A mystery illness killed a boy in 1969. Years later, doctors learned what it was: AIDS.

A thorough report from '87 (when the story first broke) by the NYTimes:

Polio vaccines were tested on chimpanzees in the early 60s and late 50s.

Chimpanzees suffer from a form of simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV). Officially the study of AIDS originating from those tests have been disproven. but who knows.

But why would he be the only one to catch it, if it was being delivered through vaccines?

It wasn't vaccines. SIV jumped to humans via African hunters, who killed chimps for food and were exposed to their blood.

It then spread via sexual contact, and the rate of spread was supercharged via international travel.

Scientists have pinpointed HIV's arrival in the U.S. from Haiti to NYC in 1970, and to San Francisco around 1975.

It took some time to take hold and become an epidemic, but there had been sporadic cases of what was probably HIV for decades before that, including this Robert R. kid.

I read the Times article earlier this week. It mentioned that one of the few things the boy told his doctors was that his uncle had all the same symptoms and had died a few years before.

So they think the uncle boned him?

[quote]SIV jumped to humans via African hunters, who killed chimps for food and were exposed to their blood.

The first AIDS victims were recorded in the area where vaccination tests had occurred. African hunters ate monkeys and chimpanzees for centuries.

Life's a banquet!

r5 r6 Apparently it wasn't the Times article, but his Wikipedia page.

[quote]Largely uncommunicative, one of the few things Robert did tell doctors was that he thought his uncle had had the same symptoms, and had died aged 52 in 1966.

I've read about the Robert R. case extensively, and this is the first I'm hearing about him talking about an uncle. There's no citation about that on the Wikipedia page. Where was this reported?

So what does this mean for Gaytan Dugas as patient zero?

r10 I don't know I remembered it and through google only found the mention on his Wikipedia page. I found out about this earlier this week and read about it for a bit.

I wonder if anyone could figure out whether this uncle traveled, and if so, where.

WELL, I'LL BE A MONKEY'S UNCLE!!!

The Patient Zero thing was bullshit.

Dugas was poz, having sex and spreading the virus, but many of the men he was having sex with were already poz. They didn't know that in the '80s/'90s, because DNA testing of the HIV virus was not available.

When science caught up, they discovered that HIV came to the US in 1970.

This article says it was his grandfather, not uncle, who died in 1966.

It took decades before HIV took hold. Sadly once it reached the gay population it exploded.

"Patient Zero" is a narrative device that shit ball Randy Shilts invented to sell his awful book.

How did this poor boy (or his unlce/grandfather) get it in the midwest if it came from African chimps?

Plus the article says his strain was a different strain from the one that became an epidemic.

So one of the hunters who was exposed to simian blood was a salami smuggler?

Uncle Bottom strikes again.

NONE OF THESE "REPORTS" ABOUT AN UNCLE/GRANDFATHER ARE ARTICLES.

They are blog posts by people who are not journalists, who are making or passing along unverified statements.

There are no credible reports of Robert R. having an uncle/grandfather with the same symptoms.

What we know as AIDS today was already an epidemic in the Congo in the 1950s, killing Africans but largely ignored by the Belgian government. There are tissue and blood samples that demonstrate it was in the human population well as early as the 1920s.

Shilts and many other writers who strung together a false narrative about vaccines, the CIA did a disservice to their readers. This was, as Dr. Luc Montaignier defined it, an unknown disease of unknown origin. Unlike anything we’d encounter this wasn’t a virus - it was a retrovirus. It was the first retrovirus we encountered. Unlike polio, smallpox, syphillis - it didn’t simply wipe out the immune system. It rewrote sections of it, primarily in the CD4 cells.

That we’ve ignored the thousands who died in Africa and the Caribbean before the first white person died in the US is equally tragic. We’ve lost perspective and empathy, and our inability to appreciate the scale of the global nature of the disease which the media also falsely styles as a gay disease continues a campaign of misinformation.

Reposting with comments:

SIV jumped to humans via African hunters, who killed chimps for food and were exposed to their blood.

It then spread via sexual contact, and the rate of spread was supercharged via international travel.

Scientists have pinpointed HIV's arrival in the U.S. from Haiti to NYC in 1970, and to San Francisco around 1975.

It took some time to take hold and become an epidemic — BUT there had been sporadic cases of what was probably HIV for decades before that, ALL OVER THE WORLD, including this Robert R. kid.

It's entirely possible that Robert R. was infected with an isolated case of HIV via molestation, child prostitution, IV drug use or what have you.

So only this kid and the uncle/grandfather had it? He probably got it from sex, so obviously there are infections/transmissions that pre-date his. And surely, unless gramps was celibate, he passed it along to grammy or whoever he might've been fucking.

R25, you are too stupid to live.

Per the link in r4:

“Patient 0” was actually “Patient O” as in the letter O, not zero. It stood for “Patient Outside (of) California.” Reporters later misunderstood the terminology and the myth was born.

I wouldn't call him zero. He was a solid 7, maybe an 8 on his best day.

R24 That was Shilt’s speculation, largely based on the early hypothesis the disease vector followed known models for rubella, and smallpox. Many diseases originate in central Africa. The species jumping was poorly phrased and unnecessarily lurid.

An example is arenavirus, where hemorrhagic fever can be spread by rodents to humans, fish or reptiles. Close contact is all that’s required for the single strand RNA to pass. No grotesque ritual involving eating of brains. The virus is quite old, at least 45,000 years old and adaptable.

We can dispatch thoughts of cannibalism, Indiana Jones style jellied monkey brain delicacies. Its silly and unscientific.

r29 Bush meat was and is and huge problem in Africa, and it may be lurid but that aspect isn't necessarily wrong. No one is saying it involves brain eating either, but it is messy and dangerous.

No one is putting forth ideas about cannibalism or eating monkey brains.

It's a fact that Africans would butcher and eat monkeys, much like Westerners would butcher and eat cows or chickens. At some point, monkey SIV (simian immunodeficiency virus) jumped to humans and became HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) because of the blood exposure involved in the process.

One of the world's biggest mysteries.

R29 Were bush meat the cause, it likely would have turned up in the samples. WHO was taking samples from every market, hunting animals just to test for potential sources when this broke out..

What is known and documented is this was already an established disease in the Congo in 1960 at the time of the uprising. Inferring animal source without actual evidence is inadvertently assigning blame to the black population.

We don’t know how the disease emerged in the Congo, what caused the outbreak and the spread to humans. It’s speculation and unkind. We don’t know the origins of Marburg or Ebola, either. We just try to develop prevention and treatment without blaming the victims.

It's actually not a mystery. The science is pretty clear.

Peer-reviewed scientific journal Nature debunks the "Patient Zero" bullshit. They got the receipts (in this case, Gaetan Dugas's DNA samples):

The Patient Zero thing again.

If you read and comprehend Shilts' book, you'd understand he never claims that Dugas brought AIDS to the US. Dugas was the patient who allowed the epidemiologists to connect the cases in various cities. That's what they do. That some may have already been infected doesn't negate the work they did to identify AIDS as an infectious disease. Shilts accurately describes their work. That he used Dugas to help tie narratives together made the book extremely readable.

And now I see people blaming Shilts for a "false narrative" regarding vaccines. Again, he accurately describes the practice of reusing needles without proper sterilization to administer vaccinations.

Shilts wrote a powerful narrative of the early years of the epidemic. It mostly stands the test of time

Please cite credible sources if you believe I'm wrong.

Are you Shilts's surviving twink-boyfriend-at-the-time, R35? Be honest.

r36 Shilts isn't the only one to implicate vaccines in Africa. Another researcher, Dr. Jacques Pepin, wrote a book about it called, "The Origins of AIDS"

Don't be ridiculous. I just hate that the work has been misrepresented, mostly by people who either didn't read the book or didn't read it carefully enough to understand what was written.

It was released in 1986, long before cocktails and shortly before the worst of the epidemic struck. A near contemporaneous account of how it unfolded, in the community, in the medical establishment, in the media, and in the government.

R37 - to the best of my recollection, he implicates the vaccination process, not the vaccines. I will check my copy tomorrow, however.

The idea that HIV resulted from contaminated vaccines has been debunked time and time and time again by peer-reviewed scientific journals. Take your anti-vax bullshit elsewhere.

R39 has reading comprehension issues.

HIV DID NOT RESULT FROM VACCINES.

Read the study at R39. And/or Google.

Just in case you find DL, Jenny McCarthy.

This is exactly what I'm talking about. People seem to have lost the ability to rrwd and comprehend.

On what planet do you live on where you call me an anto-vaxxer? I am 100% pro-vaccine.

Now...really slowly...in Africa, there was a chronic lack of disposable needles. Vaccines were often administered using the same needles over and over, without proper sterilization. A good way for the disease to take hold would have been using a needle on someone who had consumed bush meat (or cut himself butchering the animal) and got SIV/HIV. Then the needle gets reused.

That's not being anti-vaccine.

SMDH

I thought it was God's judgment against homosexuals?

Post a study or scientific research that supports your statement, R42.

Otherwise, STFU. You volley shit out there and know it will be used by the anti-vax crowd as unsupported reasons why Jayden, Brayden and Kayden shouldn't get their shots and will spread disease among the populace.

Good Lord, only a dummy would think that r44.

Everyone knows Nixon created AIDS.

That is why I couldn't discuss it.

Have you just arrived in the world of today, R45?

There are people on this very thread citing unsupported, uncited rumor as fact, just because it's on Wikipedia.

We have been roasting anti-vaxxers' conspiracy theories for months, re the measles outbreaks, etc. They get started because of vague blanket statements like yours.

R42/R45, R44 is a special deplorable type of contradiction troll. She knows what she's doing. She twists your story or argument, then claims her twisted false version of the argument that she created in her own fever brain is false and that you are wrong.

And when you say you never said the things she claims you did, she will double down and repeat her arguments, often adding personal insults to her comments.

She has a name and is well known on this website.

R44 What the hell was your score in Reading Comprhension? Thanks R42 for netting it out.

And no doubt R41/R44/R47 is angry that her thread on how ugly Meghan Markle's clothes are got iced. Be sure to check it out and mock her some.

Half the posts in this thread are by the anti-vaxxer loon, aka the Clooney loon.

Can't we all just get along?

God help us all if another AIDS hits.

I want to see an honest discussion/history built about this topic, and I'm posting Iegit journalism and peer-reviewed scientific studies, with 40 years of perspective, and I'm asking for the same, and I'm being called a Meghan Markle troll.

God help us if another crisis breaks out in real time.

[R50]I'm the one getting flak for being an anti-vaxxer for describing bad vaccination practices that may have contributed to the spread of HIV in Africa. I've mostly been away from DL for a long while.

Are you telling me the person who apparently can't read has the initials DR, from years back?

Mediterranean ilk. Not our problem..anymore

[quote] They got the receipts

derp derp derp

I grew up in the most ignorant of small towns. I remember the local church pushing the "positively true!" rumour that a gay man, likely referring to Gaetan Dugas, had fornicated with a monkey and created AIDS. Even as a kid, I knew how stupid this sounded.

So America is actually the hotbed of this dreadful disease? Germ warfare experiments have gone astray, probably.

Washingtin [sic] was one of five cities where the Army released simulated lethal germs i [sic] public places. Other cities where the public served as unknowing guinea pigs were New York, San Francisco, Key West and panama City, Fla.

The case of Arvid Noe, a Norwegian sailor and truck driver, is also of some interest. He was the first confirmed HIV case in Europe and he was believed that have contracted the disease in Cameroon in 1961, where he was known to have been sexually active with many prostitutes.

Yikes. If Robert was 16 when he died of AIDS, how old was he when he became infected?

Another germ warfare experiments have gone awry in Germany?

The case of Arvid Noe - Røed began his career as a sailor in 1961, when he was 15 years old. By 1968, Røed was no longer a sailor and was working as a long haul truck driver throughout Europe [u](mainly in Germany).[/u]

A large portion of the American-German population has a military background. Great numbers of American soldiers were stationed in Germany after World War II. The Occupation statute of 1949 set regulations for the post-war time within Allied-occupied Germany. Numerous American military installations were established during this time, and eventually hundreds were in place, mainly in Southern Germany. At the time of German Reunification in 1990, there were still about 200,000 US soldiers in Germany.

Wow, that's such a sad story about Robert Rayford. He was 15 when he checked in to a hospital and died 6 months later at the age of 16.

I've attached a picture of him, just to keep an image to the name.

Here is the docu that tries to explain the AIDS - polio - chimpanzee theory.

R66, This is my very 1st post on this thread and I'm very reluctant to link it as the material is extremely controversial and questionable. I have absolutely no idea if it's T or F. Would appreciate feedback from other posters which is the #1 reason of why I posted the link.

Another poster originally linked this conspiracy theory on steroids site for the same thread, focusing on Jim Jones evils. Extremely long (warning) but thoroughly documented, go to the very end to read about the creation & intentional spread of AIDS. Supposedly 1/2 the people in Jonestown had serious HIV symptoms at the time of their end. It was then intentionally spread to Haiti.

What about the Danish sailor who died in the fifties? He had similar symptoms...and the German (?) researcher who died in her girlfriend’s arms in the seventies? Was Shilts lying about them? Why was Shilts considered to be an asshole?

There is no "blame" being "assigned to the black population." Studies have repeatedly pointed out evidence showing that SIV had infiltrated human bloodstreams as early as 1873, but did not become a worldwide problem until the 1920s when white Europeans, via colonialism, traveled in large numbers to African nations. The port city of Kinshasa (which also was a large railway hub) became the vector for the current HIV epidemic in about 1920, primarily because of white travellers. It's not about blaming black people with subtle racism.

From the BBC:

[quote]They used archived samples of HIV's genetic code to trace its source, with evidence pointing to 1920s Kinshasa.

[quote]Their report says a roaring sex trade, rapid population growth and unsterilised needles used in health clinics probably spread the virus.

[quote]Meanwhile Belgium-backed railways had one million people flowing through the city each year, taking the virus to neighbouring regions.

The 1990s-era theory that the vaccines themselves caused spread of the disease has been thoroughly debunked, primarily because we have HIV samples from the region dating to 1959 which show several years worth of viral mutation, meaning the 1950s outbreak began before the 1957 vaccination program was even started.

If anything caused spread it was reused needles, just like in the US in the 70s and 80s.

That story was disproven as far back as the mid 90s. They were never able to replicate any data and it appears to be contamination of the sample.

Cadmium poisoning. They destroyed the Pruitt-Igoe housing complex to hide their experimentation on the locals with chemicals and radiation.

Nothing to do with HIV except that it probably was also a military experiment.

[quote]I wasn't sure you were Dvida until I read this. "This unsupported fact was absolutely proven in a book that I'll eventually quote sometime in the future, maybe" is classic Poo Shoes.[/quote]

Another one unable to process the written word.

I was checking my copy of ATBPO to verify what Shilts actually said, not to say whether what he said was true or not. And if you were actually able to comprehend, you'd know DR was attacking me as an anti-vaxxer.

Did any of you get psst past the fourth grade?

R69 understands what I was saying and what Shilts was saying in his book.

a number of you seem to think AIDS can only be passed on by sex or needles. An open wound or saliva can also pass it on. If you have a cut and a person with AIDS has a cut and they touch it can be passed

[quote]saliva can also pass it on

Beg pardon?

You get mad cow disease from eating bad beef, why wouldn’t simian SIV jump species and cause HIV?

The polio vaccine theory was popularized by an article in Rolling Stone. It claimed that vaccine makers used monkey serum to make the vaccine. Once the article came out, however, the makers claimed that monkey serum from the US was used. There was a follow up documentary that actually interviewed the polio vaccine makers, who said that African monkey serum was indeed used.

The studies shows specifically that the type of HIV in the monkeys close to the human infections is different so local monkeys were not used. But the documentary shows that it wasn't local monkey serum but that from father away that was used for serum--so the polio vaccine theory lives on.

[quote] You get mad cow disease from eating bad beef, why wouldn’t simian SIV jump species and cause HIV?

Yes and both are similar prions--viruses that infect a body but take years to express themselves.

Shilts believed that much of America's exposure came through the caribbean where men would go for sex tourism

I remember reading a fairly comprehensive scientific article on the origin of the aids virus, that made the supposition that it originated in the Belgian Congo through the bush meat trade. The theory was that the virus had had so many opportunities to jump from a simian to human host that eventually it managed to successfully mutate over a long period of time.

Mad cow disease is caused by misfolded proteins called prions; they are not even germ. And they are so hard to kill.

R72, I am definitely NOT a anti-vaxxer. I'm just the whipping boy of certain DL Trolls who abuse my name whenever anyone posts anything with which they disagree. How ironic for so many to rightfully dis Trump for being a name-calling, immature bully when they do the exact same thing on DL.

Randy Shilts was a pioneer of gay journalism, and wrote a very well-researched and important book, one of the first in-depth studies of AIDS in America. To call him a shitbag or anything else because we know more now than we did then is silly. Shilts didn't make up Patient Zero, he jus reported what was being said in the AIDS research community at the time.

It must have been terrifying when aids first appeared among the gay communities of New York and San Francisco. No one really knew anything about the disease, and I’ve read that the strain of the virus that was infecting people at that time was extremely potent.

Best article I ever read regarding the 'Kinchasa, Congo' link was the BBC website about 5 years ago, makes about the most sense.

r74 saliva- the liquid in your mouth. so drinking from the same cup or eating from the same fork or spoon can pass it on.

Hello R85 welcome to the present day! It must have been odd for you, being frozen in 1983 for so long.

R85 -- are you posting from 1983?

For r68. The sailor was from the UK; the woman was Danish.

The 'Sailor' wasn't a sailor he was a printer called David Carr and they discovered cross - contamination in the lab.

It was a local story when I was younger so I followed it a little.

[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.]

Aged 16? He was already a filthy sodomized little whore! And people wonder why I refused to issue marriage licences to those people.

Book recommendation for origin and history of AIDS?

R92, did you read this thread??

Along with some great books listed, definitely read Shilts' books.

This book is very informative and succinct.

There was a great book a few years ago that gave history on animal viruses that jumped to humans and ones we need to look out for. They found out in the Congo that the chimps were dying and getting sick. Literally dropping from the trees. And villagers were taking these sick and dead chimps and eating the meat. For one outbreak of AIDS they tracked it to this. Villagers told them some of the meat was rancid but they cut the bad parts off. Their was rampant prostitution for some workers there (I think logging). The villagers started dying of AIDS. So did the prostitutes. The workers then spread it out of the region. Maybe this was the 20s outbreak, but the outbreak started with the chimps and villagers ate the flesh.

I wonder how it mutated. Without any help?

R95: I remember watching a British documentary years ago about the bushmeat trade. This investigation team went to some village ( I forget which part of Africa ) where over half the population had died of a mysterious disease, after they ate the meat from a dead gorilla that some of them found lying already dead in the forest.

Viruses, bacteria and you, toots R96, mutate all the time, changing parts of yourself to better cope with your reality. Sometimes mutations are spontaneous; sometimes they're a result of environment. If it's a good mutation, you're born with a big dick. If it's a bad one, you are born without a brain. That's just one example among many. But yes, over millennia and with repeated exposures to potential hosts, a mutation of HIV was finally able to survive and reproduce in monkeys, then people. It didn't need the CIAs help.

R96 Cowpox gave milkmaids an immunity to Smallpox hundreds of years ago and led to the first vaccine.

Viruses can jump the species barrier without any help.

Thanks r98 and r99.

The more you know....

The reason wypipo killed so many injuns with disease when they came to the Americas is because, due to Euros habit of living near and with livestock, they were immune through exposure to many diseases. The American aborigines did not have livestock to lie with, and didn't have immunities to many zoonotic diseases, so they were sickened and died quickly upon exposure to the germs. Disease transfer from animals to humans is still a frequent cause of outbreaks.

One of the other reasons was a lack of genetic diversity, r102. The founding population of the Native Americans was only a few thousand hunter gatherers, and because their genetic diversity was so low, it made their immune systems even weaker than they otherwise would have been.

Patient zero is Catherine of Siena aka Mrs Patrick Campbell aka ERNA!!!

If we had a time machine, we could prevent the boy and his uncle from being born and avert the later AIDS epidemic.

HIV can mutate rather quickly as it replicates approximately every 90 min. That's one of the reasons AZT and the other similar early drugs only worked for several months to a year. Triple cocktail makes it harder for the virus to mutate around but it still can happen, especially with irregular dosing.

This thread is very informative. Thank you for great discussion.

I wish this boy had access to PrEP so his uncle couldn't give him HIV while schtooping him

The worst thing about the early HIV epidemic is that the drug to treat pneumocystis carinii (jiroveci) PCP (the most common cause of death) already existed, it is Bactrim (Septrin) in very high doses.

There would have been a lot more survivors to take the current treatments if the medical profession had been aware that it worked earlier.

Silly question but do the monkeys die of AIDS too?

No SIV is a bit like getting herpes for monkeys, cats don't usually die of FIV either.

It's believed that AIDS spread to the Caribbean, and from there went to the US.

One of the theories is that it was Haitian immigrants who first brought aids to the United States. Apparently labourers from Haiti worked under contract in Belgian Congo during the 1950s, and that is how the virus first entered Haiti and then the United States.

Wasn't there some god-awful gross movie in the 1970's about people eating raw monkey brains? Maybe that was the origin.

Oh, DEAR.

Prion diseases lack the RNA or DNA that enables replication. Viroid have either RNA or DNA. They required a living host to replicate. Retroviruses have the ability to convert their RNA into DNA copy - that’s the “reverse transciptase”.

The conflation is amazing here.

So, zombies caused it?

Dugas as patient zero myth has been debunked as others here have stated. The incubation period is seven or so years. Dugas was having unprotected sex with people that were already unknowingy infected. Altho I still think Dugas was something of a sociopath and his sexual partners were sort of meaningless non humans in his life view only good for immediate gratification.

As to the boy in st louis. When I read about him decades ago I thought I remembered the fact that he apparently was rampantly sexual with men at a very young age and had hundreds and hundreds of partners. His refusal to have a rectal exam at the time he was in the hospital is significant.

r117, he was probably hiding a zombie in his butt. I know that's where I keep mine when I'm going through TSA.

R113 Just as likely (and both assertions are improbable) the Cuban military which fought in wars all across Africa during the 1960s made frequent stops in Haiti for errmm “R&R”. Cuba had a very high HIV infection rate, converted a prison island into a gulag for anyone suspected of infection.

R119, why is either scenario improbable? The connections between the Congo, Haiti and Cuba are well-known.

R120 They’re improbable as both are whole cloth speculation without evidence. That’s the point. That’s also why a number of people bring up antivaxers. Same issue: the attempt to connect unrelated data points results in a slippery slope fallacy.

Next, we’ll get this as “Mossad created it as revenge on Idi Amin for Entebbe”

[quote]Randy Shilts was a pioneer of gay journalism, and wrote a very well-researched and important book, one of the first in-depth studies of AIDS in America. To call him a shitbag or anything else because we know more now than we did then is silly.

Amen. Shilts was working with the information available at the time and was not trying to deceive people intentionally or spread false theories. His work is still tremendously important.

[quote]Wasn't there some god-awful gross movie in the 1970's about people eating raw monkey brains?

R114, that would be [bold]Faces of Death[/bold] (1978).

No, that was not the origin of HIV.

The Wikipedia article mentions the Haiti connection and cites this article from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, among others. I don't know what kind of proof r121 is looking for.

The Haiti connection and American sex tourism is believed to be the point of entry of HIV into the US.

The Scandinavian (or whatever he was) sailor who died of AIDS very early on was known to patronize prostitutes when he was in the Congo.

Wasn't there a Haitian immigrant who died in NYC in the 60s of what is now widely thought to be AIDS? I remember coming across something like that when reading about those early non-African cases which were either confirmed or strongly suspected to have been AIDS.

Besides Arvind Noe, one of the early European cases were linked to the Portuguese soldiers who were returning from the war in Guinea Bissau in the 70s.

^^some, not one

So basically, everyone who died, who got sick, who exhibited symptoms of the AIDS virus between 1981 and 1988 were ALL infected before 1981? That doesn't sound right. I thought incubation period was something like six weeks before the first symptoms begin to show. And if this was so, then why did the largest number of AIDS deaths happen in the early 90s?

I'm not saying I have any answers, I just wonder if anyone really knows.

I remember reading where someone hypothesized that the 1976 Bicentennial celebration and the sailors possibly helped spread the disease. I don't remember where I read that or if there is anything to it.

That was in And the Band Played On

R130, thanks.

R102, R103

Settlers also deliberately infected blankets with smallpox other diseases and handed them out to the native American population as a gesture of "friendship".

And people think HIV/AIDS being created by the CIA is unbelievable...

It's because they don't want to believe it. Ask survivors about the Hep B vaccine tests going on the community at that time.

That's the exact link I posted, r84.

AIDS can be traced directly back to the Congo in the 1920s, before there WAS a CIA. Why do people keep pushing this anti-science nonsense?

Sorry, R134 Links weren't working for me so I never noticed.

HIV can cause little or no symptoms for years. Some people never present symptoms (Long Term Non Progressers) and they're thought to have a mutation in their system that keeps HIV from entering their cells. Some people have no resistance to HIV and would progress quickly but generally at least six months to a year. Then there are different people in different stages of health and that would contribute to how fast progression to AIDS happens. So there definitely were people with HIV back then in different stages of progression who would have no idea they were infected.

Boy do posters get sidetracked into off topics. This is a very interesting case. You have this kid, 15/16 presenting full blown symptoms of aids in 1969. He was in and out of 3 hospitals in the st louis area for almost a year before he died. Of course the drs had no clue. He was practically mute and would give almost no info to the drs. His family members were equally as mute. He did say his mid 50 s grandfather had died with the same symptoms in 1966. The drs thought the boy may be developmently disabled due to his lack of communication. Also his grandmother died a few years after the grandfather at a younger age (mid 50 s) with no cause known or details known. The boy refused to allow a rectal exam. He had something of a girlfriend who did not ever get sick.

At his autopsy it was discovered that he had evidence of anal scarring and heavy anal intercourse. He also had hemmeroids ???? At 16? The kid and the family members being so closed mouthed?? Could it have been incest? I recall he had an older brother who only died a few years ago so if it was incest it only seems to have been the boy as victim. There was mention maybe he was a sex worker? In 1969 at age 15 or 16?? In st louis? Seems pretty unlikely. Maybe he was just rampantly sexually active at a very young age with men on the downlow.

It was hypothized that somehow possibly the virus was spread between the grandfather and grandson and grandmother thru casual blood contact and maybe the grandfather had been an IV drug user and this was brought over from Europe and it was confined to this family at that point in some rare fluke.

The other factor since aids takes usually 7 years to develop......... that would put the kid at 9 at the latest to have contracted?? It seems like the family keeping mum about circumstances plays into this, but it is baffling to put the pieces to the puzzle together.

Sci show gives the facts

Scishow stage two

R63, R64, R65, R66.

[quote] There was mention maybe he was a sex worker? In 1969 at age 15 or 16?? In st louis? Seems pretty unlikely.

Yes, especially since no one in 1969 used the absolutely fucking stupid term "sex worker."

Lots of unprotected sex these days.... I worry!

Yes the chimps die from their version of AIDS which got passed to people. So do the gorillas. Additionally, cats die of of their version, too. I have two die. Viruses from us go to chimps and gorillas and decimate their populations too. There has been this danger since humans started trekking to see the gorillas. Most of our viruses they can catch.

When a virus “jumps” species does that mean it mutates and physically “lands” on the second species?

Meaning it probably alway has been touching the second species it’s just that until it mutates it cant really really affect or harm the second species?

R128, I'm going to try to tackle your question ... s.

HIV isn't like the flu. People get infected and have varying responses to the infection. Some people succumbed quickly (months to a year or more), some more slowly (years), and a few never did. When you're talking about immunity and opportunistic infections, there are a lot of variables. But nobody really had a grip on what was killing gay men and how until the mid-80s. So if you were one of the unlucky ones who died in 1981-83, it's possible nobody even knew you had GRID or the gay plague or whatever they were calling it then.

What happened, as with many contagious diseases, was that a small group of infected people were clustered in major cities (SF, NYC, etc) that permitted the virus to be spread quickly (buttfucking) among a large and ever increasing number of people over a period of years.

The spread was facilitated by national and international travel. The deregulation of airlines in the US beginning in 1979 and cheaper airfares increased travel. Because the sx of HIV are delayed, there was much buttfucking among infected but asymptomatic people, and some of these people got around, nationally and internationally.

By the mid to late 80s, you have lots of infected people, and because there are no effective treatments, they are dying in large numbers over the next several years as HIV took over their immune symptoms. Safe sex campaigns started in earnest in the late 80s, and took some time to create results, because there were already many infected men. But by the early 90s, the rate of infection began declining.

R138, prostitution is the "oldest profession." It is entirely believable that a 16 year old minority young man, exposed to sex through abuse, living in a large, economically declining, wildly racist city in the 1960s, might turn to sex work.

Both parts of Frontline's excellent AIDS documentary.

R148 - there is a preview at 3:50:26, for the next FRONTLINE "The Last Abortion Clinic" (this was from 2006)

Timeline of early HIV/AIDS cases

Thank you R146. I'm not sure we are on the absolute same page, but I agree with everything you said and that's been my understanding. I was reacting to the assertions here that the incubation was a hard and fast 7/10 years and did not or could not vary.

I'm finding this entire thread just fascinating and I'm so glad it's being discussed.

[quote]AIDS can be traced directly back to the Congo in the 1920s, before there WAS a CIA. Why do people keep pushing this anti-science nonsense?

Because people with enough brain power to remember things can recall the last "AIDS can be traced directly back to" scenario, and it was utter bullshit, yet had blind, nearly unquestioned support from the scientific community and from mainstream media.

So forgive people if they don't jump feet first on the Congo Train.

[quote]Boy do posters get sidetracked into off topics. This is a very interesting case.

I know, right. I want to know more about THIS story.

[quote] You have this kid, 15/16 presenting full blown symptoms of aids in 1969. He was in and out of 3 hospitals in the st louis area for almost a year before he died. Of course the drs had no clue. He was practically mute and would give almost no info to the drs. His family members were equally as mute. He did say his mid 50 s grandfather had died with the same symptoms in 1966. The drs thought the boy may be developmently disabled due to his lack of communication.

I work with disabled children, and I don't think this boy was disabled. He was described as shy from the articles that I read. I think he was most likely abused by the grandfather, and he had the insight to know that he probably had what killed his grandfather.

[quote]Also his grandmother died a few years after the grandfather at a younger age (mid 50 s) with no cause known or details known. The boy refused to allow a rectal exam. He had something of a girlfriend who did not ever get sick.

I don't think he did anything sexual with the girlfriend, not all teens are sexually active. I know that was the case for me.

[quote]At his autopsy it was discovered that he had evidence of anal scarring and heavy anal intercourse. He also had hemmeroids ???? At 16? The kid and the family members being so closed mouthed?? Could it have been incest?

Yes. The virus, which takes up 7 years to turn into AIDS, was probably introduced into the boy's body when he was 8 years old.

[quote] I recall he had an older brother who only died a few years ago so if it was incest it only seems to have been the boy as victim.

I think it's possible that Robert's brother was spared for some reason or another.

[quote]There was mention maybe he was a sex worker? In 1969 at age 15 or 16?? In st louis? Seems pretty unlikely. Maybe he was just rampantly sexually active at a very young age with men on the downlow.

I don't think this is true at all. If it were, then he would have infected people. Plus, by all accounts, he was very shy, didn't speak much. . .

[quote]It was hypothized that somehow possibly the virus was spread between the grandfather and grandson and grandmother thru casual blood contact and maybe the grandfather had been an IV drug user and this was brought over from Europe and it was confined to this family at that point in some rare fluke.

His grandfather kept a job, so I doubt he was drug user. Most likely, the grandfather is Patient Zero. How he got it no one knows, but it's quite clear how the grandmother and grandson got it.

[quote]The other factor since aids takes usually 7 years to develop......... that would put the kid at 9 at the latest to have contracted?? It seems like the family keeping mum about circumstances plays into this, but it is baffling to put the pieces to the puzzle together.

The boy checked in at the hospital at 15 and he died at age 16. So, he came into contact with the virus at 8. Most likely, he was abused and no one addressed the issue.

Interesting article on Ardouin Antonio, the Haitian immigrant who died of a rare opportunistic form of pneumonia in Brooklyn a decade before Rayford.

R117 was so dumb I laughed

R154 Pneumocystis Jirovecii Pneumonia (Carinnii) is not unique to patients with GRID/AIDS/HIV and nor is Kaposi's sarcoma. They both had names before the earliest examples of GRID/AIDS/HIV occurred.

They also frequently present in patients who have also have a weakened immune system for other reasons and in patients receiving radiation type treatments/organ transplant patients/leukemia sufferers etc.

As far as I'm aware there isn't any particular illness that is unique to people with HIV.

The "Seven years 'till AIDS" loons R117 and R153 need to give it a rest.

The progression from HIV infection to AIDS is highly variable. Things that influence it are genetics, age at infection, general health and nutrition status, and the version of the virus contracted. The period of time can be from months to years.

They used to think the infection incubated for years, but they since found it doesn't.

It turns out AIDS rates were not high in either Haiti or Cuba, nor did any predate the American outbreak.

As far as I know the ONLY case that hasn't been debunked of pre-1977 AIDS is the Norwegian sailor.

R158 It doesn't incubate for years but it is possible to be a Long-term non-progressor (LTNP or asymptomatic) for many years. I know because I was for at least 15 years.

I've never seen this photo of Gaëtan Dugas before. Could he ever have even imagined during those carefree days in the '70s that his name, identity, and entire life would be consumed by the advent of a plague no one could see coming? He reportedly even crossed paths with Freddie Mercury through a shared partner.

R11 - "Patient Zero" was the person who the San Francisco investigators found that made them understand how the disease was being spread. But that's it.

[quote]As far as I know the ONLY case that hasn't been debunked of pre-1977 AIDS is the Norwegian sailor.

No, there are confirmed HIV-1 cases in a Congolese man and woman in 1959 and 1960.

It didn’t just materialize out of thin air in the late ‘70s. There were likely several isolated infections in the US in previous years before it was able to take hold and spread. Rayford may or may not have been one of those cases. Unfortunately, the last of his samples was lost in Hurricane Katrina, so it’s impossible to do further tests.

Yes, Kaposi’s Sarcoma existed prior to AIDS, but outside of that context, it almost exclusively affects elderly men of Jewish descent. Rayford was a black teenager from the Midwest. If he had KS, it was likely caused by AIDS.

It absolutely does not necessarily take years from seroconversion for AIDS to develop. The men who started dying in 1981 probably contracted the virus from 2-5 years previously.

[quote]He also had hemmeroids ????

Oh, dear!

[Quote] As far as I'm aware there isn't any particular illness that is unique to people with HIV.

Yes, HIV just weakens your immune system and people get the diseases your general immunity has previously protected you from—PCP pneumonia, CMV retinitis, etc. Kaposi’s Sarcoma is caused by the herpes virus and usually affects only those who go HIV through sex.

Once the immune system is strengthened through medicines nowadays, the potential to eat these diseases fades away

[quote]It turns out AIDS rates were not high in either Haiti or Cuba, nor did any predate the American outbreak.

I don’t know about Cuba, but that is absolutely not true about Haiti. Haiti had a mini-epidemic after it was first introduced there around 1966.

R159. You’re uninformed. Haiti has the highest HIV infection rate in the region at 2.2% - double the rate of the Dominican Republic.

As for Cuba, starting in 1986 it engaged in national mandatory testing and incarceration of everyone who tested positive. But, as you will recall, several years prior Castro permitted undesirables to leave under the Mariel boatlift. Out of some 125,000 Cubans who came here in 1980, perhaps 20,000 were gay. The right wing (and some paranoid theorists) have claimed this this when the disease entered the US as it began to appear across the US in major cities in the gay population at approximately the same time - which is unusual for any disease.

Yes, Kaposi's sarcoma is herpesvirus 8.

Many of us have that virus in our bodies, along with other bacteria and fungi that cause AIDS-related opportunistic infections. (Pneumocystis pneumonia is caused by a fungus that 20% of healthy people carry at any given time.)

A healthy immune system holds them in check. HIV degrades the immune system, allowing them to take over organs and manifest as disease.

[quote] Haiti had a mini-epidemic after it was first introduced there around 1966.

Not disputing it, but would like to read more about it, i you have a link.

[quote]GRID or the gay plague or whatever they were calling it then

Gay cancer!

ass cancer

Has there been any verification of the boy's statement that his grandfather died of something with similar symptoms? It seems to be repeated and elaborated on here (e.g. in the suspicion that his grandfather molested him), but upthread posters were doubting its source.

It couldn't have entered the US just from the Mariel boatlift, which was in 1980. There were several men who were getting sick in 1979.

R174. Don’t disagree. Just pointing out the unscientific “theories” that are constantly asserted as original points of infection. Somehow, the Haitians always get blamed for a disease that is almost certain to have first emerged in Congo.

We really have no idea how it emerged in humans and how it arrived in the US.

R173, the Wikipedia page linked at R9 appears to have been recently edited to remove any reference to an uncle (or grandfather). It may have been spurious information all along.

One thing for sure is that you could never trust the NYTS and their reporting on AIDS.

Why, R177?

[quote]Somehow, the Haitians always get blamed for a disease that is almost certain to have first emerged in Congo.

No one is blaming Haitians. It’s a virus - an unfortunate act of nature that cannot be anyone’s fault. No one set out to get infected or to spread the infection. These things happen, and they’re a horrible tragedy. But it’s no one’s fault - not Haitians, not Congolese, not gay men.

Evidence suggests that it entered Haiti from the Congo in the 1960s, and spread from Haiti to NYC around 1971, and from NYC to SF around 1976. But no one knew it was happening and certainly people weren’t intentionally spreading infection.

R54 “Are you telling me the person who apparently can't read has the initials DR, from years back?”

Dracula Reincarnated?

[quote]There was mention maybe he was a sex worker? In 1969 at age 15 or 16?? In st louis? Seems pretty unlikely.

Oh no, not at all. My grandfather was perpetually out of work, and one family secret is that he for a time was the general assistant at a "jazz house" outside of St Louis. He bought supplies and made repairs. This would have been the 1940s.

And underaged girls worked those places, and it's very likely a few underaged boys did too.

R167, I'm not finding anything about that mini epidemic. Got a link?

I stumbled on this a few years ago. give it a listen, it's facilitating. They talk about tracking the DNA all the way back to the source where HIV first formed between 3 rivers in Africa. Goes back to 1800's. There is actually a Chimp Zero. Think about it, if chimps had HIV for thousands of years, then so would the men who hunted and ate them, but that's not the case. It seems to have created by a series of freak events.

Gaetan Dugas had a layover in Africa, next thing you know...boom AIDS is born.

The following is one man's tribute to fallen friend Vinnie Loscalzo, a NYC casualty in 1973.

As the author notes, it is impossible for him to confirm AIDS in someone dead for four decades, but the presence of a fast-moving and all consuming skin cancer in a young, out, free gay man raises some red flags:

[quote]And then, probably around 1973, he got sick, some rare skin cancer that overtook him quickly, and he died.

[quote]Vinnie Loscalzo was a young, active gay man. Vinnie Loscalzo came down with a weird skin cancer. Could Vinnie have had Kaposi’s? Could Vinnie—sweet, funny, happily gay Vinnie, working in an environment where he had no need to hide his fundamental nature—could Vinnie have died of AIDS?

Ultimately, the author admits that it's conjecture which can never be proven.

[quote]We’ll never know. He died, and that’s terrible enough. But if he died of AIDS in 1973, then he was the earliest case I personally know of. And that’s a fascinating piece of theoretical conjecture, though ultimately nothing more.

[quote]give it a listen, it's facilitating.

Oh, dear!

I'm not R167, but it's well-known that Haiti has the highest rates of HIV infection outside of Africa, and during the first fifteen years following the discovery of HIV Haiti had a rate of HIV progression nearly twice as high as in developed countries. It also has more strains of HIV than the U.S.

When it was first getting mainstream news coverage the alliterative summary everyone used was that AIDS was a disease affecting “Haitians, Homosexuals and Hemophiliacs.”

So the obligatory tasteless joke of the time was;

Q - What’s the most difficult part of catching AIDS? A - Convincing your mother you’re Haitian.

Computer models used to say HIV arrived in the 1930s due to its mutation rate, but its mutation rate may have changed.

The fact is people have been working on biological weapons in an organized way for a hundred years, it would be an infinitesimal probability they haven't started numerous plagues accidentally AND intentionally.

For R182:

[quote]Haiti appears to have the oldest HIV/AIDS epidemic outside sub-Saharan Africa

A film about Cuba's sanatoriums in the 1980s, The Companion (El Acompañante)

R22, the strain Rayford had was similar to that from Paris but not from New York. That is shown by medical records. R16's article is well-documented and he provides resource information where he has it and explains his thought processes where he does not. There is a lot of information provided but none of it relates to New York.

The article at 185 is touching but also rather chilling. I wonder if other eldergays remember friends or acquaintances dying young of pneumonia or cancer in the 70s, and if those were also early victims of the Plague.

Haiti's first case was 1982

R193 I suspect the fate of Vinnie Loscalzo was not an isolated thing at that early time, it's possible there were other such early mystery casualties, men whose friends didn't themselves survive to relate the story all these years later.

If it weren't for a single blog entry, no one would know of this one particular case.

[quote]men whose friends didn't themselves survive to relate the story all these years later.

Now that is really a sad thought, isn't it? The early victims aren't remembered because so many gay men had only their friends as family, and those friends did not survive, either.

If AIDS came to NYC around 1970, and the incubation period varies from months to years, it stands to reason that there were some people who caught it early, died quickly, and were never counted as victims.

R195 and r196 are some of the saddest posts I’ve read in a long time. I wish I didn’t read them, alas, they’re true.

is there any accurate count of how many gay men died from AIDS?

Yes, and it's odd that such fast-moving, fatal mystery illnesses weren't singled out for later, further investigation. People may never know how many were lost to time.

It would be interesting if someone were to crunch the data on pneumonia and cancer deaths in NYC and SF in the 70s, singling out men who died before the age of 40. It would be impossible to prove if those were AIDS deaths or not, but it might illuminate the early spread of the illness.

R198 Gay men are still dying of AIDS I fear for all the young gays that think it’s just another type of sexually transmitted disease

If a modern-day person contracts HIV, finds out early, and is totally compliant with their meds, will they stay asymptomatic, live a normal lifespan, and never progress to AIDS? I hear such conflicting reports about the efficacy of the current drugs.

R200 if it is possible to find surviving hospital records from that time, if would be interesting and perhaps helpful to know the stats. That's why I wish doctors would have noticed the anomalies happening around them and archived the files.

Laws mandating how long hospitals and clinics must keep patient files are not consistent from state to state, so it wound be hard to know if there was any incentive in New York to keep files for a long time.

It is fascinating that HIV was present in the 1970s. Really was a product of the right environment. The explosion of gay sex was a ripe breeding ground for it.

But I always thought it strange that it was a straight disease in Africa and Haiti - but a gay one in US and Europe. Given the abundance of unprotected straight sex that was happening at the same time, curious why it only took hold in the gay world. Given the transmission was more virulent via anal sex, why did it end up affecting so many straight people in Africa and Haiti but not really in US.

Africa didn't have large concentrations of gay men. They also didn't have things like gay bars and baths.

R164 ~Why would Jewish men get Kaposi's Sarcoma?

The wikipedia entry on the history of HIV suggests one theory for the specifically hetero spread in Africa is female genital mutilation. It links to this old article that points out that extreme female circumcision can result in blood during sex, or even make vaginal sex impossible--hence more anal than straight Americans were probably doing back in the day.

R203, it's such a fascinating and obvious subject for a research study, that I can't believe nobody has done it and published it: Which makes me think that people must have looked into it and seen that the data just wasn't there. As you said, not all hospitals keep long-term records. Also, given that many openly gay men were leading bohemian, liminal lives in the early 70s, who knows that the records ever existed? They might not have had regular doctors, and when they did seek medical care they wouldn't have been seen as 'important' patients. Doctors are busy, who cares why some scruffy downtowner died of pneumonia?

We know about Robert Rayford because his doctors happened to be curious enough about his condition to keep blood and tissue samples, but there are probably lots of other early cases we'll never know about because the doctors WEREN'T curious.

Even if the data were there, the only way to be sure about the reality of the men who died would be to interview family members, and even today, lots of families would never admit that adorable Uncle Robbie was anything but 100% hetero. Even if he worked as a hairdresser in NYC, died of pneumonia in 1975, and had a long-term roommate who showed up to the funeral and wept bitterly. The roomie, by the way, ALSO died a couple of years later from some funny cancer--what are the odds?

[quote]there are probably lots of other early cases we'll never know about because the doctors WEREN'T curious.

Which points to a much larger, still-present problem in the health care industry in general.

R206, some Jewish men have a genetic trait that makes them vulnerable to that specific infection.

A simple study of pneumonia deaths and skin cancer/sarcoma deaths would be interesting - even without detailed info. Just seeing the death rate for under 40 men in NYC and SF from those diseases would be informative,

Jews belong to a religion not a race.

Jewish people in America tend to have common ancestry because of mass migrations from specific places, R212. That makes their cohort vulnerable to specific illnesses. KP can affect elderly men from other Mediterranean countries as well.

R208 The longitudinal studies were done in France and the UK which had the long-term data because of their national patient data systems. You’re correct in your thinking. This is where the Pasteur Institute and Dr. Luc Montaignier focused much of their research.

There was a hepatitis study in late 70s SanFran which took blood samples from 6700 gay men. Later on, those samples were tested and about 70% of the participants tested positive for the AIDS antibody. By that time (1987), 10% of the subjects had full-blown AIDS, and half of those were dead. This doesn't show very early victims, but it certainly shows that the virus was widespread long before lots of people were noticeably ill.

That's why pictures of late 70s NYC and SF gay nightlife always give me a chill--everybody is so beautiful and happy and so many of them are already infected with the bug that will kill them.

The true [italic]Lost Generation[/italic]. RIP 😢

The statistics in the WaPo article above are chilling:

[quote]Using the test and samples of the frozen blood, the researchers tracked the footprints of the AIDS epidemic in the San Francisco men. They found that:Undetected, the virus had spread rapidly among this group of sexually active men. With the consent of the participants, CDC randomly tested stored blood samples and found about 3 percent of the gay men in the hepatitis study showed antibodies to the then-unknown AIDS virus in 1978, rising quickly to 12 percent in 1979, 20 percent in 1980 and 36 percent in 1981. By 1983, 62 percent were positive. Although the rise has since slowed, preliminary results show that more than 70 percent of those tested in 1986 follow-up studies were positive on the AIDS antibody blood test. . . .Because many people in the hepatitis vaccine study gave frequent blood samples, instances in which a person converted from negative to positive can often be pinpointed within months.

Wow R215, that is shocking. Thanks for sharing. It really tells the story - by the time people knew, it was too late. Truly victims of a unique and possibly historically singular epidemic. Reminds me how lucky I was to be born just 2 years later - to be allowed to live until middle age and to see so much life no matter how bad things may seem at certain points. There but for the grace of.....

That's why the modern fetishization of bareback sex makes me see red. Young gaylings need to understand more about their history. Maybe if they did, they would wrap it up.

The stats at the beginning of the WaPo article are a bit misleading. The quote at R217 clears things up: In 1978, only 3% of the participants in the Hep B study tested positive for the AIDS antibody. By 1986, more than70% of them did. The numbers swelled throughout the late 70s and early 80s, showing how quickly the bug spread once it was in a mobile, sociable, promiscuous population.

[quote]That's why pictures of late 70s NYC and SF gay nightlife always give me a chill--everybody is so beautiful and happy and so many of them are already infected with the bug that will kill them.

This comment just gave me a legit chill. I’ll never see those pictures the same way again.

There was a 60 minutes episode a saw awhile ago that talked of the early rise of AIDS and the correlation with hep b vaccinations in the gay community and also a rise in blood donation. I cannot find it as of yet, but it was very interesting for 60 minutes.

I understand the whole theory of C.I.A. involvement, but that's a little too simple. I don't believe the virus was created, but I do think there was some "mismanagement" of said virus. It's very suspicious that a specific, deadly, virus can only specifically affect certain "undesirable" populations (i.e. Blacks and gays). If one thinks that government wouldn't be involved in this, they would be sadly misinformed. Just look back at Tuskegee experiments, Native American exposure to small pox, and various other "experiments" that are out there. Don't get me started on that creepy island off the east coast..

[quote]It's very suspicious that a specific, deadly, virus can only specifically affect certain "undesirable" populations (i.e. Blacks and gays).

But AIDS isn’t one of them. It affects everyone from children to straights to the elderly and everything in between.

Also, AIDS strikes lesbians in low numbers, so the gay-targeting doesn't exactly work.

It's not a specifically gay/black only disease, and I'm not advocating any conspiracy theory. However-one could certainly argue that the majority of non gay, non black victims would have been those considered to be "undesirables" by anyone who would be concocting such a virus (i.e. IV drug users, low income minorities) and anyone else infected would be looked upon as collateral damage.

Again, don't flame me. I'm not pushing the conspiracy, merely playing devil's advocate to a statement upthread.

I see your point, R225. But think of it this way: Diseases happen in isolated populations all the time--look at Legionnaire's. But unlike with Legionnaire's, the government mostly ignored AIDS for almost a decade, allowing the epidemic to get more and more out of control. Why did they do this? Because it affected people that rich, white, straight lawmakers didn't give a fuck about. The conspiracy was one of silence, and we're still paying the butcher's bill for it.

I agree with you 100% R226. If you want to use the word conspiracy that way- I'm on board. The government didn't care because they viewed it as a disease that eliminated populations that they'd just as soon didn't exist. And by doing nothing, they had the blood of tens of thousands of people on their hands.

But I don't think they concocted the virus. I was merely saying that- If they did, then the fact that it could infect others outside of those "undesirables" would not have given them pause.

No, those types of people never worry about collateral damage. The same type who send thousands of young men into the jungles of Vietnam to get maimed and killed, all to win an unwinnable war for illogical stakes.

[quote]Young gaylings need to understand more about their history.

They can't be bothered with anything that isn't trending this very minute.

I agree that there had to be isolated cases of AIDS in the 70s but because the victims were on the margins of society it wasn't explored in-depth by the medical establishment. There could've been "pneumonia" deaths of young gay men that were not looked into further.

If you follow the WHO studies and the Morbidity and Mortality Reports for each country from 1970 to 1980, you can identify the likely patterns when HIV begins to expand 7 to 10 years following the initial doubling in tuberculosis.

R230 in the blog I linked to @ r185, the author describes reading a pre-1975 account of a young man who died of pneumocystis carinii, in addition to the likely Kaposi-related death of his friend.

This would fit with your speculation.

I wonder how many cases could have been prevented if more doctors at the time had been more curious, and proactive, and more like a detective, instead of upholding the status quo, merely treating the patient, losing the patient, shrugging, and moving on.

I have always wondered if that's what Ratzo Rizzo had in Midnight Cowboy.

Perhaps that's what they ended up showing, without realizing that's what they were trying to show, since it was a work of fiction, and nobody knew what AIDS / GRID was at that time.

The same surveillance system that noticed it in 1981 would have noticed in 1971.

AND YET---it didn't.

Because it wasn't there. And they are still trying, lamely, to cover up what they did.

i thought the rayford case was debunked

[quote] If we had a time machine, we could prevent the boy and his uncle from being born and avert the later AIDS epidemic.

I'd settle for giving Danny Pintauro's mother an abortion.

So this is an honest question. We know HIV is transmitted through bodily fluids. Unprotected Anal sex, sharing needles etc. Is there something about the vagina that prevents the crossing into the blood stream? I know things can pass in the anus as people take things rectally and it enters the bloodstream faster (alcohol, coke, caffeine) is that not true of the vagina? I realize the explosion of AIDS in gay men was due to anal sex being their primary intercourse but I find it difficult to believe straight men and women were not also having anal sex. TBH the conspiracy that it was created in a lab somewhere to kill off gay men is at least somewhat believable. I mean states still have anti-sodomy laws on the books, with conservatives looking at it as something perverted and only done by vile homosexuals..

I don't think anal was all that common in the '70s for straights. You can catch AIDS vaginally (or even orally), but it's more difficult as there is less chance of small tears leading into the bloodstream than with anal sex.

[quote]Haiti's first case was 1982

Sure, after they knew what it was.

[quote]TBH the conspiracy that it was created in a lab somewhere to kill off gay men is at least somewhat believable.

If you have a double digit IQ, sure.

[quote]Is there something about the vagina that prevents the crossing into the blood stream?

The vaginal walls are much thicker than the walls of the rectum.

There are 8 layers of cells lining the vagina, and only one layer in the rectum. That's why anal is such an effective transmission route.

[quote] I'd settle for giving Danny Pintauro's mother an abortion.

I've always wondered what Judith Light thought about Danny's bullshit claims and the fact that he (at least attempted to) spread such terrible misinformation on his aborted Beam of Light Tour or whatever the fuck it was called.

That woman has worked tirelessly for decades on behalf of AIDS research, funding, care, etc.

What bothers me more about Pintauro is his claim that he became HIV+ from unsafe oral sex.

While it’s definitely possible, he was a meth queen, so I highly doubt he got it the most difficult possible way to get it.

Don't forget that theren't aren't many gay men ejaculating into vaginas.

More than you might think, R247 -- a fair number of women were infected by their closeted husbands.

True. I didn't mean it as an insult but it was barely enough to make a blip on the statistics. I bought a book on AIDS written by someone who lived through the epidemic. It was just so depressing I couldn't even make it halfway through before I stopped. I can't imagine what it was like to actually live through. I keep meaning to go back to it. Chronicle of a Plague, Revisited: AIDS and Its Aftermath

R248 like Miss Kitty from Gunsmoke.

And Tina Chow.

Gia Carangi may have gotten it from prostituting herself for drugs at her lowest point, though a needle infection is probably more likely.

Alison Gertz was infected by a bisexual man.

So other question. Why is it universally accepted that the only cases of heterosexual women getting it are from Bi-sexual men? Do people think only gays get HIV and any hetero infections are because of a bi-sexual man?

Gertz's story was particularly sad. A single sexual encounter when she was 16, and she didn't even realize she was infected for 6 years. By then she had full-blown AIDS, and she died a few years before the cocktail became available.

It's far easier for the receptive partner to catch the disease, R254, whether that partner is male or female. Exclusively heterosexual men are not the receivers of semen, so especially in the early days of the epidemic, they were far less likely to be infected. A man CAN catch it from a woman, but it's not nearly as likely as a man catching it from another man.

Not to be crass, R253/R255, but Gertz might have let the guy who infected her finish in her ass.

I knew girls who were having anal sex in high school in the early '90s.

Seems like a rather advanced move for a 16-year-old in 1982, but she WAS hanging out at Studio 54 . . .

Even if he did, it doesn't make her death less tragic.

The guy who gave it to her was pretty hot.

With the Arvid Noe case, some doctors believe he contracted HIV from African prostitutes when he was there working as sailor in the 60s. IIRC, he had been treated for an STD there around that time.

Most Studio 54 bartenders were. I bet more than one seroconversion had its origins in the balcony and basements of 54.

And even more at the Mudd Club.

That's a lie R244, but how easily you fall for right-wing propaganda.

R243 is a fool.

A documentary was recently made about Gaetan Dugas.

A hero? Umm....

R266: You are an ignoramus.

R266 I disagree with that headline. He wasn't a hero and IIRC, he said he didn't care if others got infected by him.

Yeah those were my thoughts.

R268 He died before there was a test. So, exactly how would have known that he was infecting people with a disease that was unknown.

Bullshit 270. He knew he had a disease that could be spread through sexual contact and the public health groups begged him to stop having unprotected sex and he wouldn't. He didn't care.

R271 That’s magical thinking. Here you have a man who was sick with an unidentified disease from which he died a year before there was a test. From the original media buzz about the disease in 1981 until the introduction of the test in 1985, there was a lot of hysteria about the modes of transmission.

Was it sex? Shut down the bath houses. Was it poppers. Ban them. But you miss the point. Dugas not only was already sick by the time the disease itself was identified, he repeatedly assisted CDC with blood and tissue samples, potentially infected people. Most people didn’t and this helped set the original baseline for 7% infection New York and 4% in San Francisco.

Far from not caring, he volunteered to care for other people who were sick. So don’t buy into the sexed up hype from Shilt’s book that was filled with errors. Shilts left a lot out - like that he was gay and sick himself.

Gaetan Dugas was clearly a complicated person. His refusing to give up having sex was problematic, but he wasn't alone in refusing to do it. A lot of gay men saw the safe sex movement as a way of shoving them back in the closet: For them, sex wasn't just sex, it was liberation. Some became quite fatalistic and decided anyone still barebacking in the bath houses and bars was probably already infected anyway--they didn't know it was possible to become infected with multiple strains.

Interestingly, those same relationships and social networks that got everybody laid (and infected) in the 70s became the networks that held everyone together at the height of the plague: political action, social support, care for the dying, it all came out of the fact that everybody knew and had fucked each other a few years ago.

r10, remember as they told us in school. Wikipedia is not a reliable source to cite evidence from.

Yes, but what are the sources for the report about Robert Rayford's telling doctors that his grandfather had similar symptoms?

R275, the only source appears to be the online article linked at R16. The author doesn't explain his source for the claim.

Thank you, R276.