Researchers estimate that some time in the early 20th century, a form ofSimian immunodeficiency virus found in chimpanzees (SIVcpz) first entered humans in Central Africa and began circulating in Léopoldville (modern-dayKinshasa) by the 1920s.[1][2][3] This gave rise to the pandemic form of HIV (HIV-1 group M); other zoonotic transmissions led to the other, less prevalent,subtypes of HIV.[3][4]
1930s to 1950s
A range of small scalePneumocystis pneumonia epidemics occurred in northern and central European countries between the 1930s and 1950s,[5] affecting children who were prematurely born. The epidemics spread likely due to infected glass syringes and needles. Malnutrition was not considered a cause, as Europe largely had recovered from wartime food shortages. Researchers state that the most likely cause of the epidemic was a retrovirus closely related to HIV (or a mild version of HIV) brought to Europe and originating from Cameroon, a former German colony. The epidemic started in theFree City of Danzig in 1939 and then spread to nearby countries in the 1940s and 1950s, like Switzerland and The Netherlands.[6][7]
1952
American Richard Edwin Graves Jr., a 28-year-old World War II veteran who had been stationed in theSolomon Islands died on 26 July 1952 inMemphis, Tennessee with pneumocystis pneumonia and CMV, which some authors suggest constitutes a sufficient number ofopportunistic infections that are suggestive of an AIDS diagnosis.[8][9]
June 28, 1959: In New York City, Ardouin Antonio,[13] a 49-year-old Haitian shipping clerk, dies ofPneumocystis carinii pneumonia, a disease now closely associated with AIDS but then considered highly anomalous for an adult. Gordon Hennigar, who performed the postmortem examination of the man's body, found "the first reported instance of unassociatedPneumocystis carinii disease in an adult" to be so unusual that he preserved Ardouin's lungs for later study. The case was published in two medical journals at the time,[14][15] and Hennigar has been quoted in numerous publications saying that he believes Ardouin probably had AIDS.[16][17][18]
David Carr, aManchester printer (sometimes mistakenly referred to as a sailor) who died on 31 August 1959 following the failure of hisimmune system; he succumbed topneumonia. Baffled by what he had died from, doctors preserved 50 of his tissue samples for inspection. In 1990, the tissues were found to be HIV-positive. However, in 1992, a second test by AIDS researcherDavid Ho found that the strain ofHIV which was present in the tissues was similar to the strain of HIV which was found in tissue samples which were collected and analyzed in the late 1980s rather than an earlier strain of HIV (which would have mutated considerably over the course of 30 years). Ho's discovery has cast doubt on the theory that David Carr's death was caused by AIDS.[19][citation needed]
1960s
HIV-2, a viral variant found in West Africa, is thought to have transferred to people fromsooty mangabey[20] monkeys in Guinea-Bissau.
Genetic studies of the virus indicate that HIV-1 (M) first arrived in the Americas in the late 1960s likely in Haiti or another Caribbean island.[21] At this time, many Haitians were working in the Congo, providing the opportunity for infection.[22]
Slavin, Cameron, and Singh note first that research indicates that, quote "Kaposi's sarcoma occurs with great frequency in indigenous African Negroes", and then goes on to describe 117 cases of Kaposi's sarcoma (including cases in children indicative of vertical transmission), typical of HIV/AIDS infection. Finally, they note that, at the time of publication, 4% of malignancies diagnosed in Tanzania by biopsy indicated Kaposi's sarcoma as the causative agent.[25]
1968
A 2003 analysis of HIV types found in the United States, compared to known mutation rates, suggests that the form of the HIV-1-M virus that would later become the cause of the epidemic in North America and Europe may have first arrived in the United States in this year.[26][medical citation needed] The disease spread from the 1966 American strain, but remained unrecognized for another 12 years.[22][medical citation needed] It has been suggested that this is contradicted by the estimated area of time of initial infection of Robert Rayford who was most likely infected around 1959;[original research?] however, it was later discovered that Robert Rayford had been infected with an earlier strain of AIDS which would be chiefly associated with France, unrelated to the strain which would later cause the start of the pandemic in the US.[27]
1969
A St. Louis teenager, identified asRobert Rayford, dies of an illness that baffled his doctors since first exhibiting symptoms in 1966. Eighteen years later, molecular biologists at Tulane University in New Orleans test samples of his remains and find evidence of HIV, suggesting he may have been the first documented AIDS case in North America.[28][29]
1976
January: The 8-year-old daughter ofArvid Noe dies of what was later identified the first AIDS death in Europe.[30] Noe, a Norwegian sailor, dies in April; his wife dies in December. Later it is determined that Noe contracted HIV-1 type O, in Africa during the early 1960s.[30]
1977
Danish physicianGrethe Rask dies of AIDS contracted in Africa.
A San Francisco woman, believed to be a sex-worker, gives birth to the first of three children who are later diagnosed with AIDS. The children's blood was tested after their deaths and revealed HIV infection. The mother died of AIDS in May 1987. Test results showed she was infected no later than 1977.[31][medical citation needed]
French-Canadian flight attendantGaëtan Dugas, a relatively early HIV patient, gets legally married in Los Angeles to get U.S. citizenship. He stayed inSilver Lake whenever he was in town.
A Zairian woman in her 30s seeks treatment in Belgium for symptoms indicating a suppressed immune system and AIDS-like disease (rapid weight loss, swollen lymph nodes and severeCMV). She initially came to Belgium for care of the oral fungus infection of her baby daughter. Her two other children, who were recently born as well, had died from respiratory infections; both also had an oral fungus infection since birth. The woman contracted even more opportunistic infections, dying in Kinshasa in early 1978. Tissue and blood samples were not preserved, but researchers state this might be an early AIDS case.[32]
1978
A Portuguese man known asSenhor José (English: Mr. Joseph) dies; he will later be confirmed as the first known infection ofHIV-2. It is believed that he was exposed to the disease in Guinea-Bissau in 1966.[citation needed]
A Greek man who worked for years as a fisherman at Congo'sLake Tanganyika shows up in a Belgian hospital with a range of untreatable opportunistic infections, including a very rarefungal meningitis. After he dies, the hospital keeps his blood and tissue samples for future analysis. After HIV testing becomes available, his samples are tested for HIV and give a positive result.[33][34][35]
April 24 - San Francisco resident (and supposed gay sex worker) Ken Horne is reported to the Center for Disease Control withKaposi's sarcoma (KS). Later in 1981, the CDC would retroactively identify him as the first patient of the AIDS epidemic in the US. He also hadCryptococcus.[36][medical citation needed]
December 23 - Rick Wellikoff, a Brooklyn schoolteacher, dies of AIDS in New York City. He is the fourth US citizen known to die from the illness.[38][medical citation needed]
A Zairian woman and a French woman die in late 1980 ofPneumocystis pneumonia in the Claude Bernard Hospital in Paris.[39][medical citation needed]
April 28 -Sandy Ford, a drug technician at theCenters for Disease Control, writes her superiors a memo on an unusual cluster ofpneumocystis pneumonia andKaposi's sarcoma cases she has identified. Ford was in charge of CDC distribution ofpentamidine, a medicine used to treat pneumocystis pneumonia, and she had noticed a surge in young homosexual men with the disease, which only appears in individuals withsuppressed immune systems. Her memo begins the CDC's investigation into the disease.[41][42]
May 18 - Lawrence Mass becomes the first journalist in the world to write about the epidemic, in theNew York Native, a gay newspaper. A gay tipster overheard his physician mention that somegay men were being treated in intensive-care units in New York City for a strange pneumonia. "Disease Rumors Largely Unfounded" was the headline of Mass' article, which ran on page 7.[43] Mass repeated a New York City public health official's claims that there was no wave of disease sweeping through the gay community. At this point, however, theCenters for Disease Control (CDC) had been investigating the outbreak that Mass' source dismissed for about a month.
June 4 - Brent Thomas, the Associate Editor ofThe Advocate magazine, dies from AIDS complications.
July 3 - An article inThe New York Times carries the headline: "Rare Cancer Seen in 41 Homosexuals". The article describes cases of Kaposi's sarcoma found in forty-one gay men, mostly in New York City and San Francisco.[45]
July 3 - A new article appears inMorbidity and Mortality Weekly Report headlined "Kaposi's Sarcoma andPneumocystis Pneumonia Among Homosexual Men — New York City and California." One cluster, in New York City included 20 patients, 7 of whom had died at the time of publication. The other cluster, in California, had just six with an additional death. Of the 26 cases reported, 12 had tests for Cytomegalovirus, all of which were positive. The report describes frequenthepatitis andamoebiasis infections among those described. It also details the apparent connection between Kaposi's sarcoma and immune suppression, noting the abnormality of the disease among young adults. The report notes that, aside from those receivingimmunosuppressants, the only group previously known to be at elevated risk for Kaposi's sarcoma was children and young adults in Equatorial Africa — no doubt because of the already endemic HIV in the area.[46]
October - Self-proclaimed "AIDS poster boy"Bobbi Campbell is diagnosed with Kaposi's sarcoma in San Francisco. That same month he creates and displays San Francisco's first AIDS poster.[48]
October 29 - John Eaddie, 49, dies of pneumocystis pneumonia in London. Later identified as HIV.[49]
October - The first reported case appears in Spain, in a 35-year-old gay man who died shortly after.[50][51]
December 10 -Bobbi Campbell is the first to come out publicly as a person with what came to be known as AIDS.[52][53][35]
December 12 - The first known case is reported in the United Kingdom.[54]
One of the first reported patients to have died of AIDS (presumptive diagnosis) in the US is reported in the journalGastroentereology. Louis Weinstein, the treating physician, wrote that "Immunologic incompetence, related to either disease or therapy, or both ... although suspected, could not be proved..."[citation needed]
By the end of the year on December 31, 337 people are known to have had the disease, 321 adults, and 16 children under the age of 13, and of those 130 had died from the disease.[26][medical citation needed]
June 18 - "Exposure to some substance (rather than an infectious agent) may eventually lead to immunodeficiency among a subset of the homosexual male population that shares a particular style of life."[56] For example, Marmoret al. recently reported that exposure to amyl nitrite was associated with an increased risk of KS in New York City.[57] Exposure to inhalant sexual stimulants, central-nervous-system stimulants, and a variety of other "street" drugs was common among males belonging to the cluster of cases of KS and PCP in Los Angeles and Orange counties."[56]
July 4 -Terry Higgins becomes one of the first people to die of AIDS-related illnesses in the United Kingdom, prompting the foundation in November of what was to become theTerrence Higgins Trust.[58]
July 9 - The CDC reports a cluster ofopportunistic infections (OI) and Kaposi's sarcoma among Haitians recently entering the United States.[59] Their risk factor for acquiring the syndrome was uncertain. Ten (29.4%) of these 34 patients with the syndrome of unexplained OI and Kaposi's Sarcoma (termed AIDS weeks later by CDC) also had disseminated tuberculosis.[59][60] This was the first reported association of tuberculosis with AIDS in a cluster of patients.[61][62] The uncertain risk factor for AIDS among Haitians was ultimately explained mostly by heterosexual transmission.[59][63][64][65][66][67]
July 27 - The term AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome) is proposed at a meeting in Washington, D.C. of gay-community leaders, federal bureaucrats and the CDC to replace GRID (gay-related immune deficiency) as evidence showed it was not gay specific.[68]
September 24 - TheCenters for Disease Control and Prevention defines a case of AIDS as a disease, at least moderately predictive of a defect in cell-mediated immunity, occurring in a person with no known cause for diminished resistance to that disease. Such diseases include KS, PCP, and serious OI. Diagnoses are considered to fit the case definition only if based on sufficiently reliable methods (generally histology or culture). Some patients who are considered AIDS cases on the basis of diseases only moderately predictive of cellular immunodeficiency may not actually be immunodeficient and may not be part of the current epidemic.[69]
December 10 - A baby in California becomes ill in the first known case of contracting AIDS from a blood transfusion.[37][medical citation needed]
January -Françoise Barré-Sinoussi, at thePasteur Institute in Paris, isolates a retrovirus that kills T-cells from the lymph system of a gay AIDS patient. In the following months, she would find additional cases in gay men and people with hemophilia. This retrovirus would be called by several names, including LAV and HTLV-III before being named HIV in 1986.[74][medical citation needed]
March -United States Public Health Service (PHS or USPHS) issues donor screening guidelines, stating AIDS high-risk groups shouldnot donate blood/plasma products.
March -AIDS Project Los Angeles is founded by Nancy Cole Sawaya, Matt Redman, Ervin Munro, and Max Drew
The first known case appears in Colombia; a female sexual worker fromCali was diagnosed with HIV in the Hospital Universitario de Cartagena.[75]
AIDS is diagnosed in Mexico for the first time. However, HIV can be traced in the country to 1981.[55][medical citation needed]
ThePCR (polymerase chain reaction) technique is developed byKary Mullis; it is widely used in AIDS research.
Within a few days of each other, the musiciansJobriath andKlaus Nomi become the first internationally known recording artists to die from AIDS-related illnesses.
April 23 - U.S. Health and Human Services SecretaryMargaret Heckler announces at a press conference that an American scientist,Robert Gallo, has discovered theprobable cause of AIDS: theretrovirus is subsequently namedhuman immunodeficiency virus or HIV in 1986. She also declares that a vaccine will be available within two years.
June 25 - French philosopherMichel Foucault dies of AIDS in Paris. Following his death,AIDES was founded.
September 6 - First performance atTheatre Rhinoceros in San Francisco ofThe AIDS Show which runs for two years and is the subject of a 1986 documentary film of the same name.
December 17 -Ryan White was diagnosed with AIDS by a doctor performing a partial lung removal. White became infected with HIV from blood products that were administered to him on a regular basis as part of his treatment forhemophilia. When the public school that he attended, Western Middle School in Russiaville, Indiana, learned of his disease in 1985 there was enormous pressure from parents and faculty to bar him from school premises. Due to the widespread fear of AIDS and lack of medical knowledge, principal Ron Colby and the school board assented. His family filed a lawsuit, seeking to overturn the ban.
Gaëtan Dugas passes away due to AIDS-related illnesses. He was a French-Canadian flight attendant who was falsely identified as patient 0 due to his central location and labeling as "patient O," as in the letter O, in a scientific study of 40 infected Americans from multiple U.S. cities.[78]
Roy Cohn is diagnosed with AIDS, but attempts to keep his condition secret while receiving experimental drug treatment.[79]
Social worker Caitlyn Ryan becomes the first executive director of AID Atlanta, the oldest AIDS service organization in theSoutheastern US.[81]
1985
March 2 - The FDA approves anELISA test as the first commercially available test for detecting HIV in blood. It detects antibodies which the body makes in response to exposure to HIV and is first intended for use on all donated blood and plasma intended for transfusion and product manufacture.[82]
April 21 - The AIDS-related playThe Normal Heart by Larry Kramer premieres in New York City.
July 28 -AIDS Project Los Angeles hosts the world's first AIDS Walk atParamount Studios in Hollywood. More than 4,500 people helped the Walk surpass its $100,000 goal, raising $673,000.[83]
September 17 - during his second term in office, US PresidentRonald Reagan publicly mentions AIDS for the first time when asked about the lack of medical research funding by an AP reporter during a press conference.[84][85]
September 19 - The firstCommitment to Life is held in Los Angeles.Elizabeth Taylor hosted the event and honored former First LadyBetty Ford. Taylor said at the event "Tonight is the start of my personal war on this disease, AIDS."[86] The event raised more than $1 million for AIDS Project Los Angeles.[citation needed]
October 2 -Rock Hudson dies of AIDS. On July 25, 1985, he was the first American celebrity to publicly admit having AIDS; he had been diagnosed with it on June 5, 1984.
October 12 -Ricky Wilson, guitarist of American rock bandThe B-52's dies from an AIDS related illness. The albumBouncing Off The Satellites, which he was working on when he died, is dedicated to him when it is released the next year. The band is devastated by the loss and do not tour or promote the album. Wilson is eventually replaced on guitar by his former writing partnerKeith Strickland, the B-52's former drummer.
October - A conference of public health officials including representatives of theCenters for Disease Control andWorld Health Organization meet inBangui and define AIDS in Africa as "prolonged fevers for a month or more, weight loss of over 10% and prolonged diarrhea".
November 11 -An Early Frost, the first film to cover the topic of HIV/AIDS is broadcast in the U.S. on prime time TV by NBC.
The first officially reported cases appear in China.[87][88]
This image revealed the presence of both HTLV-1, and HIV.
January 14 - "one million Americans have already been infected with the virus and that this number will jump to at least 2 million or 3 million within 5 to 10 years..." – NIAID DirectorAnthony Fauci,The New York Times.[90]
February - US PresidentRonald Reagan instructs his Surgeon GeneralC. Everett Koop to prepare a report on AIDS. (Koop was excluded from the Executive Task Force on AIDS established in 1983 by his immediate superior, Assistant Secretary of Health Edward Brandt.) Without allowing Reagan's domestic policy advisers to review the report, Koop released the report at a press conference on October 22, 1986.[91][92]
August 2 -Roy Cohn dies of complications from AIDS at the age of 59.[93] He insists to the end that his disease wasliver cancer.[94]
August -Jerry Smith publicly announces he has AIDS in August 1986, becoming the first former professional athlete to do so. He dies two months later, becoming the first known former professional athlete to die of the disease.[95]
HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) is adopted as the name of the retrovirus that was first proposed as the cause of AIDS byLuc Montagnier of France, who named it LAV (lymphadenopathy associated virus) andRobert Gallo of the United States, who named it HTLV-III (human T-lymphotropic virus type III)
The first book about AIDS policy,AIDS: A Public Health Challenge, is co-authored by Caitlyn Ryan. It serves as a guide to many public officials.[81][103]
Marie St. Cyr becomes the first director of theNew York-based Women and AIDS Resource Network (WARN).[81][104]
1987
February 4 - Popular performing musicianLiberace dies from AIDS related illness.
March 1 - Dr. Peter Duesberg of the University of California, Berkeley publishes a 22-page peer-reviewed article "Retroviruses as Carcinogens and Pathogens: Expectations and Reality".[105] The article challenges the hypothesis that HIV causes AIDS, launching the "AIDS denialist movement".
Randy Shilts' investigative journalism bookAnd the Band Played On is published, chronicling the 1980–1985 discovery and spreading of HIV/AIDS, government indifference, and political infighting in the United States to what was initially perceived as a gay disease. (Shilts died of the disease on February 17, 1994.)
The first known case appears in Nicaragua.
AZT (zidovudine), the first antiretroviral drug, becomes available to treat HIV.[26][107]
1988
March 3 -John Holmes dies from AIDS-related complications.
March 26 - In Buenos Aires, Argentina, the rock musicianMiguel Abuelo dies from AIDS-related complications.
May -C. Everett Koop sends an eight-page, condensed version of hisSurgeon General's Report on Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome report namedUnderstanding AIDS to all 107,000,000 households in the United States, becoming the first federal authority to provide explicit advice to US citizens on how to protect themselves from AIDS.[91][108]
August 5 - Screenwriter, actor, director, and producerColin Higgins dies of an AIDS-related illness at his home at the age of 47.[109]
December 21 - In Buenos Aires, Argentina, the rock musicianFederico Moura dies from AIDS-related complications.
1989
January 18 - British travel writerBruce Chatwin dies on January 18 from AIDS-related complications.
March 9 - PhotographerRobert Mapplethorpe, known for his black-and-white portraits and for documenting New York'sBDSM scene, passes away at the age of 42 due to complications from HIV/AIDS in aBoston hospital.
NASCAR driverTim Richmond dies on August 13 from AIDS-related complications.
August 16 -Amanda Blake, best known for her portrayal of saloon owner Miss Kitty on the television showGunsmoke, becomes the first actress of note in the United States to die of AIDS-related illness. The cause of death was cardiac arrest stemming from CMV hepatitis, an AIDS-related hepatitis.
November 10 - Actress and writerCookie Mueller, who starred in many of filmmakerJohn Waters' early films, passes away from AIDS-related pneumonia at the age of 40.[115]
December 1 - Dancer, director,choreographer, and activistAlvin Ailey, who founded theAlvin Ailey American Dance Theater and its affiliated Alvin Ailey American Dance Center (later Ailey School) as havens for nurturing Black artists and expressing the universality of the African-American experience through dance, dies from an AIDS-related illness at the age of 58.[116]
New York's highest court ruled inBraschi vs. Stahl Associates thatMiguel Braschi, a surviving gay partner of Leslie Blanchard who died of AIDS in 1986, had the right to continue living in theirrent controlled apartment. The landlord's losing argument was that Miguel Braschi was not family because he was not related to Blanchard by "blood, marriage or adoption."[119] The decision marked the first time any top state court in the nation recognized a gay couple to be the legal equivalent of a family,American Civil Liberties Union lawyer William Rubenstein said. The decision was a ground-breaking victory for lesbians and gay men; it marked an important step forward in American law toward legal recognition of lesbian and gay relationships.[120]
JudgeElizabeth A. Kovachevich of the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida ruled thatEliana Martínez, who had AIDS, could sit at a desk in a classroom without isolation partitions; Martínez attended her first day of school on April 27, 1989.[121][122]
January 6 - British actorIan Charleson dies from AIDS at the age of 40; it is the first show-business death in the United Kingdom openly attributed to complications from AIDS.
February 16 - New York artist and social activistKeith Haring dies from AIDS-related illness.
April 8 -Ryan White dies at the age of 18 from pneumonia caused by complications associated with AIDS.
Congress enacted The Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency (CARE) Act orRyan White Care Act, the United States' largest federally funded health related program (excludingMedicaid andMedicare).
July 7 - Brazilian singerCazuza dies in Rio de Janeiro at the age of 32 from an AIDS-related illness.
The First National Women and HIV Conference is held in Washington, DC.[81][123]
1991
March 14 - Playwright, lyricist and stage directorHoward Ashman dies from HIV/AIDS, at the age of 40 years old.[124]
April - The PediatricAIDS Clinical Trials Group (ACTG) of the USNIAID and the National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM) and the National Agency of Research on AIDS (ANRS), France start the famous clinical trial ofzidovudine (AZT) in HIV-infected pregnant women named "ACTG protocol 076". The trial shows such a big reduction in the risk for HIV transmission to the infant that it was halted prematurely in 1993[125] and later became the standard of care.
May 26 - Playwright, lyricist, television writer and theatre directorTom Eyen dies of complications fromAIDS at the age of fifty.
September 8 - American actorBrad Davis, Golden Globe winning and BAFTA nominated star ofMidnight Express andChariots of Fire died of an assisted suicide drug overdose after suffering from HIV and AIDs since 1985. He had been an intravenous drug user and was bisexual.
September 28 - Jazz legendMiles Davis dies at the age of 65. The official cause of death is bronchial pneumonia. He was takingZidovudine (AZT) when hospitalized; at the time, Zidovudine was a treatment for HIV and AIDS.
November 7 - NBA starMagic Johnson publicly announces that he is HIV-positive.
November 24 - A little over 24 hours after issuing a statement confirming that he had been tested HIV positive and had AIDS,Freddie Mercury (singer of the British bandQueen) dies at the age of 45. The official cause of death is bronchial pneumonia resulting from AIDS.
April 6 - Popular science fiction writerIsaac Asimov dies. Ten years later, his wife revealed that his death was due to AIDS-related complications. The writer was infected during a blood transfusion in 1983.[130]
February 6 - Tennis starArthur Ashe dies from AIDS-related complications.[135]
June 11 - Stage, film and television actorRay Sharkey dies of complications from AIDS in Brooklyn, New York, at age 40.[136]
August 29 -drag performer and fashion designerDorian Corey dies of AIDS-related complications in Manhattan at the age of 56.[137]
November 20 - Television and film director and producerEmile Ardolino, best known for his work on the filmsDirty Dancing (1987) andSister Act (1992), dies on November 20, 1993 of complications from AIDS.[138]
November 20 - Australian/New Zealand AIDS awareness campaignerEve van Grafhorst dies from AIDS aged 11. She had contracted HIV at birth from blood transfusions.[139]
March 21 - ActorDack Rambo dies of AIDS-related complications. He was one of the first actors in Hollywood to publicly acknowledge being HIV positive. He retired from acting and spent the remainder of his life raising awareness about AIDS.
December 3 -Elizabeth Glaser, wife ofStarsky & Hutch'sPaul Michael Glaser, dies from AIDS-related complications, almost 10 years after receiving an infected blood transfusion while giving birth. She unknowingly passes HIV on to her daughter Ariel and son Jake. Ariel died in 1988, Jake isliving with HIV, and Elizabeth's son Paul Michael remains negative.
Sarah Jane Salazar, a 19-year-old Filipino AIDS activist and educator, publicly states she contracted HIV from a foreign customer while working as a club entertainer in the early 1990s. She was the second Filipino to do so.[144] The first wasDolzura Cortez.
February 23, 1995, multiple World Champion andOlympic Gold Medal winning diverGreg Louganis revealed that he was HIV positive and had been diagnosed six months prior to him competing in the1988 Seoul Olympics. The revelation proved controversial because he had hit his head on the diving board during competition at the games and bled into the water and was stitched up by team doctors, potentially exposing others to the virus.
March 26 - RapperEazy-E dies from AIDS-related pneumonia.
August 16 - Singer and musicianBobby DeBarge dies of AIDS complications at age 39.
Oakland, California resident Jeff Getty becomes the first person to receive a bone marrow transplant from a baboon as an experimental procedure to treat his HIV infection. The graft did not take, but Getty experienced some reduction in symptoms before dying of heart failure after cancer treatment in 2006.[148]
Robert Gallo's discovery that some natural compounds known aschemokines can block HIV and halt the progression of AIDS is hailed byScience as one of that year's most important scientific breakthroughs.
HIV resistance due to the CCR5-Δ32 is discovered. CCR5-Δ32 (or CCR5-D32 or CCR5 delta 32) is anallele of CCR5.[154][155]
August 2 - Nigerian musician and political activistFela Kuti dies at age 58. The following day, Kuti's brother Olikoye Ransome-Kuti, already a prominentAIDS activist and formerMinister of Health, announced that Kuti had died on the previous day from complications related to AIDS. Kuti had been anAIDS denialist,[157] and his widow maintained that he did not die of AIDS.[158][159]
September 2 - TheWashington Post carries an article stating, "The most recent estimate of the number of Americans infected (with HIV), 750,000, is only half the total that government officials used to cite over a decade ago, at a time when experts believed that as many as 1.5 million people carried the virus."[citation needed]
December 7 - "French President Jacques Chirac addressed Africa's top AIDS conference on Sunday and called on the world's richest nations to create an AIDS therapy support fund to help Africa. According to Chirac, Africa struggles to care for two-thirds of the world's persons with AIDS without the benefit of expensive AIDS therapies. Chirac invited other countries, especially European nations, to create a fund that would help increase the number of AIDS studies and experiments. AIDS workers welcomed Chirac's speech and said they hoped France would promote the idea to the Group of Eight summit of the world's richest nations."[160]
Based on theBangui definition theWorld Health Organization's cumulative number of reported AIDS cases from 1980 through 1997 for all of Africa is 620,000.[161] For comparison, the cumulative total of AIDS cases in the USA through 1997 is 641,087.
1998
December 10 -International Human Rights Day,Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) is launched to campaign for greater access to HIV treatment for all South Africans, by raising public awareness and understanding about issues surrounding the availability, affordability and use of HIV treatments. TAC campaigns against the view that AIDS is adeath sentence.
1999
January 31 - Studies suggest that a retrovirus,SIVcpz (simian immunodeficiency virus) from thecommon chimpanzeePan troglodytes, may have passed to human populations in west equatorial Africa during the twentieth century and developed into various types of HIV.[162][163]
Edward Hooper releases a book titledThe River, which accuses doctors who developed and administered the oral polio vaccine in 1950s Africa of unintentionally starting the AIDS epidemic. TheOPV AIDS hypothesis receives a great deal of publicity.[26] It was later refuted by studies demonstrating the origins of HIV as a mutated variant of asimian immunodeficiency virus that is lethal to humans.[164][165][166][167][168] Hooper's hypothesis should not be confused with theHeart of Darkness origin theory.
September 21 - The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) licenses the first nucleic acid test (NAT) systems intended for screening of blood and plasma donations.[citation needed]
2002
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approves the first rapid diagnostic HIV test kit for use in the United States. The kit has a 99.6% accuracy and can provide results in as little as twenty minutes. The test kit can be used at room temperature, did not require specialized equipment, and can be used outside of clinics and doctor's offices. The mobility and speed of the test allowed a wider spread use of HIV testing.[82]
January 5 - "Individual risk of acquiring HIV and experiencing rapid disease progression is not uniform within populations," says Anthony S. Fauci, the director of NIAID.[172][1]
2005
January 21 - TheCenters for Disease Control and Prevention recommends anti-retroviralpost-exposure prophylaxis for people exposed to HIV from rapes, accidents or occasional unsafe sex or drug use. This treatment should start no more than 72 hours after a person has been exposed to the virus, and the drugs should be used by patients for 28 days. This emergency drug treatment had been recommended since 1996 for health-care workers accidentally stuck with a needle, splashed in their eyes with blood, or exposed in some other work-related way.[173]
September 2 - Dancer and choreographerWilli Ninja, who founded the House of Ninja (prominently featured in the documentary filmParis Is Burning), dies ofAIDS-related heart failure inNew York City.[174]
A highly resistant strain of HIV linked to rapid progression to AIDS is identified in New York City.[26][medical citation needed]
2006
2007
The first case of someone beingcured of HIV is reported.Timothy Ray Brown is a San Francisco man, with leukemia and HIV. He is cured of HIV through a bone marrow transplant in Germany from a homozygous CCR5-Δ32 donor. Other similar cases are being studied to confirm similar results.[176][177]
Maraviroc, the first available CCR5 receptor antagonist, is approved by the FDA as an antiviral drug for the treatment of AIDS.
Confirmation is published that the first patient cured of HIV,Timothy Ray Brown, still has a negative HIV status, four years after treatment.[176][177]
2012
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approves Truvada for pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP). The drug can be taken by adults who do not have HIV, but are at risk for the disease. People can now take this medication to reduce their risk for contracting the virus through sexual activity.[178]
2013
Confirmation is published that a toddler has been "functionally cured" of HIV infection.[179] However, in 2014, it was announced that the girl had relapsed and that the virus had re-appeared.[180][181]
ANew York Times article says that 12 people of 75 who began combination antiretroviral therapy soon after becoming infected may have been "functionally cured" of HIV according to a French study. A functionally cured person will not experience an increase of the virus in the bloodstream despite stopping antiretroviral therapy, and therefore not progress to AIDS.[182][183][184]
A new, aggressive strain of HIV discovered in Cuba[186][187] Researchers at the University of Leuven in Belgium say the HIV strain CRF19 can progress to AIDS within two to three years of exposure to virus. Typically, HIV takes approximately 10 years to develop into AIDS. The researchers found that patients with the CRF19 variant had more virus in their blood than patients who had more common strains. Patients with CRF19 may start getting sick before they even know they have been infected, which ultimately means there is a significantly shorter time span to stop the disease's progression. The researchers suspect that fragments of other subsets of the virus fasten to each other through an enzyme which makes the virus more powerful and more easily replicated in the body, thus the faster progression.[187]
Researchers have found that an international study found that almost 2,000 patients with HIV failed to respond to the antiviral drug known asTenofovir disoproxil. Tenofovir is the main HIV drug treatment. The failure to respond to treatment indicates that the virus' resistance to the medication is becoming increasingly common.[82][189]
The United Nations holds its2016 High-Level Meeting on Ending AIDS. The countries involved, the member states of the United Nations, pledge to end the AIDS epidemic by 2030. There was significant controversy surrounding the event as over 50 countries blocked the access of LGBTQ+ groups from participating in the meeting. At the conclusion of the meetings, which ran from June 8 to 10, 2016, the final resolution barely mentioned several groups that are most affected by HIV/AIDS: men who have sex with men, transgender people, people who inject drugs, and sex workers.[82]
Research Foundation to Cure AIDS (RFTCA) becomes the first 501(c)3 public charity in the United States with a grant to its own biotechnology to research, develop and commercialize a cure for HIV/AIDS on a pro bono basis.[191]
The United Nations holds the 2021 high-level meeting on HIV/AIDS.
2022
City of Hope doctors announce that a fourth person in history has been cured of HIV through a stem cell transplant. The patient had cancer, of which he has also been cured. But the doctors warned the procedure cannot be made available on a large scale.[193][194]
2023
PrEP implants inRhesus macaque monkeys are reported as an additional possible future treatment to prevent HIV in humans. The implant's goal is to make PrEP easier to use for patients who have trouble adhering to apill orinjection timetable, and further avoidadverse drug reactions (in injections). Animals researches with positive results, however, not always fit into human conditions.[195]
Researchers confirm that a fifth person, called theDüsseldorf patient, is cured from HIV. The fact was first announced at a conference in 2019, from which it had since been pending verification.[196]
A male HIV patient based inGeneva is reported as having entered the virus' remission for 20 months, without taking antiretrovirals since November 2021. French and Swiss researchers treating him, however, said the treatment did not include receiving stem cells from a donor with theCCR5 mutation, which helped cure all the five previous patients, but only abone marrow transplant, citing that as the reason why they still cannot rule out a viral rebound on him.[197][198]
A clinical trial for a preventive HIV vaccine called VIR-1388 began in the United States and South Africa. The vaccine aims to instructT cells to recognize the HIV in the human body and start a reaction to keep it from creating achronic infection. Initial results are expected to come out in late 2024.[199]
^Pence GE (2008). "Preventing the Global Spread of AIDS".Medical Ethics Accounts of the Cases That Shaped and Define Medical Ethics. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill. p. 330.
^Hennigar GR, Vinijchaikul K, Roque AL, Lyons HA (April 1961). "Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia in an adult. Report of a case".American Journal of Clinical Pathology.35 (4):353–364.doi:10.1093/ajcp/35.4.353.PMID13713376.
^Lyons HA, Vinijchaikul K, Hennigar GR (December 1961). "Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia unassociated with other disease. Clinical and pathological studies".Archives of Internal Medicine.108 (6):929–936.doi:10.1001/archinte.1961.03620120113015.PMID14467647.
^"Strange Trip Back to the Future – The case of Robert R. spurs new questions about AIDS",Time, November 9, 1987
^Williams EH, Williams PH (1966). "A note on an apparent similarity in distribution of onchocerciasis, femoral hernia and Kaposi's sarcoma in the West Nile District of Uganda".East African Medicine Journal.43 (6):208–209.PMID5943489.
^Garry RF, Witte MH, Gottlieb AA, Elvin-Lewis M, Gottlieb MS, Witte CL, Alexander SS, Cole WR, Drake WL Jr (October 1988). "Documentation of an AIDS virus infection in the United States in 1968".JAMA.260 (14):2085–7.doi:10.1001/jama.1988.03410140097031.PMID3418874.
^Centers for Disease Control (June 1981)."Pneumocystis pneumonia—Los Angeles"(PDF).MMWR. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.30 (21):250–252.PMID6265753.Archived(PDF) from the original on April 13, 2010. RetrievedSeptember 16, 2017.
^Blaser MJ, Cohn DL (January 1, 1986). "Opportunistic infections in patients with AIDS: clues to the epidemiology of AIDS and the relative virulence of pathogens".Reviews of Infectious Diseases.8 (1):21–30.doi:10.1093/clinids/8.1.21.PMID3006206.
^"Risk factors for AIDS among Haitians residing in the United States. Evidence of heterosexual transmission. The Collaborative Study Group of AIDS in Haitian-Americans".JAMA.257 (5):635–639. February 1987.doi:10.1001/jama.1987.03390050061019.PMID3795445.
^Lamoureux G, Davignon L, Turcotte R, Laverdière M, Mankiewicz E, Walker MC (January 1, 1987). "Is prior mycobacterial infection a common predisposing factor to AIDS in Haitians and Africans?".Annales de l'Institut Pasteur. Immunology.138 (4):521–529.doi:10.1016/S0769-2625(87)80123-X.PMID3499911.
^Bruno de Michelis, Remo Modica, Giorgio Re, et al. (1992).Trattato di Clinica Odontostomatologica (3rd ed.). Turin: Minerva Medica.[the patient was] a homosexual man who had been many times in United States; ... in 1983 were reported other 4 cases about homosexuals who traveled to USA, when in 1984 AIDS cases [in Italy] were 18; among these, was described in Milan the first case about a drug addicted subject who never had been abroad.
^Xu P, Han L, Zeng G, Ma F, Liu K, Lü F (2013)."我国预防控制经性途径传播艾滋病的政策变迁及趋势分析" [Prevention and Control of Sexually Transmitted HIV/AIDS in China: Policy Evolution and Trends].Chinese Journal of Health Policy (in Chinese).6 (7):64–67.Archived from the original on February 29, 2020. RetrievedFebruary 29, 2020.
^"Roy Cohn, the flamboyant New York lawyer who catapulted to public prominence in the 1950s as the grand inquisitor of Sen. Joseph McCarthy's communist-hunting congressional panel, died yesterday at the age of 59".Boston Globe. August 3, 1986.Irene Haske, a spokeswoman at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, where Mr. Cohn died, said the primary cause of his death was cardio-pulmonary arrest, with "dementia" and "underlying HTLV III
^Paul Colichman Chief Executive Officer (October 23, 2013)."Who is Roy Cohn?".PlanetOut.Archived from the original on April 23, 2020. RetrievedDecember 5, 2013.
^Andyboy (May 22, 1992). "The First Cut".DMR.15 (9): 3.The impact of AIDS on the dance music industry has been felt by many on an excruciatingly personal level. News this week of Prelude artist Sharon Redd's recent death due to AIDS once again brought reality into chillingly clear focus.
^Tauber M, Neill M, Russell L, Fowler J, Dam J, Tresniowski A, Miller S, Dougherty S, Yu T (October 16, 2000)."American Beauties: 80 Years".People.Archived from the original on October 1, 2018. RetrievedJuly 16, 2022.
^"TV, film actor Howard Rollins dies".Wilmington Morning Star. (North Carolina). Associated Press. December 10, 1996. p. 4B.Archived from the original on November 15, 2022. RetrievedDecember 15, 2023.
