The first sign of HIV/AIDS

The first sign of HIV/AIDS in 1981 would tell little of the widespread future devastation. Rather it appeared as an anomaly in what was largely a marginalized population. HIV/AIDS was first seen as Kaposi's Sarcoma in young gay men in New York, an oddity, as traditionally Kaposi's Sarcoma had mainly been diagnosed in elderly men of Italian or Jewish descent.

At about the same time, the Centre for Disease Control in Atlanta noticed that gay men in California and New York were showing an alarming rise in a rare form of pneumonia known as Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia.

This initial link to the gay community would have lasting negative repercussions for the way the world would view HIV/AIDS and led to the terms "Gay Compromise Syndrome" and "Gay-Related Immune Deficiency." In linking the gay community to HIV/AIDS, the medical community chose to ignore that both Kaposi's Sarcoma and Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia were being seen increasingly in intravenous drug users, both heterosexual and homosexual.