LOS ANGELES, Calif.–Thirty years ago, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released the first study on the severity of what would become the AIDS epidemic, based on research that focused on five men in Los Angeles who contracted a rare type of pneumonia with no apparent cause.
“The elation of the discovery of a new disease was soon replaced by sadness,” Dr. Michael Gottlieb, who headed the 1981 study, said Friday at a City Hall news conference.
“Because as a community of doctors and patients we were in the same boat, powerless in the face of this virus, and we faced the sad reality that entire hospital wards were filled with young men with skin cancer and multiple infections.”
One year after the study was released, the CDC coined the term AIDS, short for Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. By 1983, researchers had announced the discovery of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus, or HIV.
Gottlieb said recent treatment successes have given the public a false sense of security.
“I understand the public’s passion fatigue on the subject,” Gottlieb said. “But the HIV epidemic here and around the world is nowhere near over.
Now is precisely the wrong time to back off on our efforts.”
About 2,000 new HIV cases are reported annually in Los Angeles County, according to the Department of Public Health’s 2010 Annual HIV Surveillance Report.
Councilman Bill Rosendahl, whose partner of 14 years died from AIDS in 1995, said it has been a bittersweet 30 years.
“The bitter is obvious, the lives, my brothers, my lover, my family, my friends who have been so hurt by this dreaded disease,” Rosendahl said.
“The sweet part was the major step forward in basic civil rights.”
The City Council held hearings on AIDS in 1985, following actor Rock Hudson’s death from the disease that year. Los Angeles became the first jurisdiction in the world to enact an AIDS anti-discrimination law in 1985, according to city officials.
Shortly thereafter, then-City Attorney Jim Hahn made David Schulman the first dedicated AIDS civil rights attorney in the nation.
“HIV marked the beginning of global awareness among public health officials … that many, many of the most challenging disease problems are deeply embedded in virulent social conditions and it is law that has the capacity to attack social determinants that can make the difference between whether a person with HIV has her civil rights respected, and thus has access to the appropriate treatment,” Schulman said.
City Council President Eric Garcetti, who said a cousin was one of the first Latinos to contract HIV, called the anniversary a time to reflect on progress and “a time to make sure we address the health and service needs of those living with HIV/AIDS and to recommit to the tremendous challenges that remain.”
By Richie Duchon | City News Service
