Today in 2SLGBTQI+ history…
On June 5, 1981, the first cases of the illness now known as Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) were reported in the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR). The report announced that five previously healthy young gay men in Los Angeles had contracted a rare lung infection, known as Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP), along with other opportunistic infections.
Los Angeles immunologist Dr. Michael Gottlieb, CDC’s Dr. Wayne Shandera, and their colleagues reported that all the young men had other unusual infections as well, indicating that their immune systems were not working. Two of the men had died by the time the report was published, and the others died soon after publication.
In the years prior to the publication of the report, a few physicians and public health workers in coastal cities had noticed strange opportunistic infections in otherwise healthy gay men, but the June 5 edition of the MMWR marks the first official reporting of what would later become known as the AIDS epidemic. By the end of 1981, the disease was given the name of GRID (Gay-Related Immune Deficiency), “gay plague” or even “gay syndrome,” because it only seemed to affect homosexual men.
Interestingly, the same day that the MMWR was published, New York dermatologist Dr. Alvin Friedman-Kien called the CDC to report a cluster of cases of a rare and unusually aggressive cancer – Kaposi’s Sarcoma (KS) – among gay men in both New York and California. Like PCP, KS is also associated with people who have weakened immune systems.
June 5 now marks HIV Long-term Survivors Awareness Day.
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