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  WINDY CITY TIMES

AIDS at 25: Perspectives and Retrospectives
Remembering
2006-06-21

This article shared 7217 times since Wed Jun 21, 2006
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COMPILED BY ANDREW DAVIS AND AMY WOOTEN

In this two-part series, Windy City Times takes a look back at 25 years of living in a war zone: HIV, AIDS and Science

Part Two

Pictured Robin Robinson at the recent Gay Games VII Champions benefit. Photo by Hal Baim. Don Lemon at the 2006 Equality Illinois gala. Photo by Tracy Baim. Bill Greaves. Among others sharing memories ( pictures and quotes continue at the link below ) are Robin Robinson, Mark Ishaug, Sara Waddell Lewinstein, Mary Ann Childers, Stan Sloan.

_______

To mark the 25th anniversary since the first AIDS diagnoses, a diverse array of individuals and organizations shared their perspectives. However different their backgrounds may be, all of the contributors have one thing in common: They, like a maddeningly increasing number of people, have been touched by what is unquestionably a pandemic. ( Note: These submissions were sent directly to Windy City Times unless otherwise indicated. )

To see the first part of this two-part series, go to www.windycitymediagroup.com and click the June 14 edition of Windy City Times.

_____

Robin Robinson

Anchor, FOX News at Nine

If AIDS is only 25, my older brother Greg was on the front lines as a patient. It was a time when testing positive meant living negatively—the equivalent of a death sentence. It was when ignorance about 'catching' it turned otherwise intelligent people into paranoid bigots. Remember Ryan White? The poor kid and his entire family were persecuted after neighbors and school officials learned he'd contracted the virus in a blood transfusion!

In Greg's case, we all thought his days were numbered and he vowed to change his life. He reconciled with the family and apologized to all the people he had ripped off in the past. He went into rehab. But then, he went back to heroin. I think he figured he may as well spend his last days happily high. The problem was, though, he didn't die! He lived with HIV/AIDS for at least 12 years before his death 11 years ago.

Living long ( and well ) with HIV is not uncommon these days ( Magic Johnson! ) , but for my brother it was miraculous. After all, drug addicts are notoriously inattentive to maintaining a healthful lifestyle. But here was Greg, spry and sly for a decade!

As I watch and report on the dramatic changes in the demographics of HIV/AIDS, I can only hope that the young African Americans and Hispanics realize the miracle of modern medicine and attitudes. Demanding safe sex is smart/sexy/cool. Resisting the demand for sex is a power move. Young people of color, particularly Black females, make up the vast majority of new HIV cases. It's a new enemy against a population that's had to survive adversity over the ages. Unfortunately, while the counterattack is on, using the message of prevention, we've yet to reverse the trend.

So to the thousands of people LIVING with HIV/AIDS, I offer Gregory Mark Robinson as an example of how much life you still possess and control. My brother wasn't like Magic. There were no expensive specialists. Half the time, he didn't even keep up with the meds he did have. He practiced regular nutritional neglect. He continued to poison himself with heroin until the last two years, when he was in a nursing home. We can only imagine how much more living he would have enjoyed if he could have made better choices. If you're positive, you can do more than imagine.

_____

Christopher Brown

Assistant Commissioner, STD/HIV/AIDS Division, Chicago Department of Public Health

It's hard for me to remember a time in my adult life when I wasn't living with HIV/AIDS. I started working in public health in 1983 and I was first diagnosed with HIV in 1985. This was the beginning of the most intense journey of my life.

Recently, I reconnected with an old friend from Arizona. As any old friends do, we reminisced about the past and discussed the many people who have touched our lives. After a brief period of time it hit me—the vast majority of our old friends are now dead. It was not only a stark reminder to me of just how long we have been living and dying with AIDS, but also how I have been able to carry on without being crippled by despair. I am truly thankful for the all of the people with HIV who have been a part of my life and for the strength they have given me.

I am now past the point where HIV consumes my every thought, but then I no longer go to funerals every month or believe that my life will be drastically shortened as a result of this disease. However, my commitments to live—to fight—and to conquer this disease have not diminished. What continues to motivate me is not only the basic fight for life, but also how the world has reacted to this epidemic. AIDS has forever changed all parts of our society and brought out the best and the worst in people. I often wonder how history will record this pandemic and mankind's response to it. I feel certain that Chicago's united war against this viral enemy will stand the test of time; I only hope we don't have to spend the next 25 years in battle.

_____

Don Lemon

Anchor/reporter, NBC-5 Chicago

Although AIDS is an acronym, I often say it's a small word with a very big stigma. One would think that with all the talk and awareness around AIDS that, by now, the stigma would have lessened. I mean, my God, it's been 25 years! But, as I sit here, writing this with my 21-year-old intern looking over my shoulder, she tells me the stigma is still great. Her aunt has AIDS. After others became aware of her status, friends stopped visiting, people are afraid to touch her and some of her own family members want her to keep her status a secret in order to protect their reputations.

I think the question we all need to ask ourselves is WHY? After 25 years of loved ones dying from a disease that is preventable, WHY is AIDS still a dirty word for so many? But—most of all—WHY is there still no cure?

_____

Dr. Ronald O. Valdiserri

Deputy Director of the National Center for HIV, STD, and TB Prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Since CDC reported the first cases of what would later be known as AIDS in June 1981, the fight against one of history's deadliest epidemics has become a mission for those of us in public health.

Many of us came into this fight for personal reasons. Without a doubt, my twin brother's struggle with and eventual succumbing to AIDS greatly influenced my decision to leave academic medicine in 1989 and join the CDC.

Twenty-five years of experience have confirmed that the only 'cure' for the AIDS epidemic is to prevent infections in the first place. HIV prevention has already saved countless lives. The annual number of infections dropped dramatically in the 1980s, thanks in large part to the mobilization of the gay community. Recent declines in HIV diagnoses among African Americans and injection drug users offer hope of progress in those hard-hit populations. However, the near-elimination of mother-to-child HIV transmission in the U.S. may serve as the best reminder of what prevention can achieve.

I join my colleagues in applauding the dedication of those who have helped to achieve these results, including gay men in Chicago and many other cities.

Recalling the early years of the epidemic, I am reminded that the threat of AIDS in America is still very real. Today, HIV transmission is being sustained by factors ranging from excessive optimism about HIV treatments, to inadequate knowledge of HIV status, to increasing use of crystal methamphetamine. The burdens of HIV/AIDS are especially profound for people of color.

For those working to eliminate HIV, this fight is more than professional —it's personal. On this 25th anniversary of HIV/AIDS, I, and all of CDC, call on the nation to honor those lost to HIV/AIDS by stopping its spread and continuing our commitment to sound, accessible and credible prevention efforts.

_____

Nancy Pelosi

U.S. Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., speaking on the House floor to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the first official AIDS diagnosis:

We recognize that 25 years ago in San Francisco, doctors saw a disease that did not yet have a name with symptoms that harkened back to the Middle Ages. Some manifestations of the disease were lesions, pneumonia, infections. Within five years, we were losing so many friends to AIDS that we would often go to two funerals in one day. A whole generation of young people went to more funerals than birthdays. We had too many friends who we held in our arms at the end of their lives that felt like a bag of bones more than the muscular young people they had been. There was so much, first of all, a lack of information and then fear of what became known as HIV/AIDS.

Twenty-five years ago when we heard about the symptoms that would become known as AIDS, and 19 years ago when I first came to Congress, I never thought that we would be standing here today without a cure. Five years from now, on the 30th anniversary, I pray that we can say that AIDS is a terrible, terrible memory; that we have prevented deaths, ended the epidemic, and found a cure. This is especially true not only in our country but throughout the world where many children are affected by the deaths of their parents, being orphaned, and by their own infections as well.

Mr. Speaker, I call to the attention of my colleagues the 25th anniversary of the first diagnosis of AIDS, and hope that a cure will be right around the corner.

_____

Bill Greaves

Director/Community Liaison, Advisory Council on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Issues, City of Chicago Commission on Human Relations

I remember my fear in 1981 when I first read about the new 'gay' disease in The New York Times.

I remember my confusion and dread when my boyfriend Tony disappeared into a hospital with what doctors called hepatitis but then almost died from complications that would not stop. Tony was a strapping blond—as beautiful as the sun—but when I saw him next he looked like a bent, 90-year-old man. I loved him fiercely, but my love could not save him.

I remember the great love of my life, Peter Meehan. The last time I saw him his face was covered with dark purple splotches, and we could only visit for a few minutes because he was so weak.

But most of all, I remember my anger.

Ronald Reagan was in office from 1981 through 1988. The first cases of AIDS in the U.S. were reported in 1981, yet Reagan didn't say the word 'AIDS' until a press conference in September 1985, in answer to a reporter's question. Not until 1987 did he use the word in a speech. By that time, 30,000 Americans had died from AIDS. Another 30,000 were diagnosed with AIDS, which was a death sentence, and the Centers for Disease Control estimated that 500,000 were infected with HIV.

Those figures speak for themselves. There is no moral defense of Reagan's early silence and negligence with regard to AIDS.

Perhaps my perspective on this issue is unique.

I am a gay man, and I was an editor at Science magazine in Washington, D.C., from 1984 through 1986, when Science was the U.S. journal of record for AIDS research. The discovery of the HIV virus was published soon after I joined the editorial staff. Because I was a chemist and not a biologist, I was assigned the epidemiology of AIDS and became—in those two crucial years—one of the world's experts on the spread of the virus because I studied all the research being done and consulted with leading scientists on which data to publish.

At the same time, my friends were suffering and rapidly dying from AIDS. I stopped counting the funerals I attended when the number reached 40.

Yes, there was research being done on AIDS. In the early days, much of that work was bootlegged as part of retroviral, leukemia and cancer research. Mostly due to Congressional pressure, the Reagan administration ultimately committed $5.7 billion to AIDS prevention and research efforts—often, however, Congress doubled Reagan's AIDS budget requests.

When Reagan finally responded to the crisis, his effort was weak. In February 1986, he issued a written statement to Congress in which he discussed AIDS among other domestic issues. 'While there are hopes for drugs and vaccines against AIDS, none is immediately at hand,' Reagan wrote. 'Consequently, efforts should focus on prevention, to inform and to lower risks of further transmission of the AIDS virus. To this end, I am asking the surgeon general to prepare a report to the American people on AIDS.'

Five years into the epidemic and two years after the discovery of the HIV virus, it was time for action, not a report.

Meanwhile, the Reagan administration sidelined that same surgeon general, C. Everett Koop, in his attempts to tackle the problem directly, and Reagan and his handlers swelled the White House staff with shrill, anti-gay Christian conservatives who fueled hysteria about the epidemic. The White House director of communications, Patrick Buchanan, once argued in print that AIDS was nature's revenge on gay men. Reagan's secretary of education, William Bennett, and his domestic policy advisor, Gary Bauer, made sure that neither science nor compassion got in the way of either politics or what they saw as 'God's work.'

Republican operatives Terry Dolan and Carl 'Spitz' Channel and Eric Olsen, and other beautiful gay men in Washington who helped create the Reagan revolution, slipped silently from their closets to their graves. Because I had the knowledge they wanted and needed, I was invited to dine with them and sing for my supper. Sang I did, and gladly, for they were gay men who were desperate for any scrap of information that could offer hope.

So pardon me if I do not buy into the re-writing of history that accompanied Reagan's funeral, nor do I cry for his memory. My tears and pride are reserved for my friends who were the victims of AIDS and Reagan's neglect.

_____

Karl D. Villanueva-Kimpo

Asian/Pacific Islander HIV Capacity Building Assitance Coordinator, Asian Health Coalition of Illinois

As a thirtysomething gay Asian man who was growing up as a child in Ohio at the height of the AIDS crisis in the '80s and '90s, I have never known the loss and decimation of entire circles of gay friends. I will probably never ever know that time again nor will the gay brethren of my generation because of ever advancing HIV meds technology shielding us from death, thus solidifying our isolation from those days of HIV-related fear and panic gone by. What I am afraid of is the very real possibility of my gay peers and myself coming to know the experience of having entire circles of friends who are on HIV medications if we as a community do not regain our voice, develop new leaders and re-evaluate HIV prevention that addresses key paradigm shifts in gay men's public health 25 years into combating HIV.

Read more at link below.


This article shared 7217 times since Wed Jun 21, 2006
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