AIDS

june 5th marked the 29th anniversary of the CDC's identification of what is now known as AIDS.

there were no parties or celebrations, there was no congratulations, no awards. i didn't even blog it until now, and was reluctant to do so. i decided in memory and dedication to all the loved ones we have lost, i would blog now and include the monumental photo by Therese Frare of david kirby and his family.

A Picture That Changed the Face of AIDS
In November, 1990, LIFE magazine published a photograph of a young man, David Kirby- his body wasted by AIDS, his gaze locked on something beyond this world - surrounded by anguished family members as he took his last breaths. The haunting image of Kirby's passing (above), taken by a journalism grad student named Therese Frare, became the one photograph most identified with the HIV/AIDS epidemic that, by then, had seen as many as 12 million people infected. Now, 20 years after her photograph helped transform public perception of the disease, LIFE spoke with Frare about that picture; the international controversy it sparked when United Colors of Benetton used it in a 1992 ad; and the never-before-published photographs she took before and after David Kirby's death -- photos that reveal the untold story behind one of the 20th century's most heart-breaking, indelible images. READ MORE-

AIDS was first reported June 5, 1981, when the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) recorded a cluster of Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (now still classified as PCP but known to be caused by Pneumocystis jirovecii) in five homosexual men in Los Angeles. In the beginning, the CDC did not have an official name for the disease, often referring to it by way of the diseases that were associated with it, for example, lymphadenopathy, the disease after which the discoverers of HIV originally named the virus. They also used Kaposi's Sarcoma and Opportunistic Infections, the name by which a task force had been set up in 1981.

In the general press, the term GRID, which stood for Gay-related immune deficiency, had been coined. The CDC, in search of a name, and looking at the infected communities coined “the 4H disease,” as it seemed to single out Haitians, homosexuals, hemophiliacs, and heroin users. However, after determining that AIDS was not isolated to the homosexual community, the term GRID became misleading and AIDS was introduced at a meeting in July 1982. By September 1982 the CDC started using the name AIDS, and properly defined the illness.
The earliest known positive identification of the HIV virus comes from the Congo in 1959 and 1960 though genetic studies indicate that it passed into the human population from chimpanzees around fifty years earlier. A recent study states that HIV probably moved from Africa to Haiti and then entered the United States around 1969.
during the early plague years- 1981 thru 1986, then president ronald reagan would not even say the words- AIDS, until rock hudson's death in 1985.

In 2010, former US President Bill Clinton said that countries receiving aid to combat the epidemic should redirect funding to local organizations who could spend it most effectively and efficiently. He said,
"In too many countries too much money goes to pay for too many people to go to too many meetings, get on too many airplanes."