AIDS in the Early Eighties
Fear, propaganda, greed and homophobia
By Michael Bellefountaine
“People often ask, "If AIDS drugs are what is killing people today, what
was killing them before these pills were on the market, or before HIV was
detectable through testing?"
===
In a recent Sacramento News and Review article, “The HIV
Disbelievers," about people who question HIV as the sole cause of AIDS, Gary
Myerscough, an ACT UP San Francisco critic, stated, "But in 1981...the Bay Area
Reporter (B.A.R.) -- a gay weekly in San Francisco -- was publishing two
to three pages of obituaries per week." It seemed that this assertion was
accepted as fact by the reporter and was being promoted as truth by the media.
Indeed, many people often ask AIDS dissidents, "If AIDS drugs are what is
killing people today, what was killing them before these pills were on the
market, or before HIV was detectable through testing?"
In order to answer this question I felt it was important to find out exactly
when AIDS obituaries started appearing in the gay press, how many there were,
and whether there were any peaks or trends that could be traced. This prompted a
group of ACT UP San Francisco members to go to the library and begin an
extensive search of the Bay Area Reporter for all references to AIDS, starting
in January 1979 and ending in December 1984, the year the U.S. government
announced that HIV was "the probable cause of AIDS." Not long into the research
I realized that few, if any, of the generally accepted facts about AIDS in the
early eighties were reflected in what I was uncovering.
Setting the Stage for HIV
In the late 1970s, San Francisco had the highest rates of venereal disease (VD)
in its history and in the country. In 1980, the federal government began a
program to eradicate VD by focusing on San Francisco in general, and its
sexually active gay male population specifically. The Department of Public
Health (DPH) targeted the heavily gay neighborhoods of the Castro, the Polk and
the Tenderloin with VD alerts as well as a VD van that circled these areas to
test people on street corners for gonorrhea, syphilis, parasites and other bugs.
This focus on eradicating VD was also primarily aimed at a certain subset of gay
men who "lived in the fast lane." These men were more inclined to use a wide
variety of recreational drugs, have multiple sex partners, and take antibiotics
as preventive medicine for potential VD infections. It was men from this group
who would first become sick with rare illnesses.
As gays and lesbians fought for acceptability in the 1970s, professional gays
were emboldened to come out of the closet. Gay teachers, lawyers and doctors all
formed professional associations. It was these early doctor groups that first
promoted the notion that gays had "special health needs," as opposed to the
simple need for Queer-sensitive health care providers.
Around this time, two articles appeared emphasizing this point in the Annals of
Internal Medicine; "STDs and Traumatic Problems in Homosexual Men" and "The
Clinical Approach to the Homosexual Patient." The message communicated by these
medical journal articles was that gay men had special needs, especially when it
came to stopping the spread of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and
providing psychiatric and drug abuse counseling. This paved the way for a
mind-set that would readily accept the gay-specific, deadly STD named HIV. In
fact, an article in the June 17, 1980, B.A.R. entitled "Gay Men Guilty, 50 Years
of Public Health Down the Drain" stated that gay sex led to exotic ills and was
so dirty it was reversing all public health benefits since the inception of the
sewer!
The first articles announcing new diseases in gay men began to appear in the
press in June 1981. The San Francisco Chronicle ran an article on June 4, 1981,
entitled "U.S. CDC Studies Pneumonia That Strikes Gay Men." On July 2, 1981, the
B.A.R. ran an article "Gay Men's Pneumonia" and followed it up on July 16, 1981,
with another story, "Gay Men and KS."
None of these articles gave a clue to the chaos that was to come. In fact, both
B.A.R. articles appeared on page 34 of the newspaper and are no more than a few
paragraphs long. Interestingly, they are included in the Leather News section of
the paper, indicating they would be of interest to a smaller group within the
general gay population who read the B.A.R.
It is also important to note that, contrary to Myers-cough's claim, the B.A.R.
did not run pages of obituaries in 1981. The first people with Kaposi's sarcoma
(KS) and Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP) had not died, they had only been
diagnosed. It was not that people were dying and no one knew why; it was that
certain people for some reason developed KS and PCP and no one knew why -- a
very big difference.
By September 1981 the eighteenth case of KS was diagnosed in San Francisco. By
the end of 1981, 30 articles, editorials or letters on VD or AIDS had appeared
in the B.A.R.
Treatment of Kaposi's sarcoma at the time consisted of weekly doses of
chemotherapy, and from the very beginning there were questions about the
appropriate dose. In November 1982, Dr. Alvin Friedman-Kien of the New York
University Medical Center told an audience at the University of California San
Francisco, "I am no proponent of chemotherapy. We can cure the tumor but we are
killing the patient." ("Anal Sex Latest Culprit, AIDS Topic of Local
Conference," B.A.R., November 1982.)
At this time a group of concerned citizens formed an organization called the
Committee to Study the Cumulative Effects of Poppers, to bring attention to the
use and effects of amyl-, butyl- and propyl-nitrites. With veteran activist Hank
Wilson at the helm, this group demanded an investigation into the production,
distribution, legality and long-term health effects of poppers. "The Year of the
Little Brown Bottle" was the first B.A.R. editorial of 1982, and it called
attention to popper use. Additionally, the City held hearings in early 1982 on
poppers and their distribution. Poppers were sold as "room deodorizers" and
later as video head cleaner, and city officials felt they had little ability to
stop their production or sale. They did, however, issue a warning about the
dangers of using poppers as a recreational drug.
The gay community seemed willing to accept that long-term recreational drug and
alcohol abuse would lead to immune suppression. Both Arthur Evans and Bobbi
Campbell wrote letters bemoaning the use of poppers.
In a December 10, 1981, New England Journal of Medicine editorial on causes of
gay pneumonia and cancer, Dr. D.T. Durak from Duke Medical Center stated,
"So-called recreational drugs are one possibility. The leading candidates are
the nitrites." In June the British journal The Lancet also published a study on
the immune suppressive effects of poppers. One of the big questions at the time
was what was the link between KS and PCP. Before 1982 the two had not been
linked in any way, and the only way they seemed connected was in gay men.
Somehow gay sexual practices became the focus of this link as opposed to the
common factor of drug abuse. It would make sense that nitrites inhaled through
the nose would cause both KS on the face and in the lungs, as well as a
pulmonary problem like PCP.
Forget AIDS Fraud: Fund All! Fund Now!
As news reports of illnesses and deaths began to spread, the requests for
research funding began. By May 1982 San Francisco budgeted over $2 million for
AIDS research. This funding was in addition to $2 million budgeted by the DPH
for AIDS. Looking back, it is interesting to note that there were two camps with
opposite beliefs on spending priorities. One group demanded accountability and
oversight to avoid fraud, overlap, irrelevance and lack of progress. Amazingly,
the other group had a "Fund all! Fund now!" mentality.
This view was expressed in a May 12, 1983, B.A.R. editorial that stated, "The
next question...and a touchy one...is should we care where [AIDS funding] goes
or how it's spent or who's in charge of it? What with the trillions the various
levels of government have pitched away since 1940, who is to quibble over a few
thousand here and a few thousand there... It's an emergency and there isn't time
to ask questions, to check out money seekers. No time to scrutinize the
proposals -- to find out if the people involved are legit, if the projects are
relevant, if there is any overlapping, or if there is room for fraud or
embezzlement."
By 1983 the medical associations were adept at manipulating the media. They
would promote forums that consisted of two parts: The first half would alarm gay
men about a problem like AIDS, and the second half would tell them how to
relieve their anxieties by funding solutions to the problem. Researchers and
public health officials would then use the gay media to both promote and report
on these forums.
During this period, the B.A.R. began to prominently feature a "Victim of the
Week" profiling persons with AIDS (PWAs), both alive and dead, to let gay people
know that these KS sufferers were just like them. This culminated in the
coverage of a KS patient who had committed suicide. The B.A.R. splashed it
across the front page and went so far as to run the desperate person's suicide
note.
Early 1983 also saw people express concern about the overdosing of KS patients
with chemotherapy and question whether KS was a cancer caused by a virus. Also,
the New England Journal of Medicine printed articles exploring the link between
AIDS and parasites.
Shifting Gears to AIDS Terror
As these questions were being raised, the B.A.R. launched an
ultra-sensationalistic campaign on March 17, 1983, with an opinion piece by
editor Paul Lorch entitled "Shifting Gears." Lorch informed readers of a new,
concerted effort by the newspaper to scare gay men about AIDS. "The time has
come for us to start scaring the shit out of ourselves. The Grim Reaper is no
longer simply hovering over Laguna Honda Hospital. He is in our midst, and each
day he cuts a wider swath," Lorch warned.
Lorch's inflammatory editorial and the B.A.R.'s new terror policy of reporting
on the gay health panic led to the first time that people with AIDS organized.
Over twenty PWAs wrote a letter opposing the B.A.R.'s new frighteningly
sensationalistic approach to AIDS, and pointing out the fact that the paper's
publisher, Bob Ross, happened to also be the treasurer of the KS Foundation.
These PWAs expressed concern that, given this apparent conflict of interest,
Ross' paper would be less concerned with reporting facts and more involved with
sensationalizing the new disease syndrome.
"It seems to us that the publisher and editor have been less than responsible in
representing the theories and data surrounding AIDS...We find that many are
distressed that this sensational approach to reporting only fuels the fires of
fear, guilt and homophobia and adds to the everyday stresses patients must face
in dealing with this illness," they wrote in their letter.
Lorch responded with an unbelievably cruel letter that he sent to the PWAs but
did not publish in the B.A.R. However, the San Francisco Sentinel did run a
story about the sensationalism of AIDS coverage in the B.A.R. and published both
the letter from the PWAs and the response from Lorch. By May 1983 the San
Francisco KS Foundation, with Ross as treasurer, became a national organization.
As the fear grew so did the discrimination against PWAs. In the gay
neighborhoods, PWAs were asked to leave restaurants and thrown out of their
homes. On February 9, 1983, an ambulance driver in the Castro refused to
transport a gay businessman to the hospital who was suffering from acute
appendicitis. Soon it became clear that anti-AIDS fear and prejudice flowed over
to anti-gay discrimination. People who were known to have KS or PCP were chased
out of bars and bathhouses. Some gay men even went so far as to lie about and
retaliate against others by informing bar owners that certain patrons had AIDS.
In a May 26, 1983, letter to the B.A.R. Fred Heracomb, owner of the Catacombs
bathhouse wrote, "Last week's letter by John Tallerino stated that two men with
AIDS knowingly pursue an active sexual life and can be found at the Cauldron or
Catacombs on any given night. After reading his letter I got his telephone
number and called him. I let John know that I am just as concerned as he about
the threat this poses to all of us. I asked John to give me the names of these
men so I could bar them from the Catacombs. John then said that he did not know
for sure that these men had AIDS, nor was he sure that they go to the Catacombs
and based his letter on hearsay only."
Amidst the growing hysteria of 1983, an article from the Medical World News was
released stating that the CDC had established from animal research that nitrites
could not be responsible for AIDS. This put an end to the argument of drug
causation, and the gay community embraced the viral cause of AIDS and all the
discrimination that went along with it.
Bathhouse and Blood Bank Blues
It was in the beginning of 1983 that arguments to close the bathhouses began in
earnest. Community groups demanded that owners put up AIDS warnings even though
no one knew what was causing the syndrome. There were concerns that visitors to
Gay Pride in 1983 would come to San Francisco, get infected, and return home to
spread AIDS.
Additionally, the Democratic National Convention was to be held in San Francisco
in 1984, and the city needed to be cleaned up. At the same time, blood banks
began to express concern about the safety of the nation's blood supply.
Suddenly, in 1983, the Hemophiliac Foundation of America stopped accepting blood
from gay men, Haitians and intravenous drug users. Other blood banks followed
suit, refusing donations from sexually active gays, or from all gays. After some
lobbying, local blood banks provided a self-screening questionnaire that they
handed out to potential donors. By April 1983 the U.S. Food and Drug
Administration warned blood banks against accepting donations from all
homosexual men.
The first AIDS memorial candlelight march was held in May 1983. It was well
attended, and for a very good reason -- all of the city's gay bars and
businesses agreed to close for a few hours that night. Oddly enough, in the May
5, 1983, B.A.R., reporter Wayne April stated, "Most of the marchers had not seen
actual victims of AIDS, but got their first chance when five patients spoke to
an overflow crowd." That a B.A.R. reporter would so readily admit that no one in
the gay community knew people with AIDS as late as 1983 flies in the face of
what most people believe happened during these early years.
Finally, in April 1984, HTLV-3 (the precursor to HIV) was announced and an
antibody test was patented. Symptoms of AIDS became irrelevant as the medical
establishment no longer looked at who was sick, but now searched for who was
"infected."
Despite all the hysteria, the cumulative (all time) total for AIDS cases
reported by the B.A.R. in June 1983 were very low:
National AIDS Cases: 1,450
San Francisco AIDS Cases: 249
National AIDS Deaths: 558
San Francisco AIDS Deaths: 72
Had doctors, researchers, gay leaders and the press been skeptical about the
cause of AIDS and rational in the face of fear, the non-contagious reasons for
illness could have been addressed and an atmosphere of anti-gay violence would
have been avoided.
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Michael Bellefountaine has been a member of ACT UP for over a decade. He can be
reached at ACT UP at 415-864-6686 or by e-mail at actupsf@hotmail.com