Dr James Curran, mostly known for his work at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the 1980's, pinpoints several key events and persons linked with the very first years of discoveries on HIV and AIDS.

XIX International AIDS Conference in Washington D.C. Barton Haynes from the Duke Human Vaccine Institute (DHVI) has been working in the HIV vaccine field since 1985. Here he talks about the scientific difficulties of finding an HIV vaccine.

XIX International AIDS Conference. The co-chair of this conference, Diane Havlir, has been working with HIV/AIDS since the early 80's at San Francisco General Hospital. Here she talks about the time of the outbreak and about the tools needed to end HIV and AIDS.

XIX International AIDS Conference in Washington D.C. Interview with the French Virologist, Françoise Barré-Sinoussi, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2008 for discovering HIV as the cause of AIDS. Here she talks about the possibility of ending AIDS.

XIX International AIDS Conference in Washington D.C. Interview with the French Virologist, Françoise Barré-Sinoussi, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2008 for discovering HIV as the cause of AIDS. Here she talks about the possibility of ending AIDS.

XIX International AIDS Conference. Interview with Bernhard Schwartzlander from UNAIDS in Geneva. Schwartzländer is an expert on the statistics of HIV/AIDS. He talks about the HIV prevalence globally and the importance of early diagnosis and ARV treatment.

XIX International AIDS Conference. Sharon Lewin from Monash University in Melbourne discusses the possibilities of ending AIDS and scientific breakthroughs during the 30 years of the epidemic, for instance the discovery that some people are resistant to HIV.

French virologist and Nobel Prize winner Luc Montagnier reflects on the discovery of HIV, discusses disappointments and lessons learned along the way and the possibility of a vaccine, and gives advice for future AIDS researchers.

Sten Vermund from University of Alabama reflects on the history of the global AIDS epidemic and his involvement in the field as a young scientist in the 80's. He discusses the social and economic factors of HIV/AIDS, such as stigma, poverty and the drug industry.

Annual HIV research conference arranged by IHV. Dr Robert Gallo holds a lecture on the history of medical research on human retroviruses. He also talks about the early discoveries of t-cell leukemia in Japanese patients, which led to the discovery of HTLV-1.

The primary focus of this documentary is on the history of how the AIDS epidemic started in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York in 1981. Many different stories are told about people affected or surrounded by HIV and AIDS in the early years of the epidemic.