On 31st March, at a ceremony at the White House attended by President Reagan, it was announced that an agreement had been reached regarding ownership of the HIV antibody test patent. The Pasteur Institute agreed that it would end its legal challenge, and would share the profits from the test with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.19 Although the agreement officially resolved the question of who had invented the HIV antibody test, it did not address the question of who had discovered HIV and identified it as the cause of AIDS. It was generally agreed that:
"historians can decide who found the AIDS virus first."20
But to many people it appears clear that HIV was isolated in Paris a year before it was isolated in the USA.21
The following day President Reagan made his first major speech on AIDS, when he addressed the Philadelphia College of Physicians. Reagan advocated a modest federal role in AIDS education, having told reporters the previous day that he favoured teaching pupils about AIDS,
"as long as they teach that one of the answers to it is abstinence - if you say it's not how you do it, but that you don't do it."22
In England the first specialist AIDS hospital ward was opened by Princess Diana. The fact that she did not wear gloves when shaking hands with people with AIDS was widely reported in the press.
"she shook my hand without her gloves on. That proves you can't get AIDS from normal social contact."23
The WHO Global Programme on AIDS had developed a Global AIDS Strategy, which was approved by the World Health Assembly in May. The Global AIDS Strategy established the objectives and principles of local, national and international action to prevent and control HIV/AIDS, and it included the need for every country to have a "supportive and non-discriminatory social environment".24
But on 31st May President Reagan gave a speech about AIDS at a dinner of the American Foundation for AIDS Research and particularly focused on increasing routine and compulsory AIDS testing.25
The following day Vice President George Bush opened the 3rd International Conference on AIDS in Washington and was booed by the audience when he defended President Reagan's HIV testing proposals. Demonstrators against the administration's policies were arrested outside the White House by police wearing long yellow rubber gloves.26
"On the nightly news broadcasts, the world saw pictures of demonstrators being arrested by police wearing bright yellow, arm-length gloves. Although research had by now proved that the AIDS virus could not be passed through casual contact, the sight of the gloves served to reinforce the public's general overestimation of the risk of HIV transmission."27
In June the U.S. Public Health Service added AIDS to its list of diseases for which people on public health grounds could be excluded from the USA.28 Subsequently in July the "Helms amendment" created by Senator Jesse Helms added HIV infection to the exclusion list.29 Few foresaw the implications of the addition and it went virtually unnoticed.30
In July the WHO reviewed the evidence and confirmed that HIV could be passed from mother to child through breastfeeding. Nevertheless they recommended that HIV positive mothers in developing countries should be encouraged to breastfeed, as in many circumstances safe and effective use of alternatives was impossible.31
In light of more widespread HIV testing, the CDC revised their definition of AIDS to place a greater emphasis on HIV infection status.32
Prejudice against people with HIV continued in America. The Ray family lived in Arcadia, Florida, and they had three sons, each of whom was a haemophiliac and was HIV positive. During 1986 the family was told their sons could not attend school. In 1987 the family moved to Alabama, and once again they were refused entry to school. Threats against the family grew louder and more frequent, and on August 28th the Rays' small single-storey house was doused with gasoline and torched.33
In England, the UK Government expanded syringe exchange schemes to prevent transmission of HIV through drug use, and also launched an advertising campaign with the message 'Don't inject AIDS'.34
In the autumn, a book by Randy Shilts called 'And the Band Played On' was published, which chronicled the early years of the AIDS epidemic.35 Shilts' book made an important contribution to documenting the history of AIDS, but his view of "the facts about AIDS", as well as his opinions, differ greatly from others on a number of occasions.36
Shilts was the first to identify a French-Canadian flight attendant called Gaetan Dugas as 'Patient Zero'. Shilts claimed that Gaetan Dugas played a key role in the early spread of AIDS in America, and the story of 'Patient Zero' was widely publicised by the media.37 But there never was a Patient Zero.
"There's no Patient Zero. It's lots and lots people moving around from New York to San Francisco, and the rest of the world. If there ever was an original Patient Zero, it would have been back in the mid-Seventies. But there isn't an original Patient Zero."Andrew Moss38
In Africa, President Kaunda of Zambia announced that his son had died of AIDS, and appealed to the international community to treat AIDS as a worldwide problem.39 In Uganda, 16 volunteers who had been personally affected by HIV/AIDS came together to found the community organisation TASO.40
In October, AIDS became the first disease ever debated on the floor of the United Nations (UN) General Assembly. The General Assembly resolved to mobilize the entire UN system in the worldwide struggle against AIDS, under the leadership of the WHO.41
The American scientist Dr. Peter Duesberg published a scientific paper in a cancer journal that questioned the then dominant theory that viruses were involved in cancer causation, and also queried the link between HIV and AIDS.42 In November, Channel 4 broadcast the documentary 'AIDS: the Unheard Voices' to its British audience. In the documentary Duesberg and others argued that HIV could not be the cause of AIDS.43
By December, 71,751 cases of AIDS had been reported to the World Health Organisation, with the greatest number reported by the USA (47,022). Countries reporting over 2,000 cases included France (2,523), Uganda (2,369) and Brazil (2,102). Five other countries reported more than 1,000 cases: Tanzania (1,608), Germany (1,486), Canada (1,334), UK (1,170) and Italy (1,104).
The WHO also reported that an estimated 5 to 10 million people were infected with HIV worldwide, with 150,000 cases of AIDS expected to develop in the following 12 months and up to 3 million within the next 5 years.44
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