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It was on this day in 1981 that Dr. Michael Gottlieb of UCLA, then 33, published the first report describing the syndrome that would come to be called AIDS. The immunologist writes on the Times op-ed page:
I met Michael, the man who became my Patient Zero, in early 1981. I was 33 years old; he was 31. He was rail thin with short, bleached-blond hair and high cheekbones. I remember him in more detail than patients I saw yesterday.
Michael had been admitted through the UCLA emergency room days earlier complaining of fever and weight loss. Quickly, a rare type of lung infection called pneumocystis blossomed on his chest X-ray...In the weeks that followed, two more men were referred to us with virtually identical symptoms. Like Michael, each said he had always been healthy and had no past history of difficulty fighting infections, suggesting that the immune deficiency was acquired. Like Michael, each told me that he was gay. In those days, our subcultures — white-coated medics and gay men — were worlds apart. But that was about to change.
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It is still astonishing to me that a disease that spread from chimpanzees to humans in Central Africa probably as early as the 1930s was first detected in West Los Angeles in 1981. In retrospect, we know that HIV had traveled to U.S. shores as early as 1977. And the earliest known positive HIV blood sample is from 1959, obtained from an unknown man in Kinshasa, Congo, and frozen.
Since my first report to the CDC, more than 500,000 people have died of AIDS in the United States. Globally, 25 million people have died of the disease, which is now the leading cause of death worldwide among those between the ages of 15 and 59.
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It wasn't until the advent of the AIDS "cocktail" 15 years into the epidemic that we began to turn this disease around. Those new treatments were truly revolutionary: Almost overnight, people with HIV left hospital beds and were back at work and living their lives. In one year, the number of Americans who died from AIDS dropped by 43%, and over the last decade, the death rate fell more than 70%.
For the first time, we as physicians could even use antiviral medicines to prevent the transmission of HIV from an HIV-infected mother to her newborn child. Symbolic of our progress is that very soon we will have a single, once-daily pill containing a complete "AIDS cocktail" for the disease that 25 years ago was a death sentence.
Gottlieb was on KPCC's "Airtalk with Larry Mantle" last Thursday. Here's the audio. There are events scheduled today at UCLA and in West Hollywood to mark the anniversary.
Photo: Chronicle/Darryl Bush via PierceCollege.edu