Abstract

In 1981, five cases of a rare pneumonia were diagnosed and almost immediately identified as a potential public health threat. During the next few years the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) followed this ‘gay pneumonia’. While the early research demonstrated that the disease was primarily associated with homosexual or bisexual males, the disease also made occurrences in intravenous (IV) drug users and Haitians. As the CDC pursued this outbreak, it eventually led to the identification of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) as a unique disease that was very fatal (Stall and Mills 2006). Randy Shilts’ (1987) book And the Band Played on documents the identification of AIDS in the early 1980s. After it was identified as a communicable disease, much of the response to AIDS was biomedical research attempting to understand the disease and its transmission.