts of the USOC and the Kennedy Family's "Special Olympics) where no one was being careful...

???

AIDS was a1ready spreading throughout the US well before 1982.

WTF are you talking about???

by Anonymousreply 198May 18, 2014 8:26 PM

Incubation period 1-6 months.

Progression to AIDS can take years but there would be symptoms.

Offsite Link
by Anonymousreply 199May 18, 2014 8:28 PM

I'd like to see some debunking of the pre-1978 AIDS cases. I don't generally subscribe to conspiracy theories, so I tend to believe HIV predated the vaccine program and was not created in a lab. But I'm open to evidence.

by Anonymousreply 200May 18, 2014 8:29 PM

R192, I did not know about the quarantines at the airports.

I know that the pilgrimage to Mecca is about to happen soon--will there be huge quarantines for people coming home to their countries?

by Anonymousreply 201May 18, 2014 8:34 PM

[post redacted because independent.co.uk thinks that links to their ridiculous rag are a bad thing. Somebody might want to tell them how the internet works. Or not. We don't really care. They do suck though. Our advice is that you should not click on the link and whatever you do, don't read their truly terrible articles.]

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by Anonymousreply 202May 18, 2014 8:46 PM

I am open to the argument that HIV was in part lab created. It is just too perfect, considering all that was happening in the 20th century and all the groups involved. Look at the world that existed since 1945, esp. the '50s and 60s. Society was changing with great rapidity. The old powers that be-religious, social, government, military- were losing their place.A cold war was on full force. There was a strong desire to discredit or even destroy the forces of change. Don't just brush this off as conspiracy theories. Just look at the government programs to break up groups such as the Black Panthers, discredit the Hippy/youth movement, Communists and so forth. There was also drug testing (LSD) on people without their knowledge at this time. Whatever happened to the old Nazis and scientists who fled the Soviet Union? I believe they were employed to develop a disease to eradicate groups they didn't like, perhaps for use in a Cold War battel, perhaps to eliminate "undesirables".

It makes sense that they would unleash a disease into Africa, in order to depopulate the continent. Just look at the mineral and natural wealth the continent holds! You think "they" are going to just give up their hold on THAT? HA! Sound too far-fetched? Consider the American involvement in Central America and the Mid-East, and the European history of colonization in Africa.

Consider the groups that were most affected: Gays, drug addicts, minorities. These groups were surely seen as not mattering and not anyone who would matter. The problem got out of hand when they refused to consider that the disease could and would spread to the straight community and their drug-using children.

And Yes, I believe the government could indeed keep such a thing quiet, but not for long. They never figured on the Internet. We were stranded before the 'net.

by Anonymousreply 203May 18, 2014 8:58 PM

Both Dr. Grethe Rask, the Danish lesbian who died in 1977, and RObert Rayford, the black St. Louis teenager who died in 1969, tested NEGATIVE for HIV on the ELISA test. It is only later tests some of which tested positive, others negative, after biowar theories originated, giving people a vested interest in finding early cases. There is only one other case, the family of a Norwegian sailor who died in 1976.

You can see how highly implausible it is that Robert R. who never traveled outside St. Louis, would be the only case appearing in the USA from 1976 to 1979, and that only two other examples would be found in Europe - one of them a LESBIAN, surely the lowest risk population in the world.

The whole notion that HIV predates 1978 is based on these cases. The whole justification for taking the mutation rate and assuming it happens at a constant rate going back in time is based on acceptance of these cases. And yet we know from the Manchester sailor how easily the results are corrupted.

by Anonymousreply 204May 18, 2014 8:59 PM

And to add to what I just wrote regarding the creation of HIV, I believe they found a disease that existed in the wild and then cultivated it for use in "vaccines" and such.

by Anonymousreply 205May 18, 2014 9:01 PM

R192: I have not heard nor read of any US airport quarantines, so please provide links or direct us to credible sites to read that for ourselves.

I don't think your friend arriving from Israel would have anything to worry about - MERS has so far been identified as originating in Saudi Arabia & SA & Israel do not have direct air contacts (or ANY contacts) between them. Not likely a person would go to both countries & even less likely they'd come into contact with MERS.

by Anonymousreply 206May 18, 2014 9:02 PM

So what is going to happen to all of the Muslims coming back from Mecca?

Will they be tested for MERS, or quarantined at the airports.?

I've not heard a word about this, but I have heard that scientists are very worried about the more mild case of MERS and how that could easily spread into the population unnoticed, and it being a direct cousin of SARS.

by Anonymousreply 207May 18, 2014 9:06 PM

Grethe Rask died of AIDS.

Rayford, I'm a little dubious. It's possible there were other cases of AIDS back then that we just don't know about and the strain was less virulent, but it's a stretch.

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by Anonymousreply 208May 18, 2014 9:06 PM

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

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by Anonymousreply 209May 18, 2014 9:08 PM

I think AIDS has been around for centuries after having mutated many, many times.

I think it spread through Europe at one point as one of many unknown plagues.

by Anonymousreply 210May 18, 2014 9:09 PM

I repeat: Dr. Rask was a lesbian so at extremely low risk from HIV and her samples tested in 1984 showed no exposure. It was only in 1987 samples sent to the US tested positive, which is the same time Robert R. samples, also tested negative in 1984, were found to be positive. And yet we know if it was created in a lab, it was almost certainly by the United States, giving them a vested interest in falsifying data to make it seem like there were early cases. Moreover, a first case being a lesbian does not tend to disprove gay people were targeted. As for Robert R., they no evidence whatever that he was a homosexual or a prostitute.

What they did, however, was destroy the housing project where they experimented on low income blacks, saying it was a social failure, when they probably just trying to coverup their illegal and unethical experiments.

Offsite Link
by Anonymousreply 211May 18, 2014 9:14 PM

Did you read the link I posted? Or the Shilts book? Why are assuming the only way to contract HIV/AIDS is via sex. Her sexual orientation is irrelevant.

She was a DOCTOR and a SURGEON. She was in frequent contact with blood in the country where, to the best of our knowledge, HIV started.

by Anonymousreply 212May 18, 2014 9:21 PM

In 1990, Robert R.'s blood was tested using more sophisticated techniques and found not to have HIV as quoted by L. Garrett, "The Coming Plague" and reported in Horowitz's book "Emerging Viruses: AIDS & Ebola, Nature, Accident, or Intentional?" copyright 1996-1997. This is subsequent to the 1987 test mentioned in Wikipedia.

by Anonymousreply 213May 18, 2014 9:22 PM

Except that's not true. There is no evidence whatever linking Zaire to the start of HIV.

by Anonymousreply 214May 18, 2014 9:51 PM

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. I believe that any evidence of the creation of HIV is very well hidden or even destroyed. But,the smoking guns are there. The truth will come out someday. The science behind it all will be uncovered someday. Calling us crazy or conspiracy nuts will not stop the truth.

Remember how vilified Gays were in the 1950s and 1960s. Heck, being Gay was illegal, at least in some areas.I have heard some horror stories of how we were treated by older Gay men. So, it is not surprising they would experiment with "vaccinations" on Gays and racial minorities. Funny how in all those "vaccinations" were given we also had a great number of cases of HIV, isn't it?

Things got out of control because "they" didn't understand human nature and sexuality. "They" didn't know or perhaps care that there are many, many gay men who are married, or that there are men who have sex with women (and men) of other races. "They" forgot that their children were using drugs for pleasure, some injected, as never before.

They looked on in terror as the world around them changed. Their children now protested against war, and were very liberal. Gays demanded rights and respect. Former colonies demanded freedom and respect and control of their own resources. A cold war raged on with control of resources probably at the heart of it all.

Yep, the mid and later 20th century was a perfect time for the cultivation of a disease found in nature like HIV and a perfect time for it to be released into the populations they didn't like.

by Anonymousreply 215May 18, 2014 9:59 PM

Hold on, I need to run out and get more foil.

by Anonymousreply 216May 18, 2014 10:11 PM

Nor is there any evidence from Cameroon, where the French were in charge of public health when HIV would have "broken out" and they did mount campaigns against sleeping sickness and malaria.

by Anonymousreply 217May 18, 2014 10:38 PM

The Belgians in Leopoldville should have noticed something if HIV was a natural breakout. Why didn't they? Some people say it is found in blood samples from Leopoldville of that era, but why no deaths, no symptoms, no mystery? They conducted mass innoculation campaigns in Leopoldville. Public health was high on their agenda.

by Anonymousreply 218May 18, 2014 10:53 PM

Where were the Arvid Noe samples tested?

by Anonymousreply 219May 19, 2014 12:12 AM

r217 and r218, both those areas today have high rates of HIV infection. What is the incubation period between exposure and infection? Who can say for sure, but it is worthy of note that both areas did, indeed, become areas of high infection.

As for the Japanese method of introducing germ warfare, did the Japanese "vaccinate" large groups of people? Didn't think so. The Japanese methods were cruel, but crude and ineffective.

by Anonymousreply 220May 20, 2014 4:01 AM

r209 and 202, how do you know for sure there were no cases of HIV in the world before the 1980s? You KNOW this? How?

by Anonymousreply 221May 20, 2014 4:03 AM

I just think it unlikely thousands of people were dying in Cameroon and Kinshasa from 1910 to 1979 with collapsed immune systems and nobody noticed.

by Anonymousreply 222May 20, 2014 5:03 AM

I'm curious, R215 -- and anyone who believes AIDS was created and disseminated by the US government -- how do you feel about the new governmental advice to use Truvada? Just another ploy to kill us all? If not, at what point do you think the government shifted from kill all the gays to help gays live longer, healthier lives?

by Anonymousreply 223May 20, 2014 1:12 PM

Again, r222, who knows how long the incubation period is regarding HIV. Besides, I believe any introduction would have occurred in the 1950s or 1960s more or less, not the early part of the 20th century. That time period makes more sense in so many ways.

r223, there is a big difference in our culture NOW as opposed to the 1950s. And you don't really think any government office would be so kind as to make sure we Gays live healthy HIV-Free lives, do you? We are still reviled in so many ways and places, although that is changing. Any testing or drugs is more for the benefits of straights eventually. HIV turned out to be way more than anyone ever could have figured.

by Anonymousreply 224May 20, 2014 2:33 PM

The incubation period of HIV is 1 to 6 months. How soon its growth makes one sick is another matter that can take years, but the virus is measurable and growing after 1 to 6 months.

by Anonymousreply 225May 20, 2014 2:35 PM

Remember when AIDS fist started nobody knew. So they kept expanding the "latency" period and made ridiculous claims of 10 years from infection to illness. But we know the facts now, which is that after 1-6 months the virus can be measured. How soon symptoms appear depends on what chance diseases go your way and that can take years. But anybody checking your blood could see the virus.

by Anonymousreply 226May 20, 2014 2:37 PM

My first friend who got sick started noticing he had something strange and undiagnosable in the summer of 1978.

by Anonymousreply 227May 20, 2014 2:40 PM

Medical note- Unless your immune system is already compromised at the time of potential exposure/infection by having undergone chemotherapy or an organ transplant, which then could take up to six months to show on a HIV test, the HIV virus is detectable on a test in the time period of one to three months. So, if you haven't had one of the above medical procedures, three months is the window period, not six months. And most people (>80%)who will test positive, will test positive within a month. A six month window period is, generally speaking, outdated medical information. Even three months is stretching it for most people.

by Anonymousreply 228May 20, 2014 3:12 PM

Am I the only one who thinks that Magic Johnson is just about the weirdest case of HIV?

First off, he claims he contracted the virus through heterosexual sex.

Secondly, he is not only heavier but healthier than ever.

What scam has Magic Johnson pulled on the world?

by Anonymousreply 229May 20, 2014 3:18 PM

I remember in the late 1970s men were getting sick. It would start with weakness, then a wasting away, and they would die from pneumonia or cancer. Many others have said this as well. It seems to me that HIV could have been present before the 1980s.

Concerning testing, if they didn't know what to look for before the '80s, how would they recognize the presence of HIV virus? How advanced were detection methods in, say, the 1960s or '70s? I believe TODAY detection is possible in 1 month. What about in 1965? 1975?

by Anonymousreply 230May 20, 2014 4:07 PM

"I just think it unlikely thousands of people were dying in Cameroon and Kinshasa from 1910 to 1979 with collapsed immune systems and nobody noticed."

That's not how it works. A disease can plod along with very few deaths for quite a long time before finding the right population in which to explode.

by Anonymousreply 231May 20, 2014 5:01 PM

Also, the affected groups would have surely died of another disease that due to weakened immune systems they were unable to fight off and their deaths attributed to that disease, rather than the new, man-made and introduced HIV. This surely could have been the case in sub-Saharan Africa, where perhaps inadequate health care or research facilities and diseases unfamiliar to Western workers could have led to a misunderstanding of the cause of death.

In the case of Gay men in the USA, we were a hated group of people, seen as expendable. Our deaths wouldn't have mattered. Ditto Blacks in the ghetto and drugs such as heroin in the 1970s and later on, crack . Shades of Nazi death machine handiwork, don't you see? Gosh, I simply cannot imagine who thought it all up....

The truth always comes out in the end.

by Anonymousreply 232May 20, 2014 7:53 PM

But they would have recognized kaposi's sarcoma, would they not? Thrush? PCP?

by Anonymousreply 233May 20, 2014 7:56 PM

Death, esp. in Africa, most likely was from a disease other than AIDS. Remember, they had weakened immune systems.

Why the creation of HIV? The old colonial powers wanted Africa'a natural resources back! They wanted the diamonds, the gemstones, OIL!!!! The OIL! timber, minerals and everything else. The colonial masters had just gotten tossed out in the 20th century! They got tossed out of India, Africa, everyplace.

What better group of people to experiment on but Gays.

by Anonymousreply 234May 20, 2014 8:08 PM

[quote]Gosh, I simply cannot imagine who thought it all up....

Who thought it all up? Seriously.

by Anonymousreply 235May 20, 2014 8:16 PM

There is no disease called AIDS. AIDS-deaths are really AIDS-related deaths. The point of the recent poster was that the diseases that caused deaths in early AIDS-related patients were rare and odd, such as Kaposi's sarcoma, and would have thrown up red flags when they were more common than one a year.

So it's not as stealthy a "bio-weapon" as you imagine.

by Anonymousreply 236May 20, 2014 8:18 PM

No need to imagine it. Look at the titles from some Robert Gallo papers from the 1960s and 1970s. Take these from 1973.

"Gallo, RC, Miller, NR, Sasinger, WC and Gillespie, D. Primate RNA Tumor Virus-Like DNA Synthesized Endogenously by RNA-dependent DNA Polymerase in Virus-like particles from Fresh Human Leukemic Blood Cells."

"Wu, AM, Ting, RCY and Gallo, RC RNA Directed DNA Polymerase and Virus-Induced Leukemia in Mice"

"Gallo, RC Reverse Transcriptase and Neoplasia"

by Anonymousreply 237May 20, 2014 8:34 PM

r236, early victims of HIV, esp. in Africa, surely were dying of other diseases their weakened bodies were unable to fight off due to the HIV infection. Who would have thought to look deeper for the cause of the deaths, or to the cause of an "epidemic" of some other disease.

by Anonymousreply 238May 20, 2014 8:40 PM

None of those say "...and introduce them into a hated population to exterminate them."

And as AIDS proved, and as anyone with half a brain would know, there would be no way to confine the disease to a particular group.

by Anonymousreply 239May 20, 2014 8:41 PM

On the contrary, they knew that gay men were an isolated cluster because of Hepatitis B among gays was genetically different than Hepatitis B among straights.

by Anonymousreply 240May 20, 2014 8:47 PM

So isolated that (from your theory) it quickly spread to Haitians, drug users, and heterosexuals.

by Anonymousreply 241May 20, 2014 8:51 PM

And the work boy Gallo that you cite refers to the HTLV retroviruses that he later insisted caused AIDS.

If he was complicit in introducing it into a human population, why would he point to a virus he discovered.

And why would he then prove himself to be so obviously wrong.

The Gallo theory makes no sense.

But he is a scum-sucking glory-seeking weasel.

by Anonymousreply 242May 20, 2014 10:01 PM

*by, not boy

by Anonymousreply 243May 20, 2014 10:03 PM

I was wondering what "work boy Gallo" could mean, R243.

by Anonymousreply 244May 20, 2014 10:09 PM

[quote]Seriously, were urban gay men really that much more promiscuous than their urban straight counterparts in the 70s?

On average, yes.

by Anonymousreply 245May 20, 2014 10:27 PM

r239, remember the time period in question, before Gay rights. Today we understand there are married bi men, that gay men are not just a stereotype, and we acknowledge that men will turn to prostitutes for sex and that straight, white suburbanites will dabble in drugs and the services of prostitutes. It was a more naive time in history regarding gender and sexuality. It was probably never assumed that the disease could and WOULD spread to the general population.

by Anonymousreply 246May 20, 2014 11:49 PM

Maybe Dr. Gallo could live with being thought a "scum-sucking glory-seeking weasel" if one of the alternate explanations was less flattering.

by Anonymousreply 247May 21, 2014 12:00 AM

The explanation of how HIV spread in the USA from Haiti sounds suspect. I am referring to the one that claims it was present in Haiti and then brought to the USA by Gay men. Let's see. The vaccination programs were in the 3 big urban centers of American Gay life, and these 3 areas see many cases of a new disease that comes to be known as HIV. Yet, the theory is Gays acquired it from Haitians. If that is true, that there is a link to Haiti, then huge masses of Gays would have to have vacationed in Haiti to have tons of wild sex with Haitians. I don't think that happened. I don't care how promiscuous Gay life was in the '70s.

by Anonymousreply 248May 21, 2014 9:22 AM

So if the direction is not from Haiti to the US because American gay men had no connection to Haiti, how did AIDS get to Haiti? Or were the same people vaccinating them as well?

by Anonymousreply 249May 21, 2014 11:43 AM

R3 is correct. DNA sequencing point to '68.

by Anonymousreply 250May 21, 2014 1:20 PM

R249, Are you kidding??!!

Haiti was a popular destination for gay men for decades. It was a top spot for chickenhawks exploiting poor gay Haitian men as sex partners.

Gay sex tourists took Aids to Haiti.

by Anonymousreply 251May 21, 2014 3:51 PM

The gay sex tourism was very popular in Haiti, almost to the degree that straight chicken hawks go to Thailand.

This is why the Carribean is so strongly homophobic. They have seen gay older men come and go, picking up rough trade and spreading Aids for decades.

And just so you all don't accuse me of being bigoted, straight women from Canada and the UK are picking up these men now in their version of sex tourism.

Either way, the islanders lose.

by Anonymousreply 252May 21, 2014 3:55 PM

R251, I was responding to r248 who cannot believe that American gay men could possibly have brought AIDS back from Haiti because he doesn't believe there was any connection between the American gay community and Haiti.

You say there most certainly was a connection. With that, you are refuting his point, not mine.

However, your argument that the connection went from the US to Haiti and not Haiti to the US has yet to be proven.

And, for crying out loud, if you want to be taken seriously on this topic, it's AIDS, not Aids.

by Anonymousreply 253May 21, 2014 4:00 PM

Aids is a mutated virus that has been around for hundreds of years. It was likely one of the many plagues that swept through Europe and/or Asia.

Only now, it is transmitted through anal sex mostly, or what's called dry sex in Africa.

It is spread through these practices which is why it is very difficult for a heterosexual man to contract HIV from vaginal intercourse. Still, after all of these years, straight men do not contract HIV at the rate of others, and lesbians are the least at risk.

Aids is not some conspiracy nor was it created in a lab by a mad scientist to kill of gays, Africans, or hemophiliacs.

Genital circumcision is at the root of the transmission Africa.

Anal sex is at the root of transmission in the west.

Dirty needles is at the root of transmission among the addicted.

There is no conspiracy.

by Anonymousreply 254May 21, 2014 4:01 PM

Here's the REAL coverup:

For decades gay men used Haitian boys in the sex trade business and many were children.

The gay media does not want the world to know that some gay men really are pedophiles, and that these pedophiles spread Aids to Haiti in the exploitation of the poor.

Sooo, the public does not know about this fact and believes the politically correct line that Aids was some conspiracy, created in a lab, or that one man, the French steward, was patient zero.

The FACT is that pedophile gay men are the ones who spread the disease--not complimentary to the gay rights movement.

by Anonymousreply 255May 21, 2014 4:28 PM

Was Haiti really a popular sex destination for gay men? The Caribbean is generally homophobic and Haiti is so poor and corrupt. Also not every gay man is into black men

Not saying it's not true, I just never heard that one before.

by Anonymousreply 256May 21, 2014 4:37 PM

[quote]It was likely one of the many plagues that swept through Europe and/or Asia.

Link?

Enough baseless speculation, queens. You're not Jonas fucking Salk for chrissakes.

by Anonymousreply 257May 21, 2014 4:39 PM

I've never heard of it before either, R256. Thailand, yes. Haiti, never. And I'm old and have only lived it big cities.

by Anonymousreply 258May 21, 2014 4:41 PM

Hi R256,

Yes, just as Morocco was a sex trade hotspot for gay men, Haiti was as well.

We're talking wealthy gay/straight men who essentially keep these pedophile rings secret.

And when Aids became public they all jumped ship like the rats that they are and moved on to another location.

by Anonymousreply 259May 21, 2014 4:42 PM

Straight pedophiles: Tahiti, Philippines, Thailand, Brazil.

Gay pedophiles: Morocco, Haiti (past), Tahiti, Philippines, Mexico.

God help the poor children of this world.

by Anonymousreply 260May 21, 2014 4:45 PM

What a bunch of bullshit, r255. You're full of applesauce.

by Anonymousreply 261May 21, 2014 4:47 PM

If you notice the "Haiti connection" and "AIDS was a plague in Europe centuries ago" memes are being pushed repeatedly by one particular poster.

When was Haiti a gay sex destination? With all of the early hysteria over the three H's at risk (homosexuals, Haitians and (IV) heroin addicts) you'd think a link like that would have been exploited. As I recall in the early days a firm connection between the three groups was elusive.

Yes, there are gay men who had sex with Haitians just like there are IV drug users who shared needles or had sex with gay men. But a mass connection among gay men going to Haiti to have sex? Never heard of that.

by Anonymousreply 262May 21, 2014 4:49 PM

I have been researching Aids for many years now and I firmly believe that the only conspiracy involved is one that involves pedophile rings.

These rings are made of Western men who travel to island nations or poor countries.

This coverup have morphed in to the false notion that Aids can be easily spread through vaginal/penile sex, and that anyone can easily contract HIV.

Not true.

This falsehood has been spread to alleviate the guilt of the pedophiles who have engaged in sex tourism and brought the virus back and forth, starting in the 1950's.

by Anonymousreply 263May 21, 2014 4:56 PM

"Someone fucked a monkey"

It can be deadly.

by Anonymousreply 264May 21, 2014 4:59 PM

Because you never heard about tit doesn't mean it isn't so. Haiti is so poor, t makes the most desperate housing project or hillbilly trailer park look like Beverly Hills. Port au Prince was and is teeming with beautiful glistening ebony boys and young men who would do anything in order to eat and survive. And as a poster stated earlier, Pap has now become the destination of choice for Canadian and British women looking for a How Stella Got Her Groove Back experience. And Morocco was 20 times worse. Malcolm Forbes didn't build his palace there for nothing. His home was positively dripping in beautiful young brown boys. I was there for his infamous birthday bash, and if any of the guests didn't previously know of his predilection before the party, they certainly learned of it then.

by Anonymousreply 265May 21, 2014 5:02 PM

Haiti has an estimateed 120,000 people living with AIDS, no more in proportion than Jamaica. If there was sex tourism in Haiti, French Canada would have been the number one customer and yet AIDS is not prevalent in French Canada.

by Anonymousreply 266May 23, 2014 4:31 AM

Anyway, the natural theory does not finger Haiti but KINSHASA (Leopoldville under the Belgians) and ultimately Cameroon and suggests it arrived as long ago as 1910 and I'm just not buying it because it would have been obvious long before it got to New York.

by Anonymousreply 267May 23, 2014 4:33 AM

r267, HIV may not have been detected earlier. Those dying in Africa surely did not have access to the medical detection, research and treatment a patient in the West may have had access to in the 1950s or 1960s or earlier in the 20th century under colonialism. The HIV virus would have made those infected very susceptible to God only knows what disease. If they are dying from another disease that they had contracted due to a weakened immune system, who would think to look further for a disease such as HIV,esp. if HIV had not been discovered yet. They had not discovered HIV or AIDS yet! The media at that time surely would not have cared one iota about deaths from such a disease in Africa or among Gays or IV drug users in the West. The very fact HIV took off as it did in the areas and among the populations that it did in Africa and USA that had "immunizations" and "research" is very suspicious, very telling. It all fits together too perfectly, esp. post WW2 with the Cold War and the loss of Colonies, and the various covert operations during that era that were meant to destabilize and disrupt.

by Anonymousreply 268May 29, 2014 9:10 PM

Just bought and re-read ATBPO on my Kindle.

It was the 20th anniversary issue and I thought it might include an update (obviously, not by Shilts) of all that has happened in the last 20 years.

DOH. No such luck. Most interested in updates on the scientists, politicians and (few) gay men still alive at the end of the original. I believe Enno died, Kiko and Larry are still alive.

Devastating to re-read how the epidemic was ignored and allowed to happen. Particularly in contrast to Legionaires Disease, toxic shock syndrome and the Tylenol poisonings, which had much more money and resources thrown at them MUCH SOONER and with FAR fewer CASUALITIES.

It's only gay men, indeed .....fuckers.

Props to the few scientists who tried to light a fire early on ....and to the gay men who picked up the ball and led the battle.

by Anonymousreply 269September 26, 2014 4:15 PM

R268. Belgians governed the Congo and were very proud of their medical services. You seem to forget that the natural theory posits a break out under European colonialism, not in a poor desperate African society with no access to modern medicine.

by Anonymousreply 270September 26, 2014 4:36 PM

No doubt there were sailors who came here who were infected and likely they had sex while they were here and infected others. But I'm not at all convinced they were the first to bring hiv to the U.S..

by Anonymousreply 271September 26, 2014 4:53 PM

Heads up, And The Band Played On movie is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.

by Anonymousreply 272October 7, 2014 9:26 PM

R38 Guinea-Bissau declared independence from Portugal in 1974 and threw the Portuguese out. So it is earlier than the mid 1970's.

by Anonymousreply 273October 7, 2014 9:38 PM

[quote] Did Arvid Noe sleep with African prostitutes?

He did. He was a sailor as a teenager and he spent time in Africa. He was treated for an STD(I think it was gonorrhea) during that time peroid and other men who worked with him confirmed that he had slept with prostitutes. After he returned to Norway and married and had kids, he worked as a truck driver and he traveled to other European countries. According to people who knew him, he slept with prostitutes in those countries. There are theories that some AIDS cases in Europe were linked back to him.

I have also wondered if any AIDS cases in Canada were ever linked to Gaetan Dugas? I know he was connected to clusters in L.A., SF, and NYC. I remember somewhere that he had a home in Los Angeles for awhile in the late 70s.

by Anonymousreply 274January 15, 2015 6:58 PM

Re: Haiti as a gay sex-tourist destination. I never knew so many gay men were into the ebony. You'd never be able to tell from Grindr, Scruff, ads etc. these days.. (i.e. white/latino only)

by Anonymousreply 275January 15, 2015 7:24 PM

I have my own theory about the spread of AIDS: The orange juice boycott enabled it. Oranges are a good source of vitamin C, which is good for your immune system. So a lot of gay men who were boycotting orange juice because Anita Bryant shilled for it were not getting that vitamin C.

by Anonymousreply 276January 15, 2015 7:25 PM

Invented in a lab, deliberately spread to gays in 1978.

Enough with the Dark Continent and sex trade fantasies.

by Anonymousreply 277January 15, 2015 7:34 PM

Shilts' claim was not a "theory" but a "Wild Ass Guess"

by Anonymousreply 278January 15, 2015 7:35 PM

R4 = Sam Kinison

by Anonymousreply 279January 15, 2015 7:36 PM

I know some people who knew Dugas, and they said he was a lovely unassuming man. I also have a hard time demonizing him, although Shilts had no such trouble, nor did his publishing house, which placed "The Man Who Brought AIDS To America" ads in journals and such, with Dugas's picture. It was just so disingenuous, Shilts said in interviews at the time that he knew the publisher was going to do it even though it was incorrect.

John Grayson's musical movie "Zero Patience" has a much better take on Dugas. Michael Callen plays Miss HIV who points out that without Dugas's cooperation, epidemiologists may have taken a much longer time to make a definitive correlation between sexual behavior and the spread of what would come to be called HIV.

by Anonymousreply 280January 15, 2015 8:08 PM

Everyone who says that HIV had a 5-10 year incubation period is wrong back in the early 80s is wrong. Try a year or less. That's what was being said at the time. And interestingly, that would indicate that HIV was relatively brand new as new viruses kill very fast. After a virus as been around a while it will evolve to become less lethal and produce a longer incubation period, such as current HIV.

by Anonymousreply 281January 15, 2015 8:15 PM

Shilts was a republican and you know how that fucks with people.

But we all loved seeing that video of Dugas at the 1983 Vancouver AIDS meeting. Definitely not a monster.

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by Anonymousreply 282January 15, 2015 8:25 PM

[quote]Everyone who says that HIV had a 5-10 year incubation period is wrong back in the early 80s is wrong.

Based on?

It varies from person to person. Age, general health and how it was acquired all play a part in how long it takes for AIDS to develop.

by Anonymousreply 283January 15, 2015 11:20 PM

Gaetan Dugas wasn't that good looking.

by Anonymousreply 284January 17, 2015 8:15 PM

HIV was in NYC long before the bicentennial of 1976, it was in NYC in 1969 and in 1970.

Gaetan Dugas may not have been 'Patient 0' but I do remember how he knew fully well he was HIV+ or living with AIDS and said in an interview how he had the 'gay cancer' and how other people would then get it from him since he did not use condoms as the majority of bisexual and gay men into anal sex and when safer sex, and HIV was new in the 1970s and early-late 1980s did not.

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by Anonymousreply 285December 21, 2019 12:56 AM

If it had appeared in '76 they would have been dropping like flies. Remember back then- after you were exposed- you died a horrible death within a year.

It hopscotched from Africa to the Caribbean to S. Florida to straight truckers to the northern cities. Is it an ancient disease? Who knows. No one bothers to investigate it after 40 years.

Of course there are people with a natural immunity to it or else we'd all be dead by now (no one's investigating that, either).

by Anonymousreply 286December 21, 2019 1:18 AM

It is fascinating history. Coming out to the gay world of AIDS in 1985, it has consumed my life. Probably more important to my life’s path than being gay. Amazing to think I lived through the epidemic and so much gay history. Just fate. Kind of like being in Germany in the 30s.

So important to learn the history - because it will repeat again. I’m old enough now that I would be ok catching a fatal disease. Grateful to have somehow survived the plague that killed so many so young. Natural death is a luxury.

by Anonymousreply 287December 21, 2019 1:27 AM

R286 there are also people who become HIV+ but the disease does not progress into AIDS very fast in them. I know people who were infected in the early 1980s, diagnosed in 1985 but they did not take AZT or any of the very early HIV meds which were basically experimental at the time, and they did not start taking meds until the mid or late 1990s when retrovirals were developed.

I remember hearing that it was spread to North America via Cuban prostitutes both male and female, and in the memoir before night falls by Reinaldo Arenas, he claims HIV/AIDS was in Cuba in the 1970s.

by Anonymousreply 288December 21, 2019 1:28 AM

Actually a teenager in St. Louis admitted himself to a hospital in early 1968. Rayford. He had a weird disease that none of the physicians could figure out in 1968. The teenager's legs and genitals were covered in warts, lesions and sores. Rayford had swelling of his testicles and pelvic region and perineum. It later spread to his legs, causing a misdiagnosis of lymphedema. The boy grew thin and pale and suffered from shortness of breath. Rayford told the doctors that he had experienced these symptoms since at least late 1966.

Doctors saved his blood and tissue samples in 1969.

In the early 1980s one of the few nurses and doctors still working at the hospital tested the samples 15 years later. The samples showed HIV. This teenager Rayford was one of the first victims of AIDS in 1968 and 1969. His name was Rayford.

by Anonymousreply 289December 21, 2019 1:49 AM

HIV was already in the United States. As early as 1968 in Missouri there was a documented case of a 16 year old boy with a version of Kaposi's sarcoma.

The bicentennial may have led to an opportunity for men from around the world to gather in NYC leading to the spread of the disease.

Randy Shilts may have meant well, may have meant to document society and government's indifference to the plight of AIDS victims or to the LGBT community, but he sort of scapegoated Gaetan Dugas as the Patient Zero. Dugas may have expedited the spread, but he wasn't the first person to have AIDS. Dugas must have been exposed by someone else.

Grethe Rask died from AIDS in 1972. She was a Danish surgeon stationed in Zaire. I believe she may have been one of the first five documented cases of AIDS in the world.

by Anonymousreply 290December 21, 2019 2:05 AM

So AIDS really was Gerald Ford's fault.

I knew it.

by Anonymousreply 291December 21, 2019 2:21 AM

R75

Debunked

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by Anonymousreply 292December 21, 2019 3:00 AM

The science on this is clear, via the genomic sequencing of HIV virus samples, some of which are 40 years old.

HIV started spreading in the Congo in the early 20th century, jumped to Haiti in the 1960s, landed in the U.S. via NYC around 1970, then jumped to the West Coast in the mid '70s.

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by Anonymousreply 293December 21, 2019 3:18 AM

R293 thanks. That was a really fascinating study. No doubt it was here and spreading just as the sex mania of the 70s got started. NYC was knocked first and hard. I was surprised it took a while for it to make its way to CA. But I guess the SF scene allowed it to make up for lost time.

by Anonymousreply 294December 21, 2019 4:36 AM

This book and the later documentary was fascinating. Is it correct? No clue. Yes, many say it was debunked - but we know how evidence gets buried and destroyed in the real, corrupt world.

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by Anonymousreply 295December 21, 2019 10:41 AM

R293 is correct. I think I read in the NYTimes or NY Review of Books that the transmission to America was sped up by one of the island countries (either Cuba or Haiti?) sending a lot of medical workers to the Congo in the 1960s, where those people picked up the virus. Those people returned to the Caribbean and the virus was spread to US tourists, and probably came to Miami via the Mariel boat-lift. The proliferating gay sex scene (disco) in the mid-to-late '70s, along with a simultaneous proliferation of tourist travel from the US all over the world, spread the virus to many people all over the world in a very few years. This is backed up by DNA sequencing of saved samples of the virus from various patients over time.

by Anonymousreply 296December 21, 2019 1:35 PM

R293, good luck trying to bring actual science into this conspiracy-driven thread.

by Anonymousreply 297December 21, 2019 1:47 PM

Shilts never said the Bicentennial brought HIV to the US but it may have certainly help spread it.

I think the latest theory is that it like came via Haiti and the American gay sex tourism there

by Anonymousreply 298December 21, 2019 2:35 PM

Why bother with theories when there has been some real science done on this?

Oh, I guess the "theories" are more fun and you do not have to read dense writing to understand them.

by Anonymousreply 299December 21, 2019 2:45 PM

An older bisexual friend of mine he told me how in the mid-late 1980s and early 1990s it was rumored that Haitians were more likely to be HIV+; but at the time I had heard it was Cubans.

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by Anonymousreply 300December 22, 2019 1:46 AM

R251 I'm not so sure Haiti was a huge mecca for gay men? I am sure some gay men in the 1970s went there but Puerto Rico was more popular.

The below website claims Haiti was a tourist destination for gay men in the 1970s, but this was when Papa Doc and Baby Doc ruled, and apparently baby doc was bisexual or gay and was caught having sex with two palace guards and Papa Doc had them killed.

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by Anonymousreply 301December 22, 2019 1:52 AM

Nobody know. Theories only.

by Anonymousreply 302December 22, 2019 1:55 AM

It would be easier to claim that the Congo was a popular destination for gay travelers. Makes it all more neat.

by Anonymousreply 303December 22, 2019 2:52 AM

Haiti-adjacent Cuba sent soldiers (led by Che Guevara, no less) to the Congo in the early 1960s.

by Anonymousreply 304December 22, 2019 3:02 AM

My gay older brother, living in New York at the time, volunteered In the mid-70’s, with a lot of other gay men, as guinea pigs to test a vaccine for Hepatitis B . In the mid-80’s, about half of their blood samples, preserved from the 70’s, were found to be positive for HIV. I haven’t heard of this anywhere else.

So, even in the 70’s, many gay men were carrying the virus.

I lived in New York from ‘72 to ‘87. Many gay men in that period got heavily into fist fucking. When men began dying in waves in the early 80’s, it seemed that the fist fuckers were the first to go, especially since anal tears among them were a matter of course. This is not mentioned in many of the accounts.

Further, after I moved to Hawai’i, in ‘87, as the volunteer director of the Kaua’i AIDS Project, every month I flew to Honolulu , to participate in a group news exchange with other AIDS workers. A professor at University of Hawai’i collected every news clipping he could find, and we read and discussed them. One I won’t forget detailed that, due to a greater propensity for infection in their systems, it was entirely possible that many more women than previously thought, diagnosed with different kinds of terminal cancers, had actually died of AIDS. This is something else I’ve not seen mentioned elsewhere.

It always seemed to me that the real tragedy was the willful avoidance of the “mainstream population” to ignore not only this plague, but gay men in general. How many political leaders refused to even mention it? And that stalwart beacon of righteous reportage, the hallowed New York Times, refused for years to use the word, “gay,” but stubbornly insisted on mentioning only “the homosexuals.” A continuing blot on their trumpeted integrity.

I personally believe that it was the grief of men who lost their lovers to AIDS that eventually broke this barrier of silence, leading eventually to greater legislation. However adamant they were, no one can deny grief in others. It’s grief that humanized us in the eyes of the majority.

But these advances can be lost in the face of extremists who would again demonize us out of existence. We must release our complacency and once more rise to fight to maintain rights we have gained.

by Anonymousreply 305December 22, 2019 4:19 AM

[quote]In the mid-80’s, about half of their blood samples, preserved from the 70’s, were found to be positive for HIV.

It was 20%. Twenty percent of the gay NYC men who donated blood in the Hep B vaccine study were HIV+ in 1980, as determined by later testing of their stored blood samples.

A lot. But not half.

by Anonymousreply 306December 22, 2019 4:32 AM

Has anyone read “queer blood” written by a gay military doctor. His theory on aids is quite fascinating to say the least

by Anonymousreply 307December 22, 2019 4:39 AM

R305 is fucking lying

by Anonymousreply 308December 22, 2019 4:47 AM

Can you summarize it very briefly, R307?

by Anonymousreply 309December 22, 2019 4:48 AM

Yes. I should have done that in my post. The author’s premise is that aids was created to kill gay men. And that the hepatitis studies conducted in NYC was used to to spread the virus among gay men. It “out there” but still a good read

by Anonymousreply 310December 22, 2019 4:50 AM

Yes, R307. The guy is Alan Cantwell, and he is a conspiracy theorist.

He came up with his theory (that HIV was developed as a government experiment to destroy gays) in 1988. We have DNA sequencing data from multi-national scientists in 2018 that shows this was not the case.

See the timeline at R293.

by Anonymousreply 311December 22, 2019 4:52 AM

Thank you @R311. So we can dismiss cantwell

by Anonymousreply 312December 22, 2019 4:53 AM

It came to the US in 1978 when it was deliberately spread by the government.

by Anonymousreply 313December 22, 2019 5:39 AM

Why would a virus created to destroy gay men be first introduced in the bowels of African, where it killed mainly straight men and women?

by Anonymousreply 314December 22, 2019 12:21 PM

Shilts was such a great writer. I read almost all of his books. It almost doesn’t matter if certain parts of his hypotheses turn out to be wrong because the overall reporting hold up even decades later

by Anonymousreply 315December 22, 2019 12:26 PM

There were probably new clusters of the disease created by the influx of foreign sailors during the bicentennial, and those clusters, or groups of new HIV+ cases infected by the sailors, would have furthered the spread exponentially, thus having an impact on the trajectory of the rise and spread of the epidemic. That’s all possible, and as a theory for one example of how the disease was able to spread and expand through sexual contact, but as others pointed out, there is ample evidence that HIV was spreading on U.S. soil years earlier.

by Anonymousreply 316December 22, 2019 12:28 PM

Remember ELEOP? Good times, good times.

by Anonymousreply 317December 22, 2019 12:30 PM

When I first became aware of AIDS (1982-83, jr year of hs) the at-risk groups were normally listed as gay men, heroine addicts, and Haitians. Later the word was that the infected Haitian immigrants were either gay or users or both; their being Haitian was irrelevant.

by Anonymousreply 318December 22, 2019 12:34 PM

The bushmeat theory doesn’t hold for me, because doctors and activists tell us time and again that oral transmission is low risk, that the virus can’t survive in digestive fluids, and that high heat kills the virus. Unfortunately that leaves us with one other route (sexual) for primate transmission, which I’d prefer not to believe because black men don’t need another bad thing pinned on them to add to their ‘otherness’

by Anonymousreply 319December 22, 2019 12:41 PM

I recall there was some city in Florida where a large of group of Haitians were infected.

by Anonymousreply 320December 22, 2019 12:45 PM

The bushmeat theory, R319, doesn't posit that people got the virus from eating bushmeat; it posits that people got it from preparing the bushmeat, which they do in bloody, unsanitary fashion, skinning and chopping up the animals on the kitchen table without any gloves to protect any cuts or abrasions on their hands.

by Anonymousreply 321December 22, 2019 1:40 PM

what a big cosmic joke. it's one thing to want to love the same sex in a society that doesn't accept such a thing; then, you come of age and as you're wondering how you're going to live your life, AIDS comes along. I remember the Newsweek cover. The fucking chocolate diet candy appetite suppressant -- AYDS! That lady would not shut up about it.

So you live your life not doing much while watching so many others around you die prematurely and unfairly.

I'm luckier than most. I'm alive; we know what's safe sex and what isn't and there's still a tiny window I can creep through to find someone.

I

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by Anonymousreply 322December 22, 2019 1:51 PM

[R305] suffers from extreme magical thinking.

[R310]: Interesting speculation, and definitely rumored at the time. My older brother did eventually die from HIV-related causes, but, though he took part in the Hepatitis B test in the 70’s, he did not turn positive until 1988.

Which is an awfully long incubation period.

Also, the 50% positive percentage is what he reported he was told by researchers in the 80’s.

by Anonymousreply 323December 22, 2019 3:44 PM

[quote][[R305]] suffers from extreme magical thinking.

r323 / johnspike, you [italic]are[/italic] r305.

by Anonymousreply 324December 22, 2019 3:51 PM

R305 johnspike read the article/study below, it was not half. I am sorry that your brother died from HIV/AIDS but even in the 1980s when world governments and health organizations including LGBT ones said to use condoms and have safer sex a lot of people had the mentality that since HIV/AIDS was new that they could keep having unsafe sex or that whoever they were having unsafe sex with could never be HIV+ or living with AIDS.

So Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona, stepped back into the past. They spent years tracking down blood samples taken prior to 1981 that contain signs of the virus. He and his colleagues stumbled upon two Hepatitis B virus studies from 1978-1979 — one in New York, the other in San Francisco — that had collected blood samples from gay men. Back then, though no one knew it, people with a high-risk of catching Hepatitis B turned out be high-risk for HIV, Worobey said during a press conference on Tuesday.

They whittled 11,000 blood specimens down to a set of 33 New York samples and 83 samples with signs that those patients had mounted an immune response against HIV.

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by Anonymousreply 325December 22, 2019 4:34 PM

Another thread related to HIV/AIDS in the 1970s.

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by Anonymousreply 326December 22, 2019 4:37 PM

Does anyone know how Robert Rayford was infected and died from HIV/AIDS in the Midwest United States, St Louis 1969? AFAIK it was not refuted despite what people here are claiming since when people ask for the source for this they show nothing. Had he traveled to Haiti, or to Sub-Saharan African countries? Or was he having sex with women or men from these countries?

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by Anonymousreply 327December 22, 2019 4:41 PM

I knew this thread would be full of a bunch of racist bullshit Black Africans practice cannibalism en- mass type bullshit.

There is absolutely no proof that HIV or aids started in Africa, there's a lot of speculation by a bunch of racist scientists and pseudo scientists but there's no proof. Africans don't fuck animals btw

A people who were the 1st one to live with roofs over their heads and smart enough to know you don't just throw your human waste out of the front door didn't give the world AIDS but by all means datalounge keep being datalounge.

by Anonymousreply 328December 22, 2019 4:52 PM

R327 Rayford never traveled outside of the Midwest. There was speculation by doctors who treated him that he was a sex worker and maybe he did have an experience with an infected person who came from another country.

by Anonymousreply 329December 22, 2019 5:03 PM

R327 Rayford never traveled outside of the Midwest. There was speculation by doctors who treated him that he was a sex worker and maybe he did have an experience with an infected person who came from another country.

by Anonymousreply 330December 22, 2019 5:03 PM

R328 try opening a book and learning about HIV/AIDS and diseases. They started in Africa and then spread to the rest of the world, and in some regions and countries of Africa cannibalism is practised. It is not racist to point out these facts.

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by Anonymousreply 331December 22, 2019 5:18 PM

Just before AIDS arrived, Hepatitis D (it was called the Delta Virus) had arrived, and was scaring everyone -- to a degree. I visited friends who lived in the heart of one gay ghetto, and the heaviest fucker in the household said that he had begun limiting his sex simply due to practicality -- ghettos being what they are -- a centralised whirlpool -- almost every time he fucked he scored a VD -- most regularly a bowel infection. Ironically and incredibly against all odds -- and this will sadden the DL righteous brigade -- he never caught AIDS. Everyone else in his share house of seven died of it.

by Anonymousreply 332December 22, 2019 5:18 PM

R325 - that pbs story is the best outline of the history I’ve seen. The genetic variability analysis is particularly valuable - showing how it spread. Eerie how it was present in the sexual freedom and fun that was 1970s NYC. A grim reaper waiting to leap. Confirms that it was a mixture of globalization/international travel, sexual liberation and the emergence of a gay social world that contributed to its growth.

Maddening how it played into the exact story that Republicans were pitching in 1980 - that the decadence, freedom and sexual liberation of the 70s was bad for America. Unfortunately, that framework was inherent in coming out in the 80s. Gay life = horrible early death. As if we didn’t have enough fear and stigma about being gay.

by Anonymousreply 333December 22, 2019 5:27 PM

R322 was he a bottom or into rimmming? Or a raw top/versatile? I remember reading writings by a safer sex and HIV/AIDS activist named Richard Berkowitz (no he's not the son of Sam serial killer) who claimed that so many bisexual and gay men developed AIDS so fast because of co-infection with another virus or bacterial infection. I do not remember the name but it was not a type of Hepatitis or an STI like herpes, HPV, etc.

by Anonymousreply 334December 22, 2019 5:30 PM

I saw somewhere that Robert Rayford's grandfather was said to have had similar symptoms. I'm not sure how much is known about the grandfather's life but it's possible he went to Africa at some point and contracted the disease, and later abused Robert.

by Anonymousreply 335December 23, 2019 1:26 AM

[R305] and [R323] aka johnspike here:

It was [R308] I should have addressed. The person who referred to my post at [R305] as “fucking lying.”

That person not only suffers from magical thinking, but is also a dismissive asshole.

by Anonymousreply 336December 23, 2019 3:14 AM

The early high-risk groups for contracting AIDS in the early 80s were homosexual and bisexual men, Haitians, Hemophiliacs, and Intravenous drug users. Haitians were later dropped as a risk group. At that time, gay urban culture was centered on bars, baths, sex establishments like bookstores and movie houses...all places where one could find sex partners. In some cities, like New York , LA and San Francisco it was easy to have multiple sex partners in the same day on a regular basis. AIDS spread among gay men pretty fast, mostly because the pool of gay men in any area was relatively small, and there were clusters of hyper-promiscuous men in every urban area. Mentioning this problem brought out the brigades of naysayers who would accuse you of being sex-negative, prudish, religious or something worse. Few people were interested in changing the sex-drenched culture of the time. As much as I do hold the Reagan Administration, Jerry Falwell and the anti-gay American culture very responsible, I also feel that gay men themselves weren't taking the actions necessary quickly enough to stem the tide.

by Anonymousreply 337December 23, 2019 4:40 AM

I think it’s a completely shilt theory myself.

by Anonymousreply 338December 23, 2019 4:42 AM

R337, you have a point. I've always craved intimacy over sex -- it's not good or bad; it's just what I prefer.

I think if I'd been more into sex I'd be dead.

by Anonymousreply 339December 25, 2019 1:57 AM

Even Larry Kramer who was among the first to push for limited sex and safe sex, ended up with HIV

by Anonymousreply 340December 25, 2019 3:31 PM

[Quote] I also feel that gay men themselves weren't taking the actions necessary quickly enough to stem the tide.

True, but no one was really sure where this came from and how to get it. The government certainly wasn’t helping inform anyone.

Plus gays had only recently felt they could be sexually free. It was part of their liberation identity.

It was a strange time to say the least

by Anonymousreply 341December 25, 2019 3:33 PM

They were very frightening & sad times. Looking back, one thing that I couldn't see then was how quickly things went from really great, everything seems possible to utter and complete darkness, fear and sadness. I was 19 when the first reports started in NYC. I remember the first time I heard of it. It was on the local evening news on a June Friday evening, I was still living at home. It was being called gay cancer. I asked an older friend about it that night at the 9th Circle. He said I was crazy. you can't get cancer from being gay. I remember trying to say the name of it but couldn't get it right.....karposi sarcoma. (I might have posted this story up thread already).

Within a year most of the guys in that room were dead or dying, the majority of us under 25.

by Anonymousreply 342December 25, 2019 3:49 PM

R342 I have heard similar stories from friends in their late 50s and early 60s, one bisexual man lived in a small apartment complex in Texas that was mostly all bisexual and gay men on his floor and the one below, and out of all of his friends and neighbours he was the only one to live. Another friend in Los Angeles lost 18 friends, and he and another friend were the only ones who survived because they practiced safer sex.

by Anonymousreply 343December 29, 2019 1:21 AM

I remember that interview Judith Light did where she mentioned going to funerals almost weekly for AIDS related deaths back in the 80s.

by Anonymousreply 344December 29, 2019 4:20 AM

I am just not a fan of coincidence. Finally liberated and then targeted makes sense.

by Anonymousreply 345December 29, 2019 4:30 AM

A lot of gay/bi men who survived, besides the ones who were exclusively monogamous or celibate, were exclusive tops, or exclusively practiced oral sex or other non-anal/non-penetrative sex. Some had a rare mutation that made them immune. Some were just lucky.

by Anonymousreply 346December 30, 2019 10:37 AM

The "AIDS didn't start in Africa" troll has been here for years and I'm not sure what their goal is, other than they think their particular tactic is effective on Datalounge, but most people ignore them so there must be another reason they're like this.

HIV came from a similar simian disease which was contracted by humans through eating apes, monkeys and similar animals. The disease was mostly local and contained, happening only in brief spurts every few years, until Europeans colonized Africa and traveled frequently, and it's this European travel that turned it into the epidemic it eventually became.

It's not racist, and there is no research that says anything like "it came from blacks fucking monkeys" so I don't even know what they're upset about.

Maybe they don't like people like R331 saying stupid things (there is no evidence it came from "African cannibals") but they never just single one piece of erroneous information out, they always say the entire Datalounge thread is racist because AIDS could not have come from Africa.

by Anonymousreply 347December 30, 2019 10:47 AM

R327, there have been rumors that Rayford had a relative (uncle, I believe) who was pimping him out, but per Rayford himself, his symptoms started when he slept with a neighborhood girl.

Some doctors suggested he had signs of having had sex with men but they turned out to be suspicions based on the teen having hemorrhoids.

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by Anonymousreply 348December 30, 2019 10:53 AM

This article mentions that Rayford had anal scarring, not just hemorrhoids, for what it's worth.

The story of the samples being identified as showing Rayford had HIV is really crazy. After the research was published in a medical journal, someone broke into a lab and stole the actual test results. And one of the two doctors who presented Rayford's case to the medical community long before HIV was "discovered" clearly leaked the Rayford results and manipulated the press without telling the other doctor who had worked on the case, then left the other blindsided doctor to clean up the mess.

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by Anonymousreply 349December 30, 2019 11:02 AM

I could be wrong but I have felt since my late 20s (1985 on) that there are not many of us left in my cohort. It has felt very lonely for a long time. I don't know if this feeling is true and can be verified by numbers of the dead, or my age group is simply so unwilling to connect after what happened, or it is my own personality issues. .

by Anonymousreply 350December 30, 2019 8:53 PM

I vaguely recall reading about how in the late 70s a female drug addict died of AIDS symptoms, but the doctors who treated her didn't autopsy or save samples so it wasn't known if she had AIDS.

by Anonymousreply 351December 31, 2019 12:31 AM

R346 tops can get infected with HIV as well. It's not as easy as it is for bottom or vers men but it does happen, and a lot of the 'raw tops' have the mentality that they cannot get infected this way, or that since they had sex with a guy who was poz before and were not infected they will be fine; but it does not work this way. I know men who made the mistake of fucking someone without condoms once or twice and they wound up getting infected this way.

I know men who were infected by giving oral sex but they all told me how they had sucked and swallowed hundreds or thousands of men, and in the 1990s when they would go to get tested at HIV/AIDS testing centres that they were told, 'If you only have oral sex and use condoms all the time for anal sex you are not at risk for HIV so why are you getting tested?' Others infected via oral said how they sucked cock after seeing the dentist or had an open cut in their mouth, and figured that low risk for HIV meant zero risk.

by Anonymousreply 352January 4, 2020 2:22 PM

R301, I was coming here to ask the same thing. I was really curious reading this thread and the comments about gay travel to Haiti being a big thing back then. Wasn't Haiti during the 1970's under the control of the Duvaliers, a control enforced by the dreaded Tonton Macoute? It doesn't particularly sound like a touristic paradise, but I wasn't even alive then so I'm not saying it definitely didn't happen, just that it surprised me and I was curious as to whether there were any reputable sources on this?

Speaking of looking for reputable sources, a small comment made above had me intrigued to know more. It was said that there were instances of mass death from wasting diseases affecting humans such as at a Congo chimp research station in 1957. This sounds like the setting for a horror movie. I couldn't find any information online. Is this a real story and are there any sources to back it up?

by Anonymousreply 353February 17, 2020 10:54 PM

WHat's a good book about the history of AIDS, aside from Shilts'?

by Anonymousreply 354February 17, 2020 11:18 PM

R84, Not with anal sex. And HIV doesn't materialize out of the ether. If two promiscuous people don't have it, then that's that.

by Anonymousreply 355February 17, 2020 11:27 PM

I read an article once that said there were ads placed in gay magazines in 1977 that the CDC was looking for volunteers to participate in a blood study. The blood study began in November 1977 which supposedly was when the HIV virus was injected into these gay male volunteers. I'm not saying that the article is definitely true only that it is a plausible theory as to how the HIV virus first entered the gay male populace.

by Anonymousreply 356February 18, 2020 12:10 AM

I was shocked to see this thread active! I literally just finished watching The Age of AIDS, a PBS Frontline documentary. (Just part one; I'll watch part two tonight.)

Basically it is a dispassionate reportage which, coincidentally, spends some time on the Haïti angle. American men apparently frequented Haïti in the pre-AIDS era for the cheap sex with Haitian men, who were often married to women and had children. During the 1970's, Belgium recruited Haitian healthcare workers and many of them died of AIDS early on in the pandemic.

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by Anonymousreply 357February 18, 2020 12:26 AM

There is a documentary on VIMEO called Last Men Standing. It was produced by some journalists for the San Francisco Chronicle. It's about several long term survivors of the HIV virus. It's excellent and far better than Desert Migration. You can watch it for free on Vimeo.

by Anonymousreply 358February 18, 2020 12:42 AM

I'm answering one of my own questions, but others may find this interesting too, from wikipedia (footnotes in the link):

Haiti's brief tourism boom was wiped out by the rule of Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier and his unstable government. However, when his son Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier succeeded him as President for Life, tourism returned in the 1970s, and again Haiti was a hot spot tourist destination drawing an average of 150,000 visitors annually. The resurgence of tourists flocking to Haiti's new seaside beach resort, included Bill and Hillary Clinton who honeymooned there in 1975. Vive la différence has long been Haiti's national tourism slogan, and its proximity to the United States made Haiti a hot attraction until the Duvalier regime was ousted in 1986.

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by Anonymousreply 359February 18, 2020 1:31 AM

Were there any men who had sex so infrequently that they knew they had to have been infected in a specific year in the 1970s?

by Anonymousreply 360February 18, 2020 1:45 AM

For anyone interested, here is an interesting podcast from 2011 about the quest to find out the origin of HIV. In short, they say HIV entered the US in 1966 from Haïti, and before that got into Haïti from Africa, where it crossed over to the first human in Cameroon around 1908 give or take a few years. Beyond that it goes into the development of this virus in chimpanzees.

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by Anonymousreply 361February 18, 2020 2:50 AM

R360 I have met men who claimed they were infected in the 1970s, one was from Boston but he was extremely promiscuous, did sex for pay to fund his drug addictions, and he got sick with other diseases like gonorrhea, syphilis, and others that were cured by antibiotics, but he became very sick with a disease the doctors had no idea what it was, and it was not until the 1980s that it was identified as HIV/AIDS. Others said how they were infected and were told by doctors at the time that they had a rare type of "cancer" that it was thought was caused by poppers/Amyl.

by Anonymousreply 362February 18, 2020 2:50 AM

[quote] I read an article once that said there were ads placed in gay magazines in 1977 that the CDC was looking for volunteers to participate in a blood study. The blood study began in November 1977 which supposedly was when the HIV virus was injected into these gay male volunteers

Variations on that theory have been out there for a while. Some descriptions place it as early as the Nixon administration. All of them involve testing by either the CDC or another government agency.

by Anonymousreply 363February 18, 2020 2:56 AM

May be of interest

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by Anonymousreply 364February 18, 2020 2:58 AM

R364-Who edited that article in Wikipedia? Who made them an authority on what origin of Aids theories to reject and which ones to accept?

by Anonymousreply 365February 18, 2020 4:22 AM

R365 Wikipedia is edited collectively.

I'm not pushing it either way, Wikipedia is best considered as a place to start - don't know how dependable the content is. But as I said, may be of interest.

by Anonymousreply 366February 18, 2020 3:27 PM

You can also confirm things by going through the sources used on a Wikipedia article too.

by Anonymousreply 367February 18, 2020 7:10 PM

The Wiki editor didn't discredit the theories, anyway. They report via links back to the content where people in that field discredited them. I think based on R365's comment they may not understand how Wikipedia works or how it's compiled.

by Anonymousreply 368February 18, 2020 7:57 PM

Yes, you hear about how Wikipedia is not accurate all the time, but there have been studies on it, and they say it is pretty accurate. If something is obviously wrong or there is a question about it , they argue it out. Has anybody ever clicked on the discussions? Or or do you just bitch about it?

by Anonymousreply 369February 18, 2020 10:18 PM

I worked at a network in the early 90s. I knew an accountant and we were both BIG soap fans; we met in a soap writing class at UCLA.

It was offered a few times over the course of a few years. I noticed a semester later this beautiful boy was suddenly gaunt and then he wore a bandana. We had lunch one day and he told me he was going on leave and was using disability to live on. He said it would run out eventually.

I was so young and stupid and naïve I said well, will you come back to work after it runs out? will you be well enough?

He just got quiet and then I realized he knew he wasn't going to live that long. I had decided before then the safest sex was no sex, that I couldn't trust people I'd have sex with to be honest...it was a tragic time and I can't believe I survived it.

They played all soap opera themes at his memorial; years later, I found a copy of a soap writing book written by the instructor. I opened it and it was inscribed to my pal. I bought it, of course, to give it a home.

by Anonymousreply 370February 19, 2020 3:56 PM

That is extremely sad R370, may he rest in peace. I know men who said how during the late 1980s and early 1990s they had unsafe anal sex as bottoms multiple times, with men who later told them they were HIV+ or had AIDS, and they have no idea how they were not infected and how they are HIV negative. I know it is illegal in most states and countries if someone is HIV+ or has AIDS and does not tell sexual partners but it does happen. HIV/AIDS was new in the 1980s, and a lot of people figured that they could continue to have unsafe sex or share needles like they were used to and would not get it, or they thought that if someone was clean cut, did not look sick, had a career, or wanted to date that there was no way this person could be HIV+ or living with AIDS.

by Anonymousreply 371February 20, 2020 1:25 AM

R371, yeah, it was tragic.

The first time I saw my pal, or the guy who became my pal, he seemed quiet and reserved; was he positive then? Maybe.

I know President Reagan didn't do squat about AIDS for years or probably ever. But the media was reporting on AIDS all the time. I remember when it was called GRID and that unfortunately named chocolate diet suppressant candy Ayds (EEESH)

The message I got was don't have sex. Ever not once. One time is all it takes. There used to be a list of activities in the back pages of the gay rags: safe, maybe safe, not safe.

Gay guys lie about a lot of things -- I could never trust anyone. I stuck to safe activities. I never believed anyone was negative just because they didn't look sick.

The irony is it's not over. Kids today act like AIDS is no big deal. I don't get that.

by Anonymousreply 372February 20, 2020 3:05 AM

Just bumping the thread to ask, re:

"There were instances of mass death from wasting diseases affecting humans such as at a Congo chimp research station in 1957..."

Is there any reputable source to back up this claim? I'm interested in knowing more.

by Anonymousreply 373May 4, 2020 1:39 AM

Not sure R373.

Related to this thread, I recently thought about re reading Shilts' book because I remember the ignorance of politicians that he discussed in his book reminds me a bit of some of the politicians and their attitudes regarding coronavirus.

by Anonymousreply 374May 4, 2020 1:54 AM

R374 HIV/AIDS was around before the 1970s in African countries but they did not really know what it was. Look up 'African slim disease'.

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by Anonymousreply 375May 4, 2020 1:58 AM

I wish there was some kind of movie that focused on the pre-1980s cases. I know the Grethe Raske case was briefly shown in movie version And The Band Played On. But, I think it would be interesting if there was a movie or limited series that focused on Grethe Raske, Arvid Noe, and Robert R.

by Anonymousreply 376May 4, 2020 2:05 AM

Yeah R374, I have to say it sounded sort of apocryphal and I was interested in hearing more about it to see what it was based on, if anything at all. It almost sounds like the setting for a horror movie in some ways. Which is apt really, as the whole did become a horror.

Thanks for the link R375 and I shall definitely look into 'African slim disease'. And I agree R376, I'm curious about the pre-80s cases in particular too.

by Anonymousreply 377May 4, 2020 2:12 AM

I remember reading some article years ago about how a drug addict female who died in the 1970s and the doctors who treated later speculated it was AIDS related, but they didn't save any tissues or anything that could be tested.

by Anonymousreply 378May 4, 2020 2:14 AM

I was a medical transcriptionist for a while at Cedars-Sinai in LA starting about 1980. Suddenly, in 1981 a bunch of young men were admitted with Kaposi's sarcoma, which was supposed to occur only in older people and was until then a very rare disease. It was (is?) a 1200-bed hospital and had a big infectious disease unit. I've always remembered the year because the onset of multiple patients with this unusual illness was very sudden and we all talked about it and wondered what was up. Nobody called it AIDS or HIV of course at first. So if there were people with HIV/AIDS before that, they were not showing up with Kaposi's and not in great numbers.

by Anonymousreply 379May 4, 2020 6:40 AM
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