Cultural Context-The AIDS Crisis
The AIDS pandemic began in the early 1980s and brought with it a surge of emotions from the public, they were afraid, angry, fearful, and defiant. The arrival of AIDS also brought with it a condemnation of the LGBT community. These emotions, along with the view on the LGBT community, paved the way for a new generation of artists. Artists involved in AIDS activist organizations had the ideology that while art could never save lives as science could, it may be able to deliver a message. Art of the AIDS crisis typically sought to: make a sociopolitical statement, stress the medical impact of the disease, or express feelings of longing and loss. The ideologies were present in conceptions of art in the 1980s and are still pertinent to reception of art today as well. Elizabeth Taylor, for example, spoke at a benefit for AIDS involving artwork, emphasizing its importance to activism in that, “art lives on forever.”
One of the best known works on the history of HIV is 1987’s book And the Band Played On, by Randy Shilts. Shilts contends that Ronald Reagan’s administration dragged its feet in dealing with the crisis due to homophobia, while the gay community viewed early reports and public health measures with corresponding distrust, thus allowing the disease to infect hundreds of thousands more. This resulted in the formation of ACT-UP, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power by Larry Kramer. Galvanized by the federal government’s inactivity, the movement by AIDS activists to gain funding for AIDS research, which on a per-patient basis out-paced funding for more prevalent diseases such as cancer and heart disease, was used as a model for future lobbying for health research funding.
The Shilts work popularized the misconception that the disease was introduced by a gay flight attendant named Gaëtan Dugas, referred to as “Patient Zero,” although the author did not actually make this claim in the book. However, subsequent research has revealed that there were cases of AIDS much earlier than initially known. HIV-infected blood samples have been found from as early as 1959 in Africa, and HIV has been shown to have caused the death of Robert Rayford, a 16-year-old St. Louis male, in 1969, who could have contracted it as early as 7 years old due to sexual abuse, suggesting that HIV had been present, at very low prevalence, in the U.S. since before the 1970s.
An early theory asserted that a series of inoculations against hepatitis B that were performed in the gay community of San Francisco were tainted with HIV. Although there was a high correlation between recipients of that vaccination and initial cases of AIDS, this theory has long been discredited. HIV, hepatitis B, and hepatitis C are bloodborne diseases with very similar modes of transmission, and those at risk for one are at risk for the others.
Activists and critics of current AIDS policies allege that another preventable impediment to stemming the spread of the disease and/or finding a treatment was the vanity of “celebrity” scientists. Robert Gallo, an American scientist involved in the search for a new virus in the people affected by the disease, became embroiled in a legal battle with French scientist Luc Montagnier, who had first discovered such a virus in tissue cultures derived from a patient suffering from enlargement of the lymphnodes (an early sign of AIDS). Montagnier had named the new virus LAV (Lymphoadenopathy-Associated Virus).
Gallo, who appeared to question the primacy of the French scientist’s discovery, refused to recognize the “French virus” as the cause of AIDS, and tried instead to claim the disease was caused by a new member of a retrovirus family, HTLV, which he had discovered. Critics claim that because some scientists were more interested in trying to win a Nobel prize than in helping patients, research progress was delayed and more people needlessly died. After a number of meetings and high-level political intervention, the French scientists and Gallo agreed to “share” the discovery of HIV, although eventually Montagnier and his group were recognized as the true discoverers, and won the 2008 Nobel Prize for it.
Publicity campaigns were started in attempts to counter the incorrect and often vitriolic perception of AIDS as a “gay plague”. These included the Ryan White case, red ribbon campaigns, celebrity dinners, the 1993 film version of And the Band Played On, sex education programs in schools, and television advertisements. Announcements by various celebrities that they had contracted HIV (including actor Rock Hudson, basketball star Magic Johnson, tennis player Arthur Ashe and singer Freddie Mercury) were significant in arousing media attention and making the general public aware of the dangers of the disease to people of all sexual orientations.
