July 3, 1981 - RARE CANCER SEEN IN 41 HOMOSEXUALS

[Behind the Aegis]

Doctors in New York and California have diagnosed among homosexual men 41 cases of a rare and often rapidly fatal form of cancer. Eight of the victims died less than 24 months after the diagnosis was made.

The cause of the outbreak is unknown, and there is as yet no evidence of contagion. But the doctors who have made the diagnoses, mostly in New York City and the San Francisco Bay area, are alerting other physicians who treat large numbers of homosexual men to the problem in an effort to help identify more cases and to reduce the delay in offering chemotherapy treatment.

The sudden appearance of the cancer, called Kaposi's Sarcoma, has prompted a medical investigation that experts say could have as much scientific as public health importance because of what it may teach about determining the causes of more common types of cancer. First Appears in Spots

Doctors have been taught in the past that the cancer usually appeared first in spots on the legs and that the disease took a slow course of up to 10 years. But these recent cases have shown that it appears in one or more violet-colored spots anywhere on the body. The spots generally do not itch or cause other symptoms, often can be mistaken for bruises, sometimes appear as lumps and can turn brown after a period of time. The cancer often causes swollen lymph glands, and then kills by spreading throughout the body.

more...

Today is WORLD AIDS DAY. The above article was the first in regards to a disease which would become a pandemic and decimate the gay community. It is a pandemic that many ignored, because it was "killing all the right people."



Bill, Mary, Jim...I remember you.

WORLD AIDS DAY 2020

[Solly Mack]

1. K&R

[Behind the Aegis]

9. Now how did I know?

I just knew you'd be the first or one of the first to "K&R" to this thread! As soon as I opened this thread, I smiled because I saw your name!

[Solly Mack]

12. As soon as I saw it.

For Frank and everyone we lost.

[frazzled]

2. To recall the horror and despair of that time

I recommend The Great Believers, by Rebecca Makkai. It's a pretty good read, despite the tragedy:

Rebecca Makkai’s “The Great Believers” is a page turner about illness and mortality. The novel tells, in alternating chapters, about a group of friends, most of them gay men, in Chicago in the mid-to-late 1980s, and about a woman in 2015 who has gone to Paris in search of her estranged daughter. ...

“The Great Believers” is, as far as I know, among the first novels to chronicle the AIDS epidemic from its initial outbreak to the present — among the first, that is, to convey the terrors and tragedies of the epidemic’s early years as well as its course and its repercussions over the decades. Makkai puts the epidemic (which, of course, has not yet ended) into historical perspective without distancing it or blunting its horrors.

Although it would be impossible, not to mention morally reprehensible, to try to single out the most ruinous period in the AIDS pandemic, those initial years (H.I.V. was first identified in 1983) were terrifying in their own particular way. By 1985, in one of the crueler ironies of the century, gay men had learned that the liberation of the libido, the casting-off of eons-old shame, had exposed them to an implacable, hitherto unknown virus. There was no medication except a drug known as AZT, which was mostly a palliative, and not a very effective one. An AIDS diagnosis, in 1985, was considered a death sentence.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/25/books/review/rebecca-makkai-great-believers.html

[pnwmom]

26. Imagine being the wife of a gay man in that era, a man who spent a lot of time in NYC.

Imagine being a homemaker wife who only learned of her husband's orientation after they had four children.

In 1981 the scientists had no idea what was causing this "gay man's disease," or who was susceptible.

My parents divorced that summer. My mother had been the collateral damage of a culture that forced gay people into marriage with unknowing straight people, if they wanted to have a family and a life.

[dsc]

3. and that is why gay men of a certain age are treating this pandemic seriously

I vividly remember the latter part of those days. I was 14 in 1981 so I was 18 in 1985. Coming into adulthood in the face of AIDS was so scary. Thanks to AIDS we have so many fewer gay men my age and older than we should.

[Behind the Aegis]

8. You're just a few years older than me.

Like you, I too remember coming out (1987 I was 18), and being terrified. And yes, there is a disturbing lack of gay and bi men our age, which frankly, IMO, explains quite a bit of ageism and historical revisionism I see coming from various people.

[jmowreader]

4. One interesting side effect of the AIDS epidemic...

...is it forced the media to discuss sexual terms openly. It turns out it is impossible to report on a lethal sexually-transmitted disease using 1920s-era terms. Pre-AIDS you never saw terms like penis, vagina, condom, sexual intercourse, masturbation or anal sex in the paper or on TV, and now they’re discussed routinely.

[LeftInTX]

11. Make rubbers great again!

In the 70's a condom was the butt of contraception jokes. It was something a teenage boy owned, but always tore.

All of a sudden there was this push to use condoms...I was very skeptical.

[Floyd R. Turbo]

5. Claimed my brother in 90. 🕯

[PCIntern]

6. I had three in my dental practice

I lost 20% or more of my practice in less than two years. It was horrifying...

I have hundreds of stories. Almost none positive or good.

[luvs2sing]

7. Freddie Mercury's biography..

“Somebody to Love”, was fascinating not only because of his story but it also tracks the development of AIDS all the way back to its beginnings in Africa and how it spread. Sort of a biography and contact tracing report rolled into one book.

[Spider Jerusalem]

10. My great-uncle Alvin, died 1985 at the age of 53.

Too many, gone too soon.

[cwydro]

13. Rick, Phil, Joey, Alex.

Michael, Heather, Mario...

I was in Key West in the 80s. God, it was overwhelming.

[DrToast]

14. Confused

Did they think AIDS was a type of cancer? Or can AIDS cause Kaposi's Sarcoma?

[electric_blue68]

17. I think HIV started to weaken the immune system - now...

... as to why KS showed up in particular vs some other cancer I don't know.

[Meowmee]

20. They did not know about the virus at first

Which was causing a rapid and aggressive form of this cancer by weakening the immune system.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/kaposis-sarcoma/cdc-20387726

[Behind the Aegis]

22. They weren't sure at the time.

KS was a symptom, but they didn't know that then. It was first called GRID, Gay Related Immune Deficiency, before becoming known as AIDS.

[TexasBushwhacker]

24. And gay men also started dying of pneumocystis pneumonia

which is usually only found in the elderly.

[fishwax]

15. k/r

[Keth]

16. A short poem I wrote a while back..

THE EIGHTIES

Reaganomics ruled the eighties.
The rich were given huge tax breaks.
They just forgot to trickle it down.

Many Americans lost their lives to AIDS.
The pro-life president sat back and
watched without making a sound.

[electric_blue68]

18. :( well said

[electric_blue68]

19. I remember a lot because I was..

supportive of the LGB community (no TQI acknowledged in the larger media back then) in NYC. The Village Voice started to carry a lot of news etc. Plus,of course, NYC became a center of Activism. It was terrifying.

There are aquaintences that after I left a long particular job, and others from others I was no longer in contact with could be gone. Oh, woah, I just remembered my boss's boss.. 😯😥 (a short term job).


for all of your losses.

[Meowmee]

21. I remember

It was a horrific time as well

[marmar]

23. I was just watching "And the Band Played On" .....

.... still one of the better movies about the evolution of the AIDS crisis.

[littlemissmartypants]

25. ...

Dean I miss you.



❤

[Withywindle]

27. This galvanized me

I was only 12 in 1981, didn't understand what was happening fully at the time - but as I grew into my teens I saw that Reagan didn't care, and when I went off to college in '86 (a year early, I skipped my senior year) I met openly queer people and that paved the way for my own eventual coming out. A lot of the people just a few years older than me, who mentored me, were dead within a few years.

Queer Gen X was fatalistic. We thought that if AIDS didn't get us, nuclear war would. So we had nothing to fear, so we got out in the streets and marched.

People say young people in the late 80s and 90s were apathetic. It's just because it wasn't covered by the media. I participated in huge marches of half a million people for LGBTQ rights and women's rights between '87 and 92. I was at the '87 LGBTQ march where they first rolled out the AIDS Quilt on the Lawn - and that thing was already fucking huge, so many lives, so many stories, we all cried. I was 18 and that was one of the most intense moments of my life.

And it's all buried now. All that knowledge. All that loss. All that rage and all that grief. I've talked to some people in their early 20s who don't even know it happened.