Robert Rayford was a typical 15-year old African American teenager when he arrived at a St. Louis Hospital. He was suffering from unexplained swellings followed by strange small purple lesions. Nothing the doctors tried to help him worked. Robert died on 15 May 1969 of pneumonia. His doctors had no idea why a variety of illnesses that a normally healthy body would fight off ended up killing him. Robert’s family agreed to samples of his body tissue being preserved for further examination. As a result, it is now generally agreed that he was the first American to die of AIDS – 50 years ago.
There is an excellent article in today’s Guardian about 50 years of AIDS which questions how close we might be to a cure. Over all those years only two men appear to have been cured. 37 million others live with the virus.
We all know what happened after Rayford’s untimely death. I still consider journalist Randy Shilts’ history “And the Band Played On” a near definitive chronology of what happened over the next years - and why. Shilts himself became one of the millions to die from the effects of AIDS as the HIV virus spread death to many communities all around the world.
In fact HIV was not a new disease, only new to the western world. Like many diseases, it had crossed from the animal kingdom to humans. Strange though that may seem, the world much more recently experienced a similar cross-species illness that brought worldwide fear and death. SARS appeared in 2003 killing almost 1,000 after jumping probably from bats to civet cats and then to humans in China’s Guangdong Province.
Experts believe HIV is actually nearer 100 years old, first appearing in Kinshasa in the Congo around 1920 when it spread from chimpanzees to humans. But outbreaks of AIDS were sporadic and the medical profession worldwide paid little attention to it.
Although anti-retrovirals now mean HIV is just another chronic illness for most advanced western societies, the medication is not cheap and AIDS continues to kill millions of men, women and children in poorer countries. More than a million died in 2017 alone, now just a million statistics to add to 34 million plus others.
This is not an anniversary we like to remember. Rather we should be considering and thanking the researchers and the medical profession who are desperately trying to find a cure.
On the other hand, surely we can never forget many of those who passed away. The African American tennis star Arthur Ashe who died as a result of a blood transfusion. Actors Brad Davis (“Midnight Express”), Anthony Perkins (“Psycho”) and Ian Charleson (“Chariots of Fire”), the great choreographer and activist Alvin Ailey whose dance company lives on and whose glorious “Revelations” closes all Ailey performances around the world, dancer Rudolf Nureyev, designers Perry Ellis and Halston, movie directors like Derek Jarman and Tony Richardson, singers like Freddie Mercury and Broadway star Larry Kert, concert pianists like Jorge Bolet, photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and children like Ryan White. The list is so long.
One of my dearest friends started out after university by marrying and having two children. All the time he realised he had an attraction to men. Finally around age 30 he told his wife, divorced, gave up his job as a teacher and moved to New York to start a new life and new career. Over 30 of my visits we only missed each other once when he had to be on the West Coast. On all my other trips, sometimes we would take in a Broadway show or a play and always enjoy wonderful, slightly drunken dinners at an Italian restaurant on 51st Street run by two gay guys.
After meeting more than a few men, my friend thought gay love would elude him. Then in the late 1980s he met Carlos, a Central American half his age. The two fell deeply in love. My friend had never been happier. Only three years later Carlos was diagnosed with HIV. He died less than a year later. He was 25.
Like so many others, my friend was in agony, utterly distraught and unsure how life was to continue. He himself was not infected. He felt shame, guilt and could not understand why. Two years on, he finally realised there was more to life than doing what was a very good and well-paid job. So he gave up all that and started an organisation that would raise funds to assist AIDS patients all around the USA.
He begged and borrowed heavily to get started. A company on Broadway lent him a tiny office. He then got on to his Rolodex. Over 20 years he raised many tens of millions of dollars. He had discovered a wonderful serenity in his new life, although he never found anyone who could replace Carlos in his life. He soon became something of an icon in the gay community, much loved by all. I don’t think anyone had a bad word to say about him.
He died a little under a year ago. Not of AIDS but of complications following a leukaemia bone-marrow transplant. His friends arranged a memorial service. Many well-known artists and ordinary people attended. Some sang, others recited poetry, others talked about his life. Elizabeth Taylor, Elton John and other big stars rightly get a lot of public gratitude for their strong commitment to publicising AIDS and raising vast sums for research into a cure. My friend was just one of an army of others doing his bit to help those actually infected and trying to make their lives better. I miss him.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/201 ... eath-virus
50 Years of HIV and One Man’s Tale
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Gaybutton
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Re: 50 Years of HIV and One Man’s Tale
I learned a great deal from this post. I had no idea this disease has been in existence that long. I suppose if there is any silver lining on the cloud, it did not spread any further than it did before science and technology was available to identify and combat it. If it had spread sooner, it might have been much worse.
But if it were known that the disease had been happening since 1920, it's a shame that those who did know about it didn't, or perhaps couldn't, make more of an effort to prevent the western world from thinking the disease attacked only gay people. If that were known, perhaps it would have been taken more seriously from the outset. When it first started occurring in the western world, few in power at the time gave much of a damn about what was harming gay people.
But if it were known that the disease had been happening since 1920, it's a shame that those who did know about it didn't, or perhaps couldn't, make more of an effort to prevent the western world from thinking the disease attacked only gay people. If that were known, perhaps it would have been taken more seriously from the outset. When it first started occurring in the western world, few in power at the time gave much of a damn about what was harming gay people.
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fountainhall
Re: 50 Years of HIV and One Man’s Tale
This National Geographic article provides more information on AIDS in what was then Zaire and how it spread. The question is: why did it take so long to spread to other countries, especially the USA where it was first identified. Randy Shilts spends some of his background on the search for "Patient Zero". The doctors who treated those young gay men who holidayed on Fire Island enjoying their relatively new gay freedoms realised that this had to be a new illness. And since it was appearing initially only in gay men with multiple partners, it was soon to be named GRID - Gay-Related Immune Deficiency (another reason for its being considered a gay disease). They also realised there had to be a common factor - one man who had unknowingly infected the others. The CDC researchers then set out interviewing all these young men to find out who they had had sex with.
One of the early graphs mapping the origins of AIDS
This was intensive research at a time when being known to be gay was still difficult for most men. After all, laws against homosexuality in New York State were only repealed in 1980 by which time probably some of these men were already infected. One man was discovered to have had sex with quite a few of the infected men. Named "Patient Zero" he was finally discovered to be a 28-year old Canadian air steward, Gaetan Dugas. One of the routes he had flown was to West Africa. When interviewed by the CDC, Dugas estimated he had had sex with 750 men in three years but could name only about 10%. Dugas was discovered to be HIV positive and died in 1984.
For many years his name became almost vilified as the man who brought AIDS to the West. Yet, this was one error the doctors and Randy Shilts got wrong. On learning of his HIV status, Dugas actually gave up his job, returned to Canada and did volunteer work at an HIV clinic. The death of young Robert Rayford 11 years before HIV turned up in that group of men on Fire Island proved the virus was already lurking somewhere in the USA.
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/new ... ca-health/
One of the early graphs mapping the origins of AIDS
This was intensive research at a time when being known to be gay was still difficult for most men. After all, laws against homosexuality in New York State were only repealed in 1980 by which time probably some of these men were already infected. One man was discovered to have had sex with quite a few of the infected men. Named "Patient Zero" he was finally discovered to be a 28-year old Canadian air steward, Gaetan Dugas. One of the routes he had flown was to West Africa. When interviewed by the CDC, Dugas estimated he had had sex with 750 men in three years but could name only about 10%. Dugas was discovered to be HIV positive and died in 1984.
For many years his name became almost vilified as the man who brought AIDS to the West. Yet, this was one error the doctors and Randy Shilts got wrong. On learning of his HIV status, Dugas actually gave up his job, returned to Canada and did volunteer work at an HIV clinic. The death of young Robert Rayford 11 years before HIV turned up in that group of men on Fire Island proved the virus was already lurking somewhere in the USA.
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/new ... ca-health/