First AIDS report - June 5, 1981

On this day in 1981, the first report on AIDS was published in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, before AIDS was identified as a syndrome. 

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey guys, welcome to This Day in History Class,
where we bring you a new tidbit from history every day.
Today is June five. The day was June five, n one.

(00:27):
The Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, published by the US
Center for Disease Control, released an article called Pneumo Cistus
Pneumonia Los Angeles. The article detailed five cases of pneumo
sisters karina pneumonia or PCP, which is a rare long infection.
The cases were all in Los Angeles, and all of

(00:49):
the men identified in the report as having PCP were young, white,
and gay. This report was the first on what would
become known as the AIDS or acquired immunodifee siency syndrome. Epidemic.
AIDS is caused by HIV. Are human immunodeficiency virus. HIV
attacks a person's immune system as it spreads through the body,

(01:11):
specifically attacking C D four sales, also known as T sales.
As the virus destroys these sales, the immune system has
a hard time combating disease and infection. AIDS is the
most severe stage of the HIV infection. When the immune
system is so compromised that the affected person gets many

(01:33):
opportunistic illnesses. There is no cure for HIV, but there
are treatments that can help control the infection, which reduced
the presence of symptoms and the risk of transmission to
people who do not have HIV. Scientists believe that HIV
was passed to humans from chimpanzees that had a version
of the virus called Simian immunodeficiency virus or s i V.

(01:59):
H i V could have been transmitted from apes to
humans as early as the late eighteen hundreds and spread
across the world since. Though the virus had been in
the United States since at least the nineteen seventies, it
was not reported until the nineteen one article. Local clinicians
and the Epidemic Intelligence Service officer at the Los Angeles

(02:22):
County Department of Public Health created the report and sent
it to the Morbidity and Immortality Weekly Report for publication
in May of nineteen eighty one. Before the journal published
the report, the editorial staff sent it to the CDC
for review by experts in parasitic and sexually transmitted infections,
and on June five, n one, the article was published.

(02:47):
The five patients in the article all described as previously healthy,
currently or previously had cyto megalovirus and Candida mucoastal infection
in addition to pneumo sistis pneumonia. Two of the patients died.
The editorial note included at the end of the article
stated that pneumo sisters pneumonia is usually seen in people

(03:09):
who were severely immuno suppressed, and that the occurrence of
the illness and these five patients was unusual. It also
noted that because all five men were gay, some sort
of disease acquired through sexual contact was at hand, and
that a cellular immune dysfunction related to common exposure was possible.
The same day, a New York dermatologist called the CDC

(03:33):
to report several cases of Compos's sarcoma, a very rare
cancer that often affects people with immune deficiencies, among gay men,
in New York, in California, and from there, more reports
of similar cases popped up around the country. Just days
after the initial report was published, the CDC established the

(03:53):
Task Force on Capos, Sarcoma and Opportunistic Infections to research
risk factors and in investigate new cases of the mysterious syndrome.
On July three, The New York Times published an article
on the epidemic titled Rare cancer seen in forty one homosexuals.
Because it seems like the condition was limited to gay men,

(04:15):
it became known as gay related immune deficiency. As the
epidemic received more media attention, the misnomer gay cancer entered
the public lexicon, but in September of nineteen eighty two,
the term AIDS was used to describe the syndrome for
the first time. Though it was known that people besides
men who have sex with men can get AIDS, perception

(04:37):
of AIDS as a gay disease persisted after researchers found
out that HIV causes AIDS in nineteen eighty four, HIV
tests were developed, and in nineteen eighties seven, the first
anti retroviral medication for HIV, called a z T, was released.
Throughout the nineteen eighties, the number of cases of HIV

(04:59):
AIDS increa, and so did the number of deaths caused
by complications of AIDS. After that, the number of new
cases and deaths declined. Men who have sex with men,
people of color, transgender, women who have sex with men
and injection drug users are at high risk for getting HIV.

(05:19):
I'm Eaves Deathcote and hopefully you know a little more
about history today than you did yesterday. And an additional
note about the presence of HIV in the States. There's
a longstanding myth that a French Canadian flight attendant was
patient zero in the US as he picked up HIV
in Haiti or Africa and spread it across the States,

(05:40):
but scientists declared that this was not the case. In
If you want to learn more about history, you can
listen to my new podcast called Unpopular. It's a podcast
that I host that's about people in history who were
dissenters or were rebels and they challenged the status quo
and sometimes they were per secute it for it. You

(06:02):
can follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook at t
d i h C podcast. Thank you again for listening
and we'll see you tomorrow. For more podcasts from my

(06:25):
Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.