25 Years and Counting (from Nate and Grove)

[Guest guest]

We found the first article printed in the New York Times, July 3, 1981 mentioning "the gay cancer". We thought you and/or your readers would find it a fit commerative to the discussion of "25 Years and Counting", our article this week for "The Independent Gay News."We also included the graphics that are to be published this week along with the article/articles.Be there for the cureNate and Grove

Nate and Grove

Of Two Minds

25 Years and Counting

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the deadly HIV/AIDS virus that initially took the lives of five homosexual men in Los Angeles in 1981. Since then, some 25 million people around the world have died, and 40 million more are infected. We went through the New York Times archives and dug up their very first article about AIDS. Dated July 3, 1981 and entitled, “Rare Cancer Seen in 41 Homosexuals,†the article gave us a case of the chills.

In some respects, the article showed remarkable insight. “Many of the patients have also been treated for viral infections such as herpes, cytomegalovirus and hepatitis B,†it reports, foreshadowing the discovery much later that HIV infection is much easier when these cofactors are present.

In other respects, the article seems breathtakingly naive in hindsight. “The cause of the outbreak is unknown, and there is as yet no evidence of contagion.†That’s a chilling reminder that HIV wasn’t discovered for a couple years more. We remember those early days, and remember the panic of a mysterious, fatal disease that seemed to have no cause. The article took us right back there. Were you around back then? Do you remember what it felt like when you first heard about “the gay cancer?â€

This is an anniversary that no one wants to celebrate, but commemorate it we must. There have been amazing leaps in treatment; the testament is that the two of us are still here along with many of our friends. The sad part is of course that many of our friends are gone, many in the early years of the epidemic and some falling ill now from the ravages of the disease and medication. It's been 25 years of unprecedented scientific advances -- and 25 years of unprecedented suffering.

But let us digress back to those days between Stonewall and the “gay cancer†article. Like the generations before us who always knew where they were when they heard that the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, or when President Kennedy was shot, our “moment†in history will always be remembered when we first realized that HIV/AIDS was announced as a gay disease. Of course history proved that fact wrong with more than half of all new cases diagnosed in the US in 2005 not falling into the category of Gay White Male. But the stamp of the gay disease was indelible at first; spreading through our community exponentially; and leaving in its wake death, confusion and hysteria.

B. Feinberg, an early member of ACT-UP, author of “Eighty-Sixed†writes in 1989, “It’s unfathomable. It’s beyond human comprehension…I had a lover. He moved to Australia four years ago because he was afraid of it, as if it weren’t going to cover the globe with its black cloud. …And then the phone calls began. This one was dying. Remember Tony from the Ice Palace? Gone in a month. Heard from Fred lately? Went back to Iowa to die with his family. Pretty soon there’s going to be nothing left. Survival of the fittest? Survival of the celibate. The last homosexual will die in 2030. The last heterosexual will die in 2065. Don’t worry. We won’t be around to say goodbye. But how could you understand? How could anyone understand?â€

Feinberg died in 1994 at the age of 37 disenchanted with the organization ACT-UP that he helped push into the national spotlight. ACT-UP was central in getting HIV drugs to patients quickly and preserving the rights of people infected with HIV in doctors’ offices, hospitals and the workplace. In its last years, ACT-UP was beginning to obsess with the Catholic Church and organized religion, and after losing many of its early members to the disease, faded from our national spotlight and memory.

We need to reduce the number of people who become infected in the first place. Twenty-five years into the epidemic, prevention is the only cure we have. Yet many young men and women, gay and straight, do not have the basic safe® sex education and access to contraception. There are still an estimated 40,000 new HIV infections every year in the U.S. Even though AIDS drugs can prevent mother-to-child transmission, 300 U.S. babies are born with HIV infection every year. The epidemic is changing. The face of AIDS is becoming increasingly that of a black American man or woman.

Yet how to do this has become a political and social firestorm both in Washington, DC and in our own gay community. Campaigns aimed at staying negative are called segregationist and blaming to those already infected. Our federal government is promoting an ill-fated abstinence only plan, while our own AIDS service organizations are facing massive budget cuts and destruction from within due to selfish management.

We want to be there for the cure, but it is likely that all we can hope for is to be there for the 30th, 40th, or 50th anniversary of the disease. It is our hope that the questions and answers on that day will not be the same as those today. Have a peaceful fortnight.

July 3, 1981

RARE CANCER SEEN IN 41 HOMOSEXUALS

By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN

Doctors in New York and California have diagnosed among homosexual men 41 cases of a rare and often rapidly fatal form of cancer. Eight of the victims died less than 24 months after the diagnosis was made.

The cause of the outbreak is unknown, and there is as yet no evidence of contagion. But the doctors who have made the diagnoses, mostly in New York City and the San Francisco Bay area, are alerting other physicians who treat large numbers of homosexual men to the problem in an effort to help identify more cases and to reduce the delay in offering chemotherapy treatment.

The sudden appearance of the cancer, called Kaposi's Sarcoma, has prompted a medical investigation that experts say could have as much scientific as public health importance because of what it may teach about determining the causes of more common types of cancer. First Appears in Spots

Doctors have been taught in the past that the cancer usually appeared first in spots on the legs and that the disease took a slow course of up to 10 years. But these recent cases have shown that it appears in one or more violet-colored spots anywhere on the body. The spots generally do not itch or cause other symptoms, often can be mistaken for bruises, sometimes appear as lumps and can turn brown after a period of time. The cancer often causes swollen lymph glands, and then kills by spreading throughout the body.

Doctors investigating the outbreak believe that many cases have gone undetected because of the rarity of the condition and the difficulty even dermatologists may have in diagnosing it.

In a letter alerting other physicians to the problem, Dr. Alvin E. Friedman-Kien of New York University Medical Center, one of the investigators, described the appearance of the outbreak as ''rather devastating.''

Dr. Friedman-Kien said in an interview yesterday that he knew of 41 cases collated in the last five weeks, with the cases themselves dating to the past 30 months. The Federal Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta is expected to publish the first description of the outbreak in its weekly report today, according to a spokesman, Dr. Curran. The report notes 26 of the cases - 20 in New York and six in California.

There is no national registry of cancer victims, but the nationwide incidence of Kaposi's Sarcoma in the past had been estimated by the Centers for Disease Control to be less than six-one-hundredths of a case per 100,000 people annually, or about two cases in every three million people. However, the disease accounts for up to 9 percent of all cancers in a belt across equatorial Africa, where it commonly affects children and young adults.

In the United States, it has primarily affected men older than 50 years. But in the recent cases, doctors at nine medical centers in New York and seven hospitals in California have been diagnosing the condition among younger men, all of whom said in the course of standard diagnostic interviews that they were homosexual. Although the ages of the patients have ranged from 26 to 51 years, many have been under 40, with the mean at 39.

Nine of the 41 cases known to Dr. Friedman-Kien were diagnosed in California, and several of those victims reported that they had been in New York in the period preceding the diagnosis. Dr. Friedman-Kien said that his colleagues were checking on reports of two victims diagnosed in Copenhagen, one of whom had visited New York. Viral Infections Indicated

No one medical investigator has yet interviewed all the victims, Dr. Curran said. According to Dr. Friedman-Kien, the reporting doctors said that most cases had involved homosexual men who have had multiple and frequent sexual encounters with different partners, as many as 10 sexual encounters each night up to four times a week.

Many of the patients have also been treated for viral infections such as herpes, cytomegalovirus and hepatitis B as well as parasitic infections such as amebiasis and giardiasis. Many patients also reported that they had used drugs such as amyl nitrite and LSD to heighten sexual pleasure.

Cancer is not believed to be contagious, but conditions that might precipitate it, such as particular viruses or environmental factors, might account for an outbreak among a single group.

The medical investigators say some indirect evidence actually points away from contagion as a cause. None of the patients knew each other, although the theoretical possibility that some may have had sexual contact with a person with Kaposi's Sarcoma at some point in the past could not be excluded, Dr. Friedman-Kien said.

Dr. Curran said there was no apparent danger to nonhomosexuals from contagion. ''The best evidence against contagion,'' he said, ''is that no cases have been reported to date outside the homosexual community or in women.''

Dr. Friedman-Kien said he had tested nine of the victims and found severe defects in their immunological systems. The patients had serious malfunctions of two types of cells called T and B cell lymphocytes, which have important roles in fighting infections and cancer.

But Dr. Friedman-Kien emphasized that the researchers did not know whether the immunological defects were the underlying problem or had developed secondarily to the infections or drug use.

The research team is testing various hypotheses, one of which is a possible link between past infection with cytomegalovirus and development of Kaposi's Sarcoma.

· Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

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