Face of AIDS Timeline 1981-2017

“HIV is very similar in its genetic code to a virus that infects chimpanzees, and there was transmission from a chimpanzee to a human, most likely through the practice of killing monkeys in Africa for bushmeat. And so, there would have been a cross-species transfer, which happens with many infectious diseases, estimated to have occurred in the 1930s, and it took some time to get to grow and spread out of Africa, and that was driven by modern day advances with travel.”



– Sharon Lewin, Australian infectious disease physician and researcher



https://www.avert.org/professionals/history-hiv-aids/origin

Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) describes cases of a rare lung infection in five gay men in Los Angeles. This is the first official report of the disease that would become known as AIDS – Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome.

Here are four witness reports on the outbreak of a new disease in San Francisco 1981.

Dr James Curran is mostly known for his work at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the 80s. He talks about the issue of Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), June 5 1981, the first official report of what would become known as AIDS.

Martin Delaney was a pioneering American AIDS activist, founder of the treatment project Project Inform in San Francisco in 1985, and a gay activist. He was there from the very first cases and tells his version of the outbreak.

Selma Dritz was an Infectious Disease specialist in San Francisco in 1981. She is also an activist for human rights and gay rights in the Democratic Party. She explains how she could trace case by case in the summer of 1981. She met all the first AIDS patients in San Francisco, when she tried to understand the disease and act against it from her base at the city´s Health Department.

David Perlman was the Science Editor of the San Francisco Chronicle. He called Selma Dritz after reading the MMWR report. He asked if she had seen any cases in San Francisco, and she told him she had. When Perlman then wrote the story, published the next day, it became the first ever newspaper article on AIDS published.

Luc Montagnier, born in 1932, is a French virologist, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiologi and Medicine in 2008  by Karolinska Institutet along with his friend and colleague Francoise-Barré Sinoussi , both from the Pasteur Institute in Paris.

In 1982, Willy Rozenbaum, a clinician at the Hospital Bichat in Paris, asked Luc Montagnier for advice and assistance in establishing the cause of a mysterious new syndrome, known at the time as GRID, Gay related immune deficiency, as the sick patients were mostly gay men. Rozenbaum had proposed at scientific meetings that the cause of the disease might be a retrovirus. Montagnier, his close associates Francoise Barré-Sinoussi and Jean-Claude Chermann and others in the Pasteur team, had by then extensive experience with retroviruses. They examined samples taken from dr. Rozenbaums patients and found the virus that later was named HIV, in a lymph node biopsy.  They named it first LAV, or ”Lymphadenopathy-associated virus”. The discovery took place in 1983 and in their first paper in Science in 1983, it was not yet proven to them that this actually was HIV, leading to AIDS.

A team led by Robert Gallo at the National Cancer Institute at the NIH in Bethesda, Maryland, published similar findings in the same issue of Science and later confirmed the discovery of the virus and presented evidence that it caused AIDS.  Gallo called the virus HTLV-III, (Human T-lymphocytic virus of type III), because the virus was similar to HTLV I and II, which had earlier been discovered in Gallo’s lab. Because of the timing of the discoveries, whether Montagnier´s or Gallo´s group was first to isolate HIV was for many years the subject of an intensive and very complicated dispute. The dispute was not cleared until President Ronald Reagan and President Francois Mitterand met in the White House in 1987 with the two scientists. The two scientists finally agreed to share credit for the discovery of HIV and in 1986 both the French name LAV and the US HTLV III was finally dropped and replaced with the name HIV.

They concluded that the origin of the HIV isolate discovered by Gallo was the same isolate as discovered by Montagnier (but not known to Montagnier at the time to cause AIDS). Montagnier had sent a sample of the isolate to Gallo’s lab. This compromise allowed Montagnier and Gallo to end their feud and collaborate with each other again, writing a chronology that appeared in Nature in 1986. They also signed articles together in Science in 2002, to show that they were now in agreement.

“I think actually seeing the virus was very important. We knew of course that this was a virus, it was an enemy within the infected people, and now you could visualize it. Then we gradually learned over the years how ferocious this virus was, the way it could attack the vital cells, how it could invade the brain, how it could change and jump and using another receptor than it initially used, making of course attempts at a vaccine very, very difficult, and still is.”

Hans Wigzell, Professor of Immunology, former President of KI. Quote from 1998

In July 1985, actor Rock Hudson announced that he had AIDS. He was one of the first celebrities to go public with his illness, and died in October the same year. He left $250,000 to set up the American Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR).

“This was the ‘shot heard ’round the world.’ It was the absolute moment that changed public awareness of the epidemic.” (Bruce Ward, POZ magazine).

Sharon Stone was confronted with AIDS when she played in a TV movie with Rock Hudson in 1985. After the film was completed in post production, she heard of Rock Hudsonʼs death of AIDS. Then rumours started of how HIV spread, for example through kisses. Four doctors refused to draw her blood for an HIV test, until one was willing. Stigma was so strong at this period.

She was HIV negative.

“AIDS – föreställningar om en verklighet is in many ways a dramatic, even frightening presentation of AIDS as a new threat to society and individuals alike. Yet, the film also opens up for some very personal stories as it collects four individual reflections of how it was to live with the infection in Stockholm in the fall of 1986.
The film is thus one of the first documentaries that actually takes time to listen to the infected themselves, to give them an opportunity to present their experiences in their own words. A story of a painful, devastating test result, of anxiety and anger – yes, of course. But also of strength, determination and solidarity, of dreams and hopes, of the richness and the fortune of life.”

David Thorsén
On AIDS: Metaphor and Reality – the first film in the Face of AIDS Film Archive

The American activist organization AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) arrange its first demonstration at Wall Street, New York.

“ACT UP has played a major role in the emerging AIDS activism in the US. ACT UP started in 1987. ACT UP is an AIDS network which really caught my imagination. They were inspired both from the Vietnam movement, the student rebellion in 1968 and the Civil Rights Movement in the 60’s. ACT UP as I see it is a symbol of the American protest movement. And was recognized all over the world." - Staffan Hildebrand

Link to ACT UP Oral History project

"Noerine Kaleeba was a physiohtherapist at Mulago Hospital until 1987 and an educator. She got her exam from the famous Makerere University in Kampala. She was the first really famous  leading female African AIDS activist. Noerine’s husband was dying of AIDS in London around 1986. She visited Jonathan Mann at the WHO in Geneva and asked him how she could help him. This was way before ARV treatment so Mann said to her, ‘I can’t help your husband, but you can help by providing support for those infected and participate in prevention in your own country.” She then went back to Uganda and founded TASO (The AIDS Support Organization) in 1987, the first ever African support organization for AIDS. She did it part as a legacy to honor her beloved husband who died shortly after her visit to Jonathan Mann. TASO soon became a role model for how to provide support and care for people living with HIV and also for prevention to young people so they do not put themselves at risk.  She has been the patron of TASO long after she left as Director. She has also been advisor to UNAIDS and to many other AIDS organizations. Now she has retired with all her memories in a small village outside Kampala." - Staffan Hildebrand

“This meeting with Lyle Taylor made a strong impression on me. He was the first person dying of AIDS whom I met and filmed. When filming him I had to confront my own stigma. At first I was afraid of shaking his sweaty hand, full of dark red dots caused by the skin cancer Kaposi Sarcoma, but his wonderful doctor John Dwyer pushed me to shake his hand and touch him. After I did, all my fears disappeared.

Dr. Dwyer told me that if I am afraid of touching, I can not continue filming people living with HIV and AIDS. That changed me and I am very grateful to him.”

Staffan Hildebrand

The first five women diagnosed with HIV in the Philippines, talk for the first time on camera about their health statuses and diagnoses and the stigma they are facing. They all worked as sex workers in Olangapo City near the US military navy base Subic Bay, and were infected by US military men.

“Dick Gordon, a well known politician and early promotor of AIDS response in the Philippines, told me not to film the faces of these women, he wanted to protect the HIV positive women. He took out a gun from his belt and told me that if we exposed their faces in our film, he would come after me. Even if it was a joke, it shows clearly his respect for these vulnerable women.”

Staffan Hildebrand

In 1990, a tumultuous demonstration was held outside the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Washington. It ended with activist Larry Kramer and other protesters being invited to the office of Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). This was two years after Kramer had called Fauci a “murderer” and an “incompetent idiot” in a newspaper article. In spite of that, a dialogue started, and more funding was given to AIDS research. As a result, Kramer and Fauci joined forces and became unlikely friends.

Mechai Viravaidya is a politician and activist who has popularized condoms, family planning and AIDS awareness in Thailand. By increasing his efforts to promote sexual safety awareness, he both inspired and led the Thai response to HIV and AIDS, which drastically lowered HIV prevalence in the country. Among other things, he has distributed thousands of condoms at various events, and founded a restaurant chain called “Cabbages and Condoms”, where condoms are given to customers with the bill. In Thailand, Mechai Viravaidya has become affectionately known as “Mr Condom”, and condoms have sometimes been referred to as “mechais”.

Noerine Kaleeba tells the story of how The AIDS Support Organization (TASO) in Uganda was founded and how TASO works with HIV/AIDS.

“Noreins husband was dying of AIDS in London around 1986. She visited then Jonathan Mann at the WHO in Geneva and asked him how she could help him. This was way before ARV treatment so Mann said to her, I can’t help your husband, but you can help by providing support for those infected and participate in prevention in your own country. She then went back to Uganda and founded TASO (The AIDS Support Organization) in 1987, the first ever African support organization for AIDS. She did it part as a legacy to honor her beloved husband who died shortly after her visit to Jonathan Mann.  The NGO soon became a role model for how to provide support and care for people living with HIV and also for prevention to young people so they do not put themselves at risk.  She has been the patron of TASO long after she left as Director. She has also been advisor to UNAIDS and to many other AIDS organizations.

Highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART), combining at least three drug types, is introduced in 1996. For those who receive the treatment, the prognosis for HIV shifts from almost certain fatality to chronic illness, and leads to an immediate decline of between 60% and 80% in rates of AIDS-related deaths and hospitalisation. But in low-income countries, less than 5% of those in need have access to this treatment.

John Lesnick was one of the first in the USA to get ARV medication. Here he displays all the 36 various medications which he had to take every day. Most of them were for the side effects from the ARV medication.

In 1998, Staffan Hildebrand met and interviewed Cambodian activist Oum Sopheap. He criticized the inequity in global access.

"I interviewed Oum Sopheap for the first time in 1998, at the peak of the Cambodian epidemic, and continuously over the years. In 1998 he was an angry AIDS activist involved in the World Vision Project, angry because the ARV treatment was at that time accessible in the rich countries but not in the poor countries. He has devoted his adult lifetime to the Cambodian fight against HIV/AIDS. In 2003, Oum Sopheap took over as Executive Director of KHANA, an NGO which during the past ten years has developed into the largest in the country focusing on health, and which also has had an instrumental role in the Cambodian HIV/AIDS response. Cambodia is, along with Thailand, the first Asian success story with more than 80% of those in need now accessing free ARV." - Staffan Hildebrand

“Kevina Lubowa, who was only 14 when this was filmed, is a good example of children whose parents died of AIDS, and she had to take care of her siblings. This was a very common story in the hard hit countries of Sub Sahara Africa. They are called child bearing families. The Rakai district was one of the worst affected districts in Uganda and in the world, with a very high HIV/AIDS prevalence."

- Staffan Hildebrand

Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) is a South African organization founded in 1998 to campaign for access to AIDS treatment and care. TAC has successfully campaigned against AIDS denialism and demanded affordable drugs.

The theme of this important conference was “Breaking the Silence”, focusing on the inequity in treatment access between rich and poor countries. In connection to the conference 5000 scientists signed the “Durban Declaration” in response to AIDS denialism and affirming that HIV is the cause of AIDS.

In 2002, a Face of AIDS film team documented the HIV epidemic in Russia in the film Outreach. The epidemic in Russia at the time was described as a hidden disaster, ready to explode. In a time of post-Soviet Union chaos, heroin was booming, making drug users the first line of victims together with sex workers and gay men. The film team met with representatives of UNAIDS, Medecins du Monde, Info Plus Center, and the Orthodox Christian Church. The film highlights the conflict between different approaches to the problem. 

”Our methods are based on religious traditions. Our activities have orthodox roots, which our monasteries kept alive. One monastic group is what westerners would call a treatment group. We have one of these groups here. Young people go through rehabilitation: work training, social skills, psychological and spiritual rehabilitation. […] A project involving syringe exchanges and handing out free condoms is an idea I don’t like. […] It won’t save them or society, it will create new addicts. It doesn’t solve the problem, it just postpones it.



– Father Sergei, Church Konevsky Icon of Saint Mary.

 

“Trying to cure drug addiction is very expensive, and it’s hard to get results. That’s why we have to work in such a way that we admit the fact that drug abuse exists. Our opponents sometimes say that the educational material our project hands out can teach people how to use drugs.  But these people are forgetting that this information is not spread to the general population. It is spread to those who unfortunately already have drug addictions.”

– Alexandre Tsekhanovitch, Medecins du Monde

In January 2003, President George W. Bush announced the creation of the United States President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), a $15 billion, five-year plan to combat AIDS primarily in countries with a high number of HIV infections.

Sibulele Sibaca is a peer educator for the youth organization Love Life in South Africa. Here she talks about her work with Love Life and about sex education targeting young people and boys in particular. She thinks it is important to encourage young people to talk about love and sex.

Oracle is a Botswanan hip hop artist. He talks about the messages of HIV prevention in his music and how to approach young people. He also reflects on the AIDS situation in Botswana and globally and how people are relating to HIV/AIDS.

An HIV positive patient is the first person ever to be cured of HIV. Called “The Berlin Patient”, he later decides to make his name – Timothy Ray Brown – public. He had a bone-marrow transplant from a donor who was naturally resistant to HIV. In 2019, another HIV positive person – called “The London Patient” – was reported showing no trace of the virus after more than 18 months, also after a bone marrow transplant from an HIV resistant donor.

Timothy Ray Brown: “I Am the Berlin Patient: A Personal Reflection”

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4287108/pdf/aid.2014.0224.pdf

Gracia Violeta Ross Quiroga is a leading HIV activist in Bolivia. She was infected with HIV at the age of 22 when she was raped by two men in an alley near her home in La Paz. This led to a deep personal change in her. She became depressed, but after she recovered she decided to be open with her status and to become an HIV activist.

She is co-founder of the first Bolivian network of people living with HIV and AIDS, REDBOL, and has been involved in a number of international HIV projects. She is also part of the UN Women Civil Society Advisory Group for Latin America and The Caribbean.

Mary-Jane Matsolo and Nokubonga Yawa are two young AIDS activists in South Africa. They are both active in GroundUp, an online news publication covering health and education issues, and human right stories. In this film, they discuss the importance of activism. Mary-Jane Matsolo also visits a village outside of Durban and talks about growing up as a teenage girl in the area, sexual behaviour and safe sex.

In 2012, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the drug for use as PrEP, based on growing evidence that the drug was safe and effective at preventing HIV in populations at increased risk of infection.

Steve Sjöquist is a writer, HIV activist and deacon at Capio S:t Görans Hospital in Stockholm. He was diagnosed with HIV in 1987 and one of the first Swedish AIDS patients to get the new antiretroviral therapy in 1996. It saved his life.

In a scene in the documentary The Longest Journey is the Journey Within (2015), he meets Simon Blom, who represents a young generation of Swedish HIV activists.Simon is in charge of an HIV project on social media for young people.

The Prevention Campaign launches the U=U campaign: “U=U is a simple but hugely important campaign based on a solid foundation of scientific evidence. It has already been successful in influencing public opinion, causing more people with HIV (and their friends and families) to comprehend that they can live long, healthy lives, have children, and never have to worry about passing on their infection to others." - The Lancet (November 2017)

“Much has improved and today itʼs rewarding to be an HIV doctor. Even when I must give somebody the difficult message that they are HIV positive, I can also say: ʻBut I can offer you an amazing treatment. You will not die from this. You can live a long, healthy life and you shouldnʼt have to be alone. You wonʼt infect others when you are on treatment, neither your partner nor any future babies.ʼ A lot has improved, but the epidemic can also quickly go the other way, since we still have a lot of new infections – almost 5 000 people are newly infected every day, and most of them are young people. We need to keep the discussion going, and keep HIV and AIDS high on the global agenda, so that the world doesnʼt think that the problem is solved.” Anna Mia Ekström, Clinical professor in global infectious disease epidemiology focusing on HIV