11 ms·

I didn't understand the AIDS epidemic until I listened to a podcast [1] where they interviewed a gay survivor. I can't imagine my friends dying off one by one

by djaque 6y ago

I didn't understand the AIDS epidemic until I listened to a podcast [1] where they interviewed a gay survivor. I can't imagine my friends dying off one by one around me from an unknown specter. The government pretending you didn't exist and ignoring you because it was a "gay problem". Society demonizing you. He said that even after it was understood that AIDS was not transmissible by touch, morgues would refuse to accept the bodies of gay men. When people knew they were at the end of the rope, they would ask their friends to throw their ashes over the fence into the white house lawn. That way as their final act, they could tell the government that their active silence was literally killing people and that even if they considered them others, they wouldn't be ignored. It's heartbreaking, but I'd recommend anyone to listen to the interview if you don't know much about that period in history. [1] https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/shame-on-you/e/66787240 https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/shame-on-you/e/66787240

klmadfejno 6y ago
The white house lawn comment sounds powerful. But I don't see any evidence it actually happened. Right?
- djaque 6y ago
  Looking closer I found this [1] which is the guy the interviewee was speaking about. It looks like it was his ashes, not literally his corpse. I think it was referred to as his body in the podcast which is where I got it from, but I'm assuming that was in the sense of "what remains of his body". I'll update my post. It looks like the white house lawn is home to the remains of at least 18 gay men that died from AIDS. [1] https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/vdqv34/why-the-ashes-of-aids-victims-on-the-white-house-lawn-matter https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/vdqv34/why-the-ashes-of-a...
- redis_mlc 6y ago
  I followed the AIDS crisis in the newspaper from Day One, starting with one-inch long columns about "mysterious purple lesions called Kaposi's sarcoma" to shrines with hundreds of photos occupying whole sections. The similarity with corona in 2020 is that so little was known, but for years, not months. The difference was that AIDS was 100% fatal until drugs were developed, and AIDS killed a generation of young adults rather than older people. (There were interviews with a handful of men who were immune to the AIDS virus, but had to endure all of their friends and partners dying, and had to deal with inheriting a lot of possessions that reminded them of dead people.) Almost all hemophiliacs in North America used pooled blood products from thousands of donors, so just about all of them died. (There's a Canadian film on Youtube that covers this.)
  - dghughes 6y ago
    >There's a Canadian film on Youtube that covers this. Yeah it was a major scandal here in Canada. The Red Cross lost the right to handle blood a new organization called Canadian Blood Services was created. Many people with hemophilia died but I think people at the tail end of it were around when the new drug cocktails slowed the disease. As a teen in the 80s AIDS was pretty scary even for a straight kid with no girlfriend. It seemed like everyone was talking about it, getting it, scared of people with it, or denying it existed. Anthony Fauci had a hard time getting Pres. Reagan to even take it seriously (sound familiar!?). Many conservatives saw it as the "gay disease" and dismissed it as irrelevant.
    - inappropriately 6y ago
      Shame there's not a disease that only wipes out conservatives. They deserve it.
  - fortran77 6y ago
    Isaac Asimov was so embarrassed to have contracted AIDS from a blood transfusion that it wasn't mentioned 'til after his death.
    - djaque 6y ago
      I had no idea that he died of AIDS and that was in the 90s. It's terrifying how recent it was that he would have received public backlash for contracting a disease during a surgery.
      - neltnerb 6y ago
        To be fair, 1990 is 30 years ago. I remember how much of a hero Magic Johnson was presented as being for simply publicly admitting he got it during surgery and advocating. It was brave for a multi-millionaire celebrity to admit publicly that he got it by accident. If he'd have been gay too my gosh... what scandal... Terrifying indeed.
      - 6y ago
- MiroF 6y ago
  Look up The Ashes Action organized by ActUP
etrabroline 6y ago
The Regan administration had two options. The first was to spend billions of dollars hoping to find a cure while certain behaviors continued to spread the virus. (what these activists wanted) The second option was to reduce the occurrence of those behaviors, namely intravenous recreational drug use, and unprotected sex with large numbers of sexual partners, which is particularly widespread among homosexual males. The war on drugs had some horrible consequences, but in this case it was a positive. Even the very liberal New York City government shut down gay bathhouses to reduce the amount of unprotected sex and had some success in reducing infection rates. Telling people to stop a selfish and destructive behavior is not demonizing them or ignoring their problems. EDIT: This was meant to be a reply to djaque.
- ebg13 6y ago
  > The Regan administration had two options. Por que no los dos?
  - etrabroline 6y ago
    He did do both. From wikipedia: >"It's been one of the top priorities with us, and over the last 4 years, and including what we have in the budget for '86, it will amount to over a half a billion dollars that we have provided for research on AIDS in addition to what I'm sure other medical groups are doing." He also remarked, "Yes, there's no question about the seriousness of this and the need to find an answer." Annual AIDS related funding was $44 million in 1983, 2 years after he took office, and was $1.6 billion in 1988, an increase of over 3,600 percent. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_policy_of_the_Ronald_Reagan_administration#Response_to_AIDS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_policy_of_the_Ronald_...
    - drewbug01 6y ago
      You cherry-picked the end of the statement, but you left off the beginning. It says a lot: > Although AIDS was first identified in 1981, Reagan did not mention it publicly for several more years, notably during a press conference in 1985 and several speeches in 1987. During the press conference in 1985, Reagan expressed skepticism in allowing children with AIDS to continue in school Reagan waited years, and a generation of gay men died. Better late than never, I suppose, but he didn’t do nearly enough and his response to the crisis is not worthy of honor or respect.
gumby 6y ago
You know how public restrooms in the USA always have paper toilet seat covers? This dates to that era (the product existed already but was extremely uncommon). Because of that whenever I see those I think of the bigoted attitude that lead to their deployment and won't use them.
- fencepost 6y ago
  Really? I'd think they'd be more likely for things like herpes, staph and maybe fungal diseases.
  - gumby 6y ago
    They do help for those things, and not for HIV. But which caused them to be deployed?
- drewbug01 6y ago
  I respect your commitment to fighting bigotry, but I mean - those toilets can be pretty nasty. May as well use them, now that we have them. :)
  - gumby 6y ago
    Well, I survived for decades before they were widespread, and have survived since, so...
  - bdauvergne 6y ago
    There are more pathogens on your hands than on your butt, as you touch the whole world with your hands and keep your butt most of the time in your pants.
  - arbitrage 6y ago
    Paper ass gaskets do not diminish transmission of any microbial contamination on a toilet seat. They exist solely for psychological benefit.
    - 6y ago
jdub 6y ago
The Australian government's 1987 "Grim Reaper" ad gives some impression of the mood at the time. Of course, it didn't do any favours to the gay community. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lhFc_9U_UY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lhFc_9U_UY
- qubex 6y ago
  Italy’s 1990 “AIDS: If you know it, you avoid it” public service advertisement is indelibly seared into the consciousness of my whole generation. Drawing purple outlines around things is still an instant reminder of that. The soundtrack is often heard overlaid over threatening scenarios much as the Benny Hill soundtrack is overload over situations to indicate they are ‘funny’. https://youtu.be/so94WTK8kBw https://youtu.be/so94WTK8kBw
  - sandebert 6y ago
    What a sad way to ruin the song "Oh Superman" by Laurie Anderson.
    - detritus 6y ago
      It's one of my all-time favourite songs, since I was a kid. Italian partner looked at me oddly first time I played it at home, as her memory of it was all bundled up in grim negativity. It's not a song that gets played much at home, when she's about :(
      - qubex 6y ago
        Yeah, it’s really ingrained in us. It’s shorthand for existential dread.
- xeromal 6y ago
  Damn son. That gave me chills.
longtom 6y ago
The notion of the "gay problem" does not come from nowhere though. Gays have extremely promiscuous lifestyles with 3.5 as many lifetime sex partners, resulting in a 60x higher rate of HIV infections[1], accounting for 67% of HIV diagnoses despite making up 2% of the population or so.[2] So gays are clearly massively responsible for the spreading of the virus and they could reduce its prevalence by engaging less in anonymous sex. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3462414/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3462414/ [2] https://www.cdc.gov/nchhstp/newsroom/2012/hivincidencegraphics.html https://www.cdc.gov/nchhstp/newsroom/2012/hivincidencegraphi...
- inappropriately 6y ago
  Fuck off with your gay bashing bullshit, hiding behind statistics.
- apcragg 6y ago
  Fuck you
  - dang 6y ago
    Please don't break the site guidelines regardless of how bad another comment is. That only makes this place even worse. Also, please don't feed egregious comments by replying—a.k.a. please don't feed the trolls. That's also in the guidelines. Instead, flag the comment by clicking on its timestamp to go to its page, then clicking 'flag'. Other users did that and the comment was killed. If you had done that instead, then the comment would have been killed sooner. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- dang 6y ago
  If you keep posting flamebait to HN we will ban you again.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
ddingus 6y ago
And the band played on. Great film that tells the story
GreeniFi 6y ago
In 2002, I was back in my hometown after some years away. By then they estimated that HIV infection was running at 1/3 of the population. I had a job that took me most days to the local cemetery, and was harrowed by the next round of graves freshly dug, most three foot long. I imagine you can guess why they were so short. And if that sounds angry, it is anger - still - but not directed at you, OP. I went to the hospital on one occasion to see the child of a friend, a little boy called AK, draw his last breath. His name was a reference to the machine gun; a child of a revolution I didn’t understand. I’m not sure why I write this. I never really spoke of it before. I think I found your comment deeply moving.
- divbzero 6y ago
  Your story is heartbreaking. Thank you for sharing. I would love to learn more about your hometown and hope it has fared better since 2002.
- JordanFarmer 6y ago
  Sorry... Trying to understand. Are you saying that all these little kids died of aids? How did they contract it? Most kids are 3 feet tall by age three or four. Also, why so many deaths in 2002? Very effective drugs had been widely available for a long time.
  - ReptileMan 6y ago
    Kids got it trough birth/breastfeeding. Combine that with AK, 2002 - I would guess somewhere in the southern half of Africa. I guess that it was combination of medicine not being cheap and IIRC some political leaders in the region were downplaying HIV by that time.
    - bobthemover 6y ago
      Also corruption, ideology and ignorance. https://www.politicsweb.co.za/news-and-analysis/the-virodene-affair-i https://www.politicsweb.co.za/news-and-analysis/the-virodene...
  - 6y ago
sampo 6y ago
And The Band Played On, the whole 1993 film (2h20min) is on YouTube. It's based on a 1987 book. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KthBMpST7Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KthBMpST7Q
- billfruit 6y ago
  The Randy Shilts book it is based upon is a very engaging and detailed record of the AIDS epidemic in the US. He himself sadly died of it, shortly after finishing the book.
mmmBacon 6y ago
My mother worked in a funeral home from about 1986 to 1997. I recall when they got their first AIDS victim in 1987. They took the body and I don’t recall my Mother freaking out about it. They realized that sooner or later they were going to get remains of someone who had died of AIDS. There were few protocols at the time regarding how to prepare bodies for viewing and I think they simply used common sense. I recall my Mother describing double gloves, smocks, and face shields when dealing with the blood. Despite the times, I think the folks who work in the funeral industry at that time (mostly family run) were truly compassionate about caring for someone’s remains regardless of who they were and didn’t judge. While they had concerns about dealing with this first case, it became routine (sadly) very quickly thereafter. I’d imagine they received referrals from their handling of that first case. And very quickly they started handling all remains are handled as if they were HIV positive. The only other thing I do recall was some concern on this first case about folks showing up to disrupt the Funeral in part because most of the mourners were from the gay community. So I think they hired the an officer from the local PD to provide security but nothing happened.
- djaque 6y ago
  I'm sure it varied quite a bit depending on where you were. In the podcast, the interviewee talks about how in some major cities there was only one funeral home which would serve that population. Those places have now become the only place some gay men want to handle their body when they pass as a sign of appreciation for their compassion during the AIDS epidemic.
caycep 6y ago
This reminds me of an art history class in college; amidst a lecture covering works in the '80s and '90s, the professor just broke down in tears as a lot of the artists he knew personally, and had passed from AIDS at the time...

by djaque 6y ago

klmadfejno 6y ago

The white house lawn comment sounds powerful. But I don't see any evidence it actually happened. Right?

djaque 6y ago
Looking closer I found this [1] which is the guy the interviewee was speaking about. It looks like it was his ashes, not literally his corpse. I think it was referred to as his body in the podcast which is where I got it from, but I'm assuming that was in the sense of "what remains of his body". I'll update my post. It looks like the white house lawn is home to the remains of at least 18 gay men that died from AIDS. [1] https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/vdqv34/why-the-ashes-of-aids-victims-on-the-white-house-lawn-matter https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/vdqv34/why-the-ashes-of-a...
redis_mlc 6y ago
I followed the AIDS crisis in the newspaper from Day One, starting with one-inch long columns about "mysterious purple lesions called Kaposi's sarcoma" to shrines with hundreds of photos occupying whole sections. The similarity with corona in 2020 is that so little was known, but for years, not months. The difference was that AIDS was 100% fatal until drugs were developed, and AIDS killed a generation of young adults rather than older people. (There were interviews with a handful of men who were immune to the AIDS virus, but had to endure all of their friends and partners dying, and had to deal with inheriting a lot of possessions that reminded them of dead people.) Almost all hemophiliacs in North America used pooled blood products from thousands of donors, so just about all of them died. (There's a Canadian film on Youtube that covers this.)
- dghughes 6y ago
  >There's a Canadian film on Youtube that covers this. Yeah it was a major scandal here in Canada. The Red Cross lost the right to handle blood a new organization called Canadian Blood Services was created. Many people with hemophilia died but I think people at the tail end of it were around when the new drug cocktails slowed the disease. As a teen in the 80s AIDS was pretty scary even for a straight kid with no girlfriend. It seemed like everyone was talking about it, getting it, scared of people with it, or denying it existed. Anthony Fauci had a hard time getting Pres. Reagan to even take it seriously (sound familiar!?). Many conservatives saw it as the "gay disease" and dismissed it as irrelevant.
  - inappropriately 6y ago
    Shame there's not a disease that only wipes out conservatives. They deserve it.
- fortran77 6y ago
  Isaac Asimov was so embarrassed to have contracted AIDS from a blood transfusion that it wasn't mentioned 'til after his death.
  - djaque 6y ago
    I had no idea that he died of AIDS and that was in the 90s. It's terrifying how recent it was that he would have received public backlash for contracting a disease during a surgery.
    - neltnerb 6y ago
      To be fair, 1990 is 30 years ago. I remember how much of a hero Magic Johnson was presented as being for simply publicly admitting he got it during surgery and advocating. It was brave for a multi-millionaire celebrity to admit publicly that he got it by accident. If he'd have been gay too my gosh... what scandal... Terrifying indeed.
    - 6y ago
MiroF 6y ago
Look up The Ashes Action organized by ActUP

etrabroline 6y ago

The Regan administration had two options. The first was to spend billions of dollars hoping to find a cure while certain behaviors continued to spread the virus. (what these activists wanted) The second option was to reduce the occurrence of those behaviors, namely intravenous recreational drug use, and unprotected sex with large numbers of sexual partners, which is particularly widespread among homosexual males. The war on drugs had some horrible consequences, but in this case it was a positive. Even the very liberal New York City government shut down gay bathhouses to reduce the amount of unprotected sex and had some success in reducing infection rates. Telling people to stop a selfish and destructive behavior is not demonizing them or ignoring their problems. EDIT: This was meant to be a reply to djaque.

ebg13 6y ago
> The Regan administration had two options. Por que no los dos?
- etrabroline 6y ago
  He did do both. From wikipedia: >"It's been one of the top priorities with us, and over the last 4 years, and including what we have in the budget for '86, it will amount to over a half a billion dollars that we have provided for research on AIDS in addition to what I'm sure other medical groups are doing." He also remarked, "Yes, there's no question about the seriousness of this and the need to find an answer." Annual AIDS related funding was $44 million in 1983, 2 years after he took office, and was $1.6 billion in 1988, an increase of over 3,600 percent. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_policy_of_the_Ronald_Reagan_administration#Response_to_AIDS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_policy_of_the_Ronald_...
  - drewbug01 6y ago
    You cherry-picked the end of the statement, but you left off the beginning. It says a lot: > Although AIDS was first identified in 1981, Reagan did not mention it publicly for several more years, notably during a press conference in 1985 and several speeches in 1987. During the press conference in 1985, Reagan expressed skepticism in allowing children with AIDS to continue in school Reagan waited years, and a generation of gay men died. Better late than never, I suppose, but he didn’t do nearly enough and his response to the crisis is not worthy of honor or respect.

gumby 6y ago

You know how public restrooms in the USA always have paper toilet seat covers? This dates to that era (the product existed already but was extremely uncommon). Because of that whenever I see those I think of the bigoted attitude that lead to their deployment and won't use them.

fencepost 6y ago
Really? I'd think they'd be more likely for things like herpes, staph and maybe fungal diseases.
- gumby 6y ago
  They do help for those things, and not for HIV. But which caused them to be deployed?
drewbug01 6y ago
I respect your commitment to fighting bigotry, but I mean - those toilets can be pretty nasty. May as well use them, now that we have them. :)
- gumby 6y ago
  Well, I survived for decades before they were widespread, and have survived since, so...
- bdauvergne 6y ago
  There are more pathogens on your hands than on your butt, as you touch the whole world with your hands and keep your butt most of the time in your pants.
- arbitrage 6y ago
  Paper ass gaskets do not diminish transmission of any microbial contamination on a toilet seat. They exist solely for psychological benefit.
  - 6y ago

jdub 6y ago

The Australian government's 1987 "Grim Reaper" ad gives some impression of the mood at the time. Of course, it didn't do any favours to the gay community. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lhFc_9U_UY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lhFc_9U_UY

qubex 6y ago
Italy’s 1990 “AIDS: If you know it, you avoid it” public service advertisement is indelibly seared into the consciousness of my whole generation. Drawing purple outlines around things is still an instant reminder of that. The soundtrack is often heard overlaid over threatening scenarios much as the Benny Hill soundtrack is overload over situations to indicate they are ‘funny’. https://youtu.be/so94WTK8kBw https://youtu.be/so94WTK8kBw
- sandebert 6y ago
  What a sad way to ruin the song "Oh Superman" by Laurie Anderson.
  - detritus 6y ago
    It's one of my all-time favourite songs, since I was a kid. Italian partner looked at me oddly first time I played it at home, as her memory of it was all bundled up in grim negativity. It's not a song that gets played much at home, when she's about :(
    - qubex 6y ago
      Yeah, it’s really ingrained in us. It’s shorthand for existential dread.
xeromal 6y ago
Damn son. That gave me chills.

longtom 6y ago

The notion of the "gay problem" does not come from nowhere though. Gays have extremely promiscuous lifestyles with 3.5 as many lifetime sex partners, resulting in a 60x higher rate of HIV infections[1], accounting for 67% of HIV diagnoses despite making up 2% of the population or so.[2] So gays are clearly massively responsible for the spreading of the virus and they could reduce its prevalence by engaging less in anonymous sex. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3462414/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3462414/ [2] https://www.cdc.gov/nchhstp/newsroom/2012/hivincidencegraphics.html https://www.cdc.gov/nchhstp/newsroom/2012/hivincidencegraphi...

inappropriately 6y ago
Fuck off with your gay bashing bullshit, hiding behind statistics.
apcragg 6y ago
Fuck you
- dang 6y ago
  Please don't break the site guidelines regardless of how bad another comment is. That only makes this place even worse. Also, please don't feed egregious comments by replying—a.k.a. please don't feed the trolls. That's also in the guidelines. Instead, flag the comment by clicking on its timestamp to go to its page, then clicking 'flag'. Other users did that and the comment was killed. If you had done that instead, then the comment would have been killed sooner. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
dang 6y ago
If you keep posting flamebait to HN we will ban you again.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

ddingus 6y ago

And the band played on. Great film that tells the story

GreeniFi 6y ago

In 2002, I was back in my hometown after some years away. By then they estimated that HIV infection was running at 1/3 of the population. I had a job that took me most days to the local cemetery, and was harrowed by the next round of graves freshly dug, most three foot long. I imagine you can guess why they were so short. And if that sounds angry, it is anger - still - but not directed at you, OP. I went to the hospital on one occasion to see the child of a friend, a little boy called AK, draw his last breath. His name was a reference to the machine gun; a child of a revolution I didn’t understand. I’m not sure why I write this. I never really spoke of it before. I think I found your comment deeply moving.

divbzero 6y ago
Your story is heartbreaking. Thank you for sharing. I would love to learn more about your hometown and hope it has fared better since 2002.
JordanFarmer 6y ago
Sorry... Trying to understand. Are you saying that all these little kids died of aids? How did they contract it? Most kids are 3 feet tall by age three or four. Also, why so many deaths in 2002? Very effective drugs had been widely available for a long time.
- ReptileMan 6y ago
  Kids got it trough birth/breastfeeding. Combine that with AK, 2002 - I would guess somewhere in the southern half of Africa. I guess that it was combination of medicine not being cheap and IIRC some political leaders in the region were downplaying HIV by that time.
  - bobthemover 6y ago
    Also corruption, ideology and ignorance. https://www.politicsweb.co.za/news-and-analysis/the-virodene-affair-i https://www.politicsweb.co.za/news-and-analysis/the-virodene...
- 6y ago

sampo 6y ago

And The Band Played On, the whole 1993 film (2h20min) is on YouTube. It's based on a 1987 book. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KthBMpST7Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KthBMpST7Q

billfruit 6y ago
The Randy Shilts book it is based upon is a very engaging and detailed record of the AIDS epidemic in the US. He himself sadly died of it, shortly after finishing the book.

mmmBacon 6y ago

My mother worked in a funeral home from about 1986 to 1997. I recall when they got their first AIDS victim in 1987. They took the body and I don’t recall my Mother freaking out about it. They realized that sooner or later they were going to get remains of someone who had died of AIDS. There were few protocols at the time regarding how to prepare bodies for viewing and I think they simply used common sense. I recall my Mother describing double gloves, smocks, and face shields when dealing with the blood. Despite the times, I think the folks who work in the funeral industry at that time (mostly family run) were truly compassionate about caring for someone’s remains regardless of who they were and didn’t judge. While they had concerns about dealing with this first case, it became routine (sadly) very quickly thereafter. I’d imagine they received referrals from their handling of that first case. And very quickly they started handling all remains are handled as if they were HIV positive. The only other thing I do recall was some concern on this first case about folks showing up to disrupt the Funeral in part because most of the mourners were from the gay community. So I think they hired the an officer from the local PD to provide security but nothing happened.

djaque 6y ago
I'm sure it varied quite a bit depending on where you were. In the podcast, the interviewee talks about how in some major cities there was only one funeral home which would serve that population. Those places have now become the only place some gay men want to handle their body when they pass as a sign of appreciation for their compassion during the AIDS epidemic.

caycep 6y ago

This reminds me of an art history class in college; amidst a lecture covering works in the '80s and '90s, the professor just broke down in tears as a lot of the artists he knew personally, and had passed from AIDS at the time...