History of HIV and AIDS

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  • Douglas Crimp, Scholar, Curator and Art World Disrupter, Dies at 74

    Douglas Crimp, a groundbreaking art scholar, curator, writer, editor, educator and AIDS activist who challenged the field of art history by insisting on seeing it in a social context, died on July 5 at his home in Manhattan. He was 74.

    17 July 2019 | New York Times

  • The Beautiful Uncertainty of Douglas Crimp

    Masha Gessen mourns critic, curator, and art historian Douglas Crimp as a prominent voice in AIDS activism by way of two classic Crimp essays: “How to Have Promiscuity in an Epidemic” and “Mourning and Militancy.”

    17 July 2019 | New Yorker

  • HIV’s genetic code, extracted from a nub of tissue, adds to evidence of virus’ emergence in humans a century ago

    Scientists at the University of Arizona examined a tissue sample that dates back to the 1960s, the oldest sample of HIV to date, and concluded the virus jumped from primates earlier than expected.

    17 July 2019 | STAT

  • These Women Are Forgotten HIV Warriors

    The legacy of straight women in the early fight against the AIDS epidemic should not be underrated.

    15 July 2019 | HIV Plus

  • Living proof of Hawke and his successors' triumph against HIV

    The Bob Hawke government's response to the shock emergence of an alien health crisis is still saving lives after 30 years. There was nothing pre-ordained about this success. Other nations took other approaches. Among the rich countries, the US handling of AIDS notoriously was bungled.

    07 July 2019 | Sydney Morning Herald

  • Fifty years of HIV: how close are we to a cure?

    It’s half a century since the first known HIV-related death and two patients appear to have been cured of the virus. What does this mean for the 37 million still living with it?

    03 July 2019 | The Guardian

  • How a Dying Ryan White United Washington on the AIDS Crisis

    In the late ’80s, getting Congress or the White House to fund anything having to do with AIDS was a non-starter. Advocates needed a miracle. And they got one.

    01 July 2019 | Daily Beast

  • A mystery illness killed a boy in 1969. Years later, doctors learned what it was: AIDS

    The 16-year-old boy had the kind of illness that wouldn't be familiar to doctors for years: He was weak and emaciated, rife with stubborn infections and riddled with rare cancerous lesions known as Kaposi's sarcoma, a skin disease found in elderly men of Mediterranean descent. The boy, Robert Rayford, died on May 15, 1969, in St. Louis. It would be more than a decade before doctors started seeing similar cases among gay men in New York and California. In 1982, with the numbers of sick surging, the disease got a name: Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome.

    16 May 2019 | New Zealand Herald

  • Robert Rayford Died of HIV 50 Years Ago: We Are Still Failing Queer Youth of Color

    Robert Rayford died on May 15, 1969, of a mysterious illness later identified as HIV, 13 years before the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) first reported on the disease in its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report on June 5, 1981.

    13 May 2019 | Newsweek

  • Why the infected blood enquiry matters

    Our infection through medical treatment for haemophilia caused the media to obsess about our ‘innocence’ in getting HIV and, even if they did not say it out loud, everyone could guess who the ‘guilty’ were.

    10 May 2019 | National AIDS Trust
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Community Consensus Statement on Access to HIV Treatment and its Use for Prevention

Together, we can make it happen

We can end HIV soon if people have equal access to HIV drugs as treatment and as PrEP, and have free choice over whether to take them.

Launched today, the Community Consensus Statement is a basic set of principles aimed at making sure that happens.

The Community Consensus Statement is a joint initiative of AVAC, EATG, MSMGF, GNP+, HIV i-Base, the International HIV/AIDS Alliance, ITPC and NAM/aidsmap
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