Wisconsin gay news specials

30 years of setbacks, progress mark AIDS battle

Written by Lisa Neff,
Staff writer Jun 30, 2011

In early 1981, health officials began hearing reports of young men in New York and California sick with a devastating pneumonia and a rare form of cancer.

On June 5, 1981, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, under the headline “Pneumocystis Pneumonia – Los Angeles,” contained case reports for “five young men, all active homosexuals,” all of them healthy until they suffered pneumonia, fever, coughs and skin lesions.

The announcement from the CDC was the first published report on what would come to be called Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome or AIDS. By the time the MMWR was released, two of the five men had died.

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30 Years of AIDS

AIDS, a timeline

Jun 30, 2011

Photo: Courtesy

June 5, 1981: The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention publishes a report describing cases of a rare lung infection, Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, in five young, previously healthy gay men in Los Angeles. This marks the first official reporting of what will become known as the AIDS epidemic.

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30 Years of AIDS

A heartbreaking past, a hopeful future

Written by Doug Nelson Jun 30, 2011

Doug Nelson

It is difficult to look back 30 years to the beginning of the AIDS epidemic. It was a horrifying and heartbreaking time. I recall the frightening news in 1981 that several gay men in New York and California were stricken with unexplained cancer and pneumonia. Within a year, 452 gay men from 23 states were sick. Half of them had died.

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30 Years of AIDS

Older AIDS survivors face challenges

Written by Lisa Leff,
AP writer Jun 30, 2011

Having survived the first and worst years of the AIDS epidemic, when he was losing three friends a day to the disease and undergoing every primitive, toxic treatment that then existed, Peter Greene is grateful to be alive.

But a quarter-century after his own diagnosis, the former Mr. Gay Colorado, now 56, wrestles with vision impairment, bone density loss and other debilitating health problems he once assumed he wouldn’t grow old enough to see.

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30 Years of AIDS

Case of AIDS cure leads to new hope

Written by Marilynn Marchione,
AP medical writer Jun 30, 2011

Timothy Ray Brown – Photo: Courtesy

The 30-year anniversary of the outbreak of the AIDS epidemic brought with it fresh hope for something that many had come to think was impossible: finding a cure.

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