(TIME WARP): AIDS, The plague years-1981-91!

June 1991

If you are of an older generation, and especially a gay man, you probably remember reading or hearing about a July 3, 1981, New York Times article reporting on a strange series of illnesses striking gay men in East Coast and West Coast urban areas. Just 12 years after the Stonewall riots in New York, the decade of love and liberation had come to a crashing end.


There were some signs of distress earlier than 1981. Doctors and nurses, especially those with many gay patients, began to notice obscure illnesses cropping up. Gay health groups did screenings for venereal diseases, which were spreading rapidly.

But it was the summer of 1981 when the U.S. Centers for Disease Control's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report ( MMWR, June 5 and July 3 ) first reported that a new disease might be in our midst. It could have been around for years, but was just at that time starting to exhibit itself.

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