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A look at the history of AIDS in the U.S. Robert Gallo and Luc Montagnier identified HIV — the virus that causes AIDS — in 1983. The three decades since have seen wide medical and cultural advancements in our understanding of the virus. The years have also brought much hardship and controversy. Here’s a photographic history of the AIDS epidemic in the United States.
1984
Gaetan Dugas, an Air Canada flight attendant shown here in an undated photo, was identified controversially as "Patient Zero" in Randy Shilts's 1987 book "And The Band Played On," about the AIDS epidemic. The Centers for Disease Control had first referred to an anonymous Patient Zero in 1984, linking him to 40 of the first 248 HIV/AIDS diagnoses in the United States. Dugas died of AIDS-related complications on March 30, 1984.
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AP
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July 25, 1985
Rock Hudson, the romantic leading man of 1950s and ’60s cinema, became the first major public figure to announce that he had contracted HIV/AIDS. He died of AIDS-related complications less than three months later, on Oct. 3, 1985, at age 59.
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AP
Aug. 1, 1985
School officials barred 13-year-old Ryan White from attending middle school after learning he had contracted HIV during treatment for hemophilia. White, seen here in front of his house in Kokomo, Ind., died on April 8, 1990, at age 18.
Doug Atkins
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AP
Sept. 9, 1985
Barry Davidson, director of community information at the Gay Men's Health Crisis in New York, shows a poster and information booklet being distributed nationwide to inform individuals about HIV/AIDS and how it is and is not contracted.
Marty Lederhandler
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AP
Nov. 7, 1985
New York City police officers stand outside the Mine Shaft, a gay bar that was shut down in Greenwich Village. It was the first move by the city against places that allegedly permitted “high risk” sexual activity that can spread HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
Rich Maiman
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AP
December 1985
This image shows a magnified view of the AIDS virus taken by researchers in the medical department of Tokyo’s Tottori University. The photo, magnified 350,000 times, was taken with a scanning electron microscope. Researchers said the virus of the deadly disease has a rugged surface. Nearly 30 million people have died of AIDS since the first five cases were recognized in Los Angeles in 1981. About 34 million people have HIV now, including more than 1 million in the United States.
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Tottori University via AP/Kyodo News
May 9, 1986
Actress Elizabeth Taylor, national chairwoman of the American Foundation for AIDS research, testified before a Senate subcommittee at Capitol Hill, in Washington. Taylor, who founded the organization in 1985, asked the subcommittee to appropriate funds for researching a cure for the virus.
Lana Harris
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AP
June 29, 1986
Marchers carrying a banner and signs protesting California Proposition 64 — known as the LaRouche Initiative, after political activist Lyndon LaRouche, who proposed it — parade down San Francisco’s Market Street during the 17th annual Freedom Day Parade. The LaRouche Initiative, which was on the Nov. 4, 1986, ballot, proposed that all AIDS patients be quarantined and barred from school and food service jobs. It was rejected.
Jim Gerberich
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AP
Nov. 8, 1986
Mother Theresa speaks during dedication ceremonies for a hospice for AIDS victims in a Washington neighborhood where residents angrily objected to the facility. Theresa said “to thank God for giving us this beautiful gift, this home.”
J. Scott Applewhite
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AP
Oct.15, 1986
Jerry Smith, who had played in the NFL for the Washington Redskins, was one of the first professional athletes to announce that he had HIV/AIDS, in August 1986; he died of AIDS-related complications two months later, at 43.
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The Washington Post
Feb. 3, 1987
A research technician at Abbott Laboratories in Lake County, Ill., inspects a batch of biochemically treated beads that are used in a test to screen blood for evidence of the early stages of HIV infection. Abbott would later create Kaletra, a single-pill antiviral medication used to treat HIV.
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AP
Feb. 4, 1987
Pianist and singer Liberace, shown here in the year of his death, died of pneumonia less than a year after being diagnosed with HIV/AIDS.
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AP
Oct. 11, 1987
AIDS patients are pushed in wheelchairs as they participate in the Second National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. Estimates of attendance at the march range from 200,000 to 500,000; it has since often been referred to as the “Great March.”
Scott Stewart
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AP
May 4, 1988
Surgeon General C. Everett Koop holds a news conference in Washington to announce that the federal government would be mailing a pamphlet on HIV/AIDS to every American household. The pamphlet was available in English and Spanish.
J. Scott Applewhite
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AP
Oct. 8, 1988
The AIDS Memorial Quilt, first displayed on the Mall in Washington on Oct. 11, 1987, returned to the nation’s capitol a year later — this time on the Ellipse in front of the White House. The quilt was then composed of more than 8,200 3-by-6-foot panels; it now comprises nearly 50,000.
Charles Tasnadi
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AP
March 22, 1989
First lady Barbara Bush holds a young infant identified as Donavan during a visit to Grandma’s House, in Washington. Grandma's House serves as a house for infants and small children infected with HIV/AIDS.
Dennis Cook
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AP
Sept. 14, 1989
Protesters lay on the street in front of the New York Stock Exchange in a demonstration against the high cost of AZT, the first government-approved AIDS treatment drug. The protest was organized by ACT UP, a gay-rights activist group.
Tim Clary
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AP
Nov. 29, 1989
Playwright, novelist and journalist Larry Kramer — seen here at his home in New York's Greenwich Village — is the founder and one of the principal voices in the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, or ACT UP. Such plays as “The Normal Heart” and “The Destiny of Me,” widely recognized as among the best plays of the 20th century, were among the first works of art to focus on HIV/AIDS. Kramer found out that he was HIV positive in 1988.
Mark Lennihan
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AP
April 20, 1990
About 50,000 Haitian and African American demonstrators march on Broadway in lower Manhattan in a mass rally denouncing the Food and Drug Administration's policy to ban blood donations by people of Haitian and sub-Saharan African origin.
Gerald Herbert
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AP
Oct. 5, 1990
Princess Diana carries a young child during a visit to Grandma’s House, a Washington home for young AIDS patients
Barry Thumma
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AP
Sept. 24, 1991
Kimberly Bergalis, center, grimaces as her parents George and Anna escort her to a train bound for Washington, D.C., in Okeechobee, Fla. Bergalis, who contracted HIV from her dentist while having molars removed, testified before Congress about requiring mandatory AIDS testing for health care workers. She died less than three months later at 23.
Ray Fairall
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AP
Nov. 7, 1991
Earvin "Magic" Johnson announce his retirement from the Los Angeles Lakers at a press conference in Inglewood, Calif., after learning he was HIV-positive.
Mark J. Terrill
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AP
April 8, 1992
Tennis player Arthur Ashe announces in a televised press conference that he became infected with HIV through a blood transfusion he received during heart-bypass surgery; he discovered that he was HIV-positive in 1988, when he went to the hospital for brain surgery. Ashe died of AIDS-related complications on Feb. 6, 1993, at 49.
Charles Tasnadi
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AP
October 1992
The AIDS Memorial Quilt returned to the Mall in 1992. By this time, the quilt comprised panels from all U.S. states and 28 countries.
Mark Thiessen
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Smithsonian
1993
Three of the drugs used in treating AIDS patients: DDC, left, AZT, front, and DDI, right.
Sam Morris
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AP
Dec. 6, 1995
HIV/AIDS activists convene in front of the White House before the White House Conference on HIV/AIDS.
Denis Paquin
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AP
May 14, 1996
The Confide Home HIV Test is approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
Ron Edmonds
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AP
Oct. 11, 1996
The AIDS Memorial Quilt is laid out along the Mall in Washington. This was the last time the quilt was displayed in D.C. in its entirety.
Larry Morris
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The Washington Post
Oct. 11, 1996
Marion Warmkessel, center, is comforted by Crystal Bristol, left, kneeling, Carol Bensing, left, standing, Steve Paul, right, leaning over, and Rabbi Stephen Roberts. Except for Rabbi Roberts, all are relatives of Ed Noll, who died of AIDS-related illness and whose quilt patch they are viewing.
Nancy Andrews
Sept. 4, 1997
From left to right, Food & Friends volunteers Pete Clifford and John Parham and chef Commillus Woodard prepare fresh meals for hundreds of people with AIDS in the D.C. area. Washington has one of the highest HIV infection rates in the country.
Dayna Smith
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The Washington Post
March 5, 2001
Demonstrators chant outside the offices of the Bristol-Myers Squibb offices in New York. The protest was aimed at pharmaceuticals companies that took the South African government to court in an effort to prevent them from making or buying cheaper substitutes for mainstream AIDS drugs. The 39 companies later announced that they were dropping the lawsuit.
Peter Morgan
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Reuters
June 21, 2001
A man takes a free oral HIV test at the Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Center's HIV testing services center on National HIV Testing Day.
Reed Saxon
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AP
Nov. 21, 2001
Michael Deighan, co-owner of Nightsweats & T-cells in Kent, Ohio, has been HIV positive since 1981 and takes 47 pills each day to combat the virus. Nightsweats & T-cells provides design work for HIV/AIDS service organizations.
Amy Sancetta
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AP
Nov. 30, 2011
Workers hang a red ribbon on the North Portico of the White House the day before World AIDS Day, in Washington, DC. The day was created in 1988 at the World Summit of Ministers of Health on Programmes for AIDS Prevention in London, which brought together health ministers and delegates from 148 different countries.
Chip Somodevilla
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Getty Images
May 10, 2012
Lisa Sterman holds up a Truvada pill at her office in San Francisco. Dr. Sterman prescribes Truvada off-label for about a dozen patients at high risk for developing AIDS. The pill, already used to treat people with HIV, also helps prevent the virus from infecting healthy people.
Jeff Chiu
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AP
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