First report of AIDS
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The June 5 1981 Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report generated coverage in the mainstream media (Los Angeles Times and San Francisco Chronicle) about a mysterious illness (they called it a "gay cancer") that had killed five young gay men in Los Angeles. It was the first mention of what later became known as AIDS. The term AIDS was first used on July 27 1982 by the American Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. |
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Five cases of Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP) were reported in what turned out to be the first reporting of AIDS in the medical literature (June 5, 1981). Los Angeles-based general practitioner Joel Weisman and immunologist Michael S. Gottlieb of the UCLA Medical Center had encountered a series of gay male patients with symptoms that appeared to be immune system disorders including significant loss of weight and swollen lymph nodes, accompanied by fever and rashes, in addition to two patients with chronic diarrhea, depressed white blood cell counts and fungal infections. Gottlieb diagnosed these and a number of his other patients as having pneumocystis pneumonia. A report they jointly wrote and published in the June 5, 1981, issue of Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, described their patients as "5 young men, all active homosexuals, [who] were treated for biopsy-confirmed Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia at 3 different hospitals in Los Angeles, California" of which "[t]wo of the patients died" by the time of the original report. This notice has been recognized as the first published report marking the official start of the AIDS pandemic and as "the first report on AIDS in the medical literature".
