WEBVTT - Ep 12 HIV/AIDS: Apathy Will Kill You 0:00:03.080 --> 0:00:06.239 Hi, I'm erin Welsh and I'm erin Allman Updike. 0:00:06.280 --> 0:00:08.319 And this is this podcast will kill you. 0:00:08.760 --> 0:00:11.520 Before we start off, we first want to ask you 0:00:11.720 --> 0:00:15.280 to make sure that if you're not subscribed, that you 0:00:15.440 --> 0:00:18.759 do so now, because this is our last episode of 0:00:18.800 --> 0:00:21.200 the season and we don't want you to miss next 0:00:21.200 --> 0:00:24.799 season's premiere or all the super fun bonus episodes that 0:00:24.840 --> 0:00:26.360 we're going to have in the interim. 0:00:27.120 --> 0:00:30.520 The subject of this week's episode is HIV and AIDS, 0:00:31.120 --> 0:00:35.640 and we were fortunate enough to interview three individuals who 0:00:36.040 --> 0:00:38.320 shared their experiences with us. 0:00:40.000 --> 0:00:42.199 Well, my name is Frank and my last name is 0:00:42.240 --> 0:00:46.279 I am Ellie. I'm sixty five, gay man. I live 0:00:46.360 --> 0:00:49.200 outside of Boston. I was about twenty seven, I guess 0:00:49.320 --> 0:00:52.919 or twenty eight when we first started to hear about it. 0:00:53.080 --> 0:00:56.760 I remember distinctly walking into work one morning and this 0:00:57.160 --> 0:01:00.639 woman I work with, she hadn't read the news, and 0:01:00.680 --> 0:01:03.960 she said something about, hey, have you heard about this 0:01:04.080 --> 0:01:07.800 gay plague that's going on, this gay cancer, and I 0:01:08.000 --> 0:01:11.120 was I had never heard of it before. You know, 0:01:11.240 --> 0:01:14.000 you started hearing that, well, this one's not well, and 0:01:14.040 --> 0:01:17.560 then this one's not well, and it just sort of 0:01:17.680 --> 0:01:21.680 mushroomed from there, so within I would say about a 0:01:21.840 --> 0:01:24.640 year and a half to two years of reading about 0:01:24.640 --> 0:01:29.679 it in the paper, it had hit Boston like crazy. 0:01:29.720 --> 0:01:33.319 So I think in times of crisis, your true self 0:01:33.400 --> 0:01:39.240 really comes into being. And I've always thought of myself 0:01:39.280 --> 0:01:41.319 as kind of a really nurturing kind of a guy. 0:01:42.280 --> 0:01:45.880 And it was just my first instinct was when people 0:01:45.959 --> 0:01:49.000 around me that I loved and cared for were getting sick, 0:01:49.080 --> 0:01:52.000 that you know, there was nothing that was going to 0:01:52.040 --> 0:01:55.200 keep me away from helping them. And you also have 0:01:55.320 --> 0:01:59.120 to keep in mind for a fair number of people, 0:01:59.200 --> 0:02:02.880 I won't say all of them whose families had abandoned them. 0:02:03.040 --> 0:02:07.840 You know, we were their only family, and so we 0:02:07.880 --> 0:02:10.720 took care of them. We clean them, we fed them, 0:02:10.919 --> 0:02:14.360 you know, we socialized with them, We tried to keep 0:02:14.440 --> 0:02:18.080 them in good spirits and all of that and basically 0:02:18.240 --> 0:02:20.960 just be with them, you know, through the end. I mean, 0:02:21.480 --> 0:02:24.920 I can't tell you how many people have sat and 0:02:25.320 --> 0:02:29.960 held their hands until they died. It wasn't easy for me, 0:02:30.800 --> 0:02:32.840 but I knew I was doing the right thing for them. 0:02:33.720 --> 0:02:37.720 But the bigger thing is in retrospect, when I was 0:02:37.760 --> 0:02:40.480 sort of when I was growing up, I always once 0:02:40.560 --> 0:02:44.400 I started making friends. I mean, we had a really 0:02:44.560 --> 0:02:48.000 large circle of friends in a very very strong gay 0:02:48.080 --> 0:02:53.559 community at the time, and I remember thinking in the 0:02:53.639 --> 0:02:58.480 late seventies early eighties, I had such a wonderful group 0:02:58.520 --> 0:03:00.760 of friends that I thought, this is going to be wonderful. 0:03:01.360 --> 0:03:03.720 You know, we're all going to grow all together, we'll 0:03:03.760 --> 0:03:06.079 all take care of each other as we get older. 0:03:06.800 --> 0:03:10.800 And they're all gone. The whole family that you created, 0:03:10.960 --> 0:03:14.639 it's just gone. I've got, like, maybe I don't know, 0:03:14.840 --> 0:03:19.120 four or five friends left from that time period, and 0:03:19.960 --> 0:03:26.360 you know, I cherished them, but the larger community, it's 0:03:26.600 --> 0:03:31.880 just weird to realize that everybody that you loved is gone. 0:03:32.240 --> 0:03:36.120 I even lost my partner to age two, and honestly, 0:03:36.160 --> 0:03:40.000 that's one of the reasons that I'm doing this today is, 0:03:40.560 --> 0:03:43.560 you know, if we don't tell our stories about what happened, 0:03:44.360 --> 0:03:44.840 who will. 0:03:47.040 --> 0:03:50.800 My name is Hillel Wasserman. I live in Los Angeles, California, 0:03:51.840 --> 0:03:56.240 and at present time, I work in the emotion picture business. 0:03:56.360 --> 0:03:59.640 At the time that I first learned about HIV, I 0:03:59.840 --> 0:04:03.160 was about I guess I was in my late twenties. 0:04:03.160 --> 0:04:06.760 We started to hear these whispers about this weird gay 0:04:06.960 --> 0:04:10.280 cancer that was going around, which you know a lot 0:04:10.320 --> 0:04:12.600 of us discounted because come on, cancer. 0:04:12.320 --> 0:04:13.680 Isn't a communtal disease. 0:04:13.720 --> 0:04:16.599 How can you, you know, transfer cancer from one person 0:04:16.640 --> 0:04:18.960 to another. It must just be a way for the 0:04:19.040 --> 0:04:21.520 repressive society that we were living in to kind of 0:04:21.600 --> 0:04:26.320 cuash the gay you know, liberation revolution, whatever we were doing, 0:04:26.880 --> 0:04:29.720 and so, you know, it was easily discounted. But it 0:04:29.800 --> 0:04:34.719 was getting harder and harder to overlook. Guys were getting 0:04:34.720 --> 0:04:37.839 together for funerals more often than we were getting together 0:04:37.880 --> 0:04:40.520 for brunch, and people were showing up at the gym 0:04:40.560 --> 0:04:44.160 that looked like walking skeletons. It very much became a 0:04:44.200 --> 0:04:49.560 reality for me when I woke up one morning and 0:04:49.760 --> 0:04:54.400 I saw four purple spots on my legs. I jumped 0:04:54.400 --> 0:04:56.760 in my car and I ran to my doctor and 0:04:56.800 --> 0:04:58.800 I marched into his office and I pulled down my 0:04:58.880 --> 0:05:01.400 pants with my legs and I pointed it at them 0:05:01.440 --> 0:05:03.120 and I said, look, I said, I've got the spots. 0:05:03.120 --> 0:05:06.000 They're ks. I'm going to die. Right. He took a 0:05:06.000 --> 0:05:09.640 long breath and he said to me, finally, hello, He said, 0:05:09.720 --> 0:05:12.760 what you have on your legs are bruises. It was 0:05:12.839 --> 0:05:14.919 kind of, but it had really kind of gotten to 0:05:15.000 --> 0:05:18.359 be enough for me because every time I had a 0:05:18.400 --> 0:05:20.760 cold and last the extra week, I'm running to the doctor. 0:05:20.760 --> 0:05:22.600 Every time I got out of shower and get a 0:05:22.680 --> 0:05:24.400 check on me and saw something new grown on me, 0:05:24.440 --> 0:05:27.000 I'm running to the doctor. And every time we had 0:05:27.040 --> 0:05:30.120 the exact same conversation. And so he said to me, 0:05:30.200 --> 0:05:32.120 He'll alway says, I'm happy to give it the eighth sests, 0:05:32.480 --> 0:05:34.480 but you have to be prepared for a results you 0:05:34.600 --> 0:05:36.760 may not like. And I said, you know what, I said, 0:05:37.200 --> 0:05:40.440 I'm a UCLA graduate, I am good at taking tests. 0:05:40.960 --> 0:05:43.200 Give me the age sest. And so there I was 0:05:43.320 --> 0:05:45.440 sitting in my beautiful office when I get a phone 0:05:45.480 --> 0:05:47.800 call from the doctor after those seven days to tell 0:05:47.839 --> 0:05:51.160 me that the test results came back and they were positive. 0:05:51.400 --> 0:05:55.919 And he started to talk to me about statistics, about 0:05:55.960 --> 0:06:00.880 the odds right, about getting my affairs in order, which 0:06:01.160 --> 0:06:05.440 is doctor code for get ready to die. And as 0:06:05.520 --> 0:06:07.320 I sat there and listened to all of that, all 0:06:07.400 --> 0:06:10.440 I could think of was, oh my god, how am 0:06:10.480 --> 0:06:12.120 I ever going to tell my parents? 0:06:12.640 --> 0:06:13.160 And that was it. 0:06:13.320 --> 0:06:16.719 I mean, I controlled that information very very tightly until 0:06:16.839 --> 0:06:21.560 I couldn't anymore. In nineteen ninety five, eight years after 0:06:21.640 --> 0:06:25.599 taking that test, finally, finally, the rain started to fall. 0:06:26.160 --> 0:06:31.000 I developed HIV related non Hodgston's lymphoma, which is luphatic cancer. 0:06:31.880 --> 0:06:34.040 And there I was. I wasn't quite forty years old. 0:06:34.080 --> 0:06:37.520 I was thirty nine. I've never been in love, I'd 0:06:37.600 --> 0:06:41.440 never been to Israel, I'd never been, never done so 0:06:41.600 --> 0:06:43.360 many of the things that I hoped and wish that 0:06:43.440 --> 0:06:49.880 I would do. And yet well your March, you know, 0:06:50.920 --> 0:06:57.160 and that was twenty three almost years ago, and still here. 0:06:57.960 --> 0:06:59.880 How how does he do it? 0:07:00.920 --> 0:07:01.120 You know? 0:07:01.800 --> 0:07:04.960 What is the magic formula of the secret weapon that 0:07:05.040 --> 0:07:09.920 I possess? Well, it's drugs. Not the kind that we 0:07:10.000 --> 0:07:13.880 took back in the day. Oh dude, So these are 0:07:14.040 --> 0:07:18.320 HIV drugs. So when I ask myself for people ask 0:07:18.440 --> 0:07:22.520 me how HIV has affected my everyday life, I mean, seriously. 0:07:22.080 --> 0:07:22.680 How can it not. 0:07:23.800 --> 0:07:26.800 At one point I was taking medicine six times in 0:07:26.880 --> 0:07:30.400 a day. Seriously, who takes that much medicine? Normally no 0:07:30.520 --> 0:07:34.560 one does six people take medicine. But as I've grown 0:07:34.640 --> 0:07:36.960 fond of saying, I may have HIV, but it doesn't 0:07:37.040 --> 0:07:37.360 have me. 0:07:39.000 --> 0:07:42.840 My name is Brian Jackson. And I'm from Saint Louis, Missouri. 0:07:44.280 --> 0:07:48.640 I am a motive based on speaker and life coach. 0:07:50.160 --> 0:07:52.320 What else is there to say about me? I'm cool 0:07:52.760 --> 0:07:55.280 and I think one of the most important things, because 0:07:55.320 --> 0:07:59.000 we're talking about this on the podcast, is I'm HIV positive. 0:07:59.400 --> 0:08:02.360 My story is a little bit different about how people 0:08:02.440 --> 0:08:05.600 contract HIV. When I was eleven months old with my father, 0:08:05.800 --> 0:08:09.600 who was a forbotomist at a hospital, decided to steal 0:08:09.800 --> 0:08:13.120 HIV painted blood and come over to a hospital that. 0:08:13.160 --> 0:08:13.960 I was staying at. 0:08:14.040 --> 0:08:17.880 I was admitted for my asthma attack, and he got 0:08:17.920 --> 0:08:20.160 my mother out of the room and then sinsoring injected 0:08:20.240 --> 0:08:22.720 me with the HIV bias, hoping I would die off 0:08:22.840 --> 0:08:25.640 and he wouldn't have to pay shot support. Not only 0:08:25.680 --> 0:08:30.560 where at HIV, it was also uncompatible blood, and so 0:08:30.800 --> 0:08:33.360 my BiDi signs started going out of whack. I was 0:08:33.400 --> 0:08:36.599 screaming and crying. No one could figure out what was 0:08:37.080 --> 0:08:40.880 going on with me. They transferred me to another hospital. 0:08:41.000 --> 0:08:44.960 Twenty four hours later, I was stabilized and everything was okay. 0:08:45.440 --> 0:08:48.320 In nineteen ninety six, one for being this playful hockey 0:08:48.440 --> 0:08:49.600 and the jet of five year. 0:08:49.440 --> 0:08:51.600 Old to dispload the beavers sick kid. 0:08:52.480 --> 0:08:54.480 In the matter of months, my body began to break 0:08:54.600 --> 0:08:58.760 down and doctor started testing me for numerous diseases even 0:08:58.800 --> 0:09:03.840 forever and sent another country. In conclusion, they came to say, 0:09:04.080 --> 0:09:06.520 you know, I know he's not at risk for HIV, 0:09:06.679 --> 0:09:09.920 but let's text him for HIV. The results came back 0:09:09.960 --> 0:09:13.320 and I was diagnosed with full blown AIDS. Given five 0:09:13.440 --> 0:09:16.480 months to this, my tea cell account was at zero. 0:09:17.440 --> 0:09:20.200 They put me on twenty three or medications through IVY 0:09:20.280 --> 0:09:23.240 in a Vatican team Jess's daily The majority of those 0:09:23.320 --> 0:09:27.280 were not available for SHIVEN at the time. But three 0:09:27.360 --> 0:09:32.240 months past, five months past, and as I stand before 0:09:32.320 --> 0:09:35.599 you today, wasn't supposed to see my sixth birthday, but 0:09:35.960 --> 0:09:40.480 come next month we celebrated my twenty seventh birthday. Well, 0:09:40.559 --> 0:09:43.880 how people and my family were very receptive towards it. 0:09:44.000 --> 0:09:47.240 They wanted to get educated and they wanted to, you know, 0:09:47.400 --> 0:09:50.400 be a part of my life. But on this social atmosphere, 0:09:50.920 --> 0:09:53.440 I wasn't always I was left at a birthday party, 0:09:53.640 --> 0:09:57.600 social event. My oldest sister, who has a different father, 0:09:57.800 --> 0:10:00.320 Her father decided to take out of her life because 0:10:00.679 --> 0:10:03.360 he didn't want to be associated with the HIV family 0:10:03.600 --> 0:10:06.560 who is even left out of birthday parties and social events. 0:10:06.840 --> 0:10:10.360 I lost a lot of friends. I couldn't play sports 0:10:10.400 --> 0:10:13.800 and staff growing up, even though I'm a very athletic person. 0:10:14.440 --> 0:10:16.959 I did find my calling and cheerleading though, and I 0:10:17.080 --> 0:10:20.000 am a state champion. Even after I came clean with 0:10:20.160 --> 0:10:23.160 my story and said, hey, I don't care about what 0:10:23.280 --> 0:10:25.920 you guys think, like this is who I am. HIV 0:10:26.080 --> 0:10:29.240 doesn't defy me, and I started showing people that I 0:10:29.400 --> 0:10:32.679 was lobbying in Washington, DC. You know, some of the 0:10:32.760 --> 0:10:36.000 ignorance went away, but still the ignorance is still consistent. 0:10:36.600 --> 0:10:39.760 But in twenty eighteen, there's you know, we have great 0:10:39.920 --> 0:10:43.360 medications that can help people live long and healthy life 0:10:43.720 --> 0:10:47.520 and be undetectable. Most people can have a zero physic 0:10:47.760 --> 0:10:50.679 chance of passing under by it, but a lot of 0:10:50.760 --> 0:10:54.320 people the stigma is still live and real, so where 0:10:54.400 --> 0:10:57.040 people don't want to go get tested, or when people 0:10:57.200 --> 0:11:01.000 contracted by it, they automatically think I'm I'm going to that, 0:11:01.640 --> 0:11:04.400 and that's not the true. It's like people who are 0:11:04.440 --> 0:11:09.400 living with can be successful lives, and people who are 0:11:09.480 --> 0:11:13.240 not with HIV positive people who are probably gonna always 0:11:13.280 --> 0:11:14.880 remain HIV negative. 0:11:33.520 --> 0:11:33.720 Yeah. 0:11:34.200 --> 0:11:41.160 Wow, wow, those I mean, those stories were so incredibly touching. Yeah, 0:11:41.840 --> 0:11:46.520 thank you again to Frank, to Hillel, and to Brian 0:11:47.920 --> 0:11:49.800 for for sitting. 0:11:49.600 --> 0:11:53.319 Down with us to tell us those stories and for 0:11:53.480 --> 0:11:56.640 being willing to share your stories with our listeners. 0:11:57.440 --> 0:12:01.040 And next week, listeners, we are going to be releasing 0:12:01.160 --> 0:12:06.840 a bonus episode in which Frank, Heillel, and Brian will 0:12:06.880 --> 0:12:11.000 be telling their more of their stories in detail, and 0:12:11.280 --> 0:12:13.600 we want you guys to tune into that because it's 0:12:13.640 --> 0:12:16.280 going to be absolutely incredible, So please keep an ear 0:12:16.320 --> 0:12:16.679 out for that. 0:12:17.880 --> 0:12:21.319 Yeah, all right, this week. 0:12:21.440 --> 0:12:27.360 We are we don't have a quarantine for you, no, nope. 0:12:28.040 --> 0:12:31.319 But what we will advise you to do, which is 0:12:31.360 --> 0:12:34.520 what we're doing, is just make yourself a drink whatever 0:12:34.640 --> 0:12:38.040 you have, yep, and sit back and get ready to learn. 0:12:38.640 --> 0:12:38.840 Yeah. 0:12:38.880 --> 0:12:42.199 I was thinking about it before we started recording this. 0:12:42.559 --> 0:12:46.040 And you know how if you listen to this American Life, 0:12:47.040 --> 0:12:50.319 sometimes it's like you're laughing and it's a funny one. 0:12:50.480 --> 0:12:52.640 And sometimes you're like, wow, gosh, that was really interesting. 0:12:52.679 --> 0:12:55.360 I learned a lot. And then sometimes you just cry. Yeah, 0:12:55.440 --> 0:12:57.959 like the whole episode you're just bawling. Ours is that 0:12:58.040 --> 0:13:00.920 one welcome to this podcast. Will tell you this American 0:13:01.000 --> 0:13:05.160 Life edition the Crying the Crying episode, not really but 0:13:05.320 --> 0:13:08.000 kind of. Well, it's a very serious topic. Not that, 0:13:08.240 --> 0:13:10.640 not that all the ones we've discussed have been serious topics, 0:13:10.800 --> 0:13:14.560 but because this is so recent, it really does hit 0:13:14.679 --> 0:13:17.520 a nerve and there are a lot of very serious 0:13:17.559 --> 0:13:20.439 issues that we're going to discuss in it. So all right, 0:13:21.000 --> 0:13:22.200 business is out of the way. 0:13:22.320 --> 0:13:23.800 All right, Biology time. 0:13:24.040 --> 0:13:40.319 All right, So it's nineteen eighty October, Los Angeles. Okay, 0:13:40.640 --> 0:13:43.760 you're a physician. Okay, a thirty three year old man 0:13:44.000 --> 0:13:46.839 comes to your hospital complaining of a fever for about 0:13:46.880 --> 0:13:50.720 two months. His liver enzymes are elevated, which is not good, 0:13:51.360 --> 0:13:54.800 and his white blood cell count is pretty low, and 0:13:54.960 --> 0:13:57.280 a fever for two months. Two months, it's a pretty 0:13:57.320 --> 0:14:01.720 long time. He's also infected, as it turns out, with cidamegalovirus, 0:14:01.800 --> 0:14:04.720 which is a pretty common virus that generally doesn't cause 0:14:04.760 --> 0:14:09.360 any problems unless a person is immunocompromised. You run a 0:14:09.360 --> 0:14:12.160 whole bunch of tests and you diagnose him with pneumonia 0:14:12.480 --> 0:14:18.760 caused by a fungus called Pneumaicistus corinnei. Weird it's really 0:14:19.000 --> 0:14:24.080 not common, especially not in otherwise healthy young people. You 0:14:24.240 --> 0:14:28.480 also diagnose him with oral candidiasis, which is another fungal infection, 0:14:29.040 --> 0:14:32.840 this time of the mouth instead of the lungs. Unfortunately, 0:14:33.000 --> 0:14:36.760 his condition deteriorates despite attempts to treat with antifungals, and 0:14:36.880 --> 0:14:41.120 the patient dies. In May of nineteen eighty one. Cut 0:14:41.200 --> 0:14:44.400 back to April nineteen eighty one, another patient presents to 0:14:44.480 --> 0:14:48.800 your hospital in LA with strikingly similar symptoms. Then you 0:14:48.920 --> 0:14:52.040 find out that in January and February of nineteen eighty 0:14:52.080 --> 0:14:55.680 one at another hospital, two other men presented with the 0:14:55.800 --> 0:14:59.840 same cluster of symptoms, and in April at yet another hospital, 0:15:00.120 --> 0:15:03.560 the same. So that's a total of five otherwise healthy 0:15:03.640 --> 0:15:06.800 young men aged twenty nine to thirty six who were 0:15:06.880 --> 0:15:10.200 diagnosed with fungal pneumonia and fungal infections of the mouth 0:15:10.280 --> 0:15:13.360 as well a cluster A cluster. This is not normal. 0:15:13.600 --> 0:15:13.640 No. 0:15:14.440 --> 0:15:18.040 By nineteen eighty two, the CDC had received reports of 0:15:18.080 --> 0:15:22.960 a cluster of nineteen cases of PCP. That's numrosistous carinia pneumonia, 0:15:23.120 --> 0:15:26.560 not the drug not the drugs, and something else called 0:15:26.640 --> 0:15:31.440 Caposi's sarcoma, which is a viral induced cancer cooposi. Sarcoma 0:15:31.600 --> 0:15:35.200 leaves these characteristic purple lesions on your skin, and before 0:15:35.240 --> 0:15:38.480 this time pretty much only ever affected much older men 0:15:38.680 --> 0:15:42.080 or severely immunal compromised people, and generally was a very 0:15:42.200 --> 0:15:43.520 slow progressive disease. 0:15:43.720 --> 0:15:45.440 And it wasn't even known at that time that it 0:15:45.520 --> 0:15:46.480 was caused by a virus. 0:15:46.720 --> 0:15:46.880 Right. 0:15:47.080 --> 0:15:47.280 Yeah. 0:15:47.960 --> 0:15:52.360 Of these nineteen patients, eleven of them died. WHOA. At first, 0:15:52.600 --> 0:15:57.520 these case reports were almost exclusively popping up in gay men. However, 0:15:57.760 --> 0:16:01.920 they quickly started seeing cases similar case in patients with hemophilia, 0:16:02.680 --> 0:16:07.160 in intravenous drug users, in infants, and so something was 0:16:07.360 --> 0:16:10.920 clearly happening, and at the time physicians and public health 0:16:10.960 --> 0:16:14.600 professionals had no idea what it was, but we do now. 0:16:15.600 --> 0:16:18.040 What was happening was that each of these men and 0:16:18.240 --> 0:16:20.920 women and children were suffering from what we now know 0:16:21.120 --> 0:16:24.920 of as AIDES acquired immune deficiency syndrome, which we now 0:16:25.000 --> 0:16:29.480 know means they were infected with HIV human immuno deficiency 0:16:29.600 --> 0:16:30.920 virus YEP. 0:16:31.440 --> 0:16:32.560 So that's how it begins. 0:16:32.720 --> 0:16:36.800 This is how it begins. So what is HIV. HIV 0:16:36.920 --> 0:16:41.000 is a retrovirus. Okay, the first actual retrovirus that we're 0:16:41.040 --> 0:16:44.240 going to talk about on this show. So we're going 0:16:44.320 --> 0:16:46.960 to do a quick virology one on one course. 0:16:47.280 --> 0:16:50.160 All right, hey, but come on, it's been several years. 0:16:50.040 --> 0:16:52.120 Let's do it. All right, it's time. Then you need 0:16:52.200 --> 0:16:56.080 a refresher for sure. All right. So, the other RNA 0:16:56.200 --> 0:16:58.840 viruses that we've talked about on this show, like influenza 0:16:58.920 --> 0:17:02.560 and yellow fever, when they get into your cells, they 0:17:02.640 --> 0:17:06.480 basically hijack your cells machinery and force your cells to 0:17:06.560 --> 0:17:10.880 start making protein. Normally, RNA codes for protein. 0:17:11.160 --> 0:17:12.040 Okay, So these. 0:17:12.000 --> 0:17:15.320 RNA viruses basically tell your cells get busy, mech and 0:17:15.359 --> 0:17:18.320 more of me, and your cells are like, okay, whatever, 0:17:18.520 --> 0:17:23.240 your cells mid and scary, okay. But retroviruses do something 0:17:23.280 --> 0:17:27.520 a little bit different. Retroviruses, which are also RNA viruses, 0:17:28.000 --> 0:17:30.600 get into your cells and they bring along an enzyme 0:17:30.640 --> 0:17:34.840 of their own called reverse transcriptase, and that enzyme makes 0:17:34.960 --> 0:17:38.520 copies of their RNA, but not just regular copies. It 0:17:38.640 --> 0:17:43.880 actually makes DNA copies. And so now this viral DNA 0:17:44.880 --> 0:17:47.880 is in your cells, I can just swoop its way 0:17:48.240 --> 0:17:49.720 straight into your DNA. 0:17:49.960 --> 0:17:52.480 So it's a lot of a it's a sneakier tactic. 0:17:52.359 --> 0:17:57.280 Exactly, And so it literally fits this viral DNA into 0:17:57.359 --> 0:17:59.760 your genome and that makes it a lot harder for 0:17:59.800 --> 0:18:02.840 your cells to target. And it basically means that whenever 0:18:02.960 --> 0:18:06.680 your cells replicate, they'll replicate not only your DNA, but 0:18:06.760 --> 0:18:07.960 this viral DNA as. 0:18:07.880 --> 0:18:12.920 Well, which is like a background replication exactly. 0:18:13.200 --> 0:18:16.760 Yes, and then eventually those copies of viral DNA will 0:18:16.800 --> 0:18:20.560 do what DNA normally does, and that is make an 0:18:20.680 --> 0:18:23.360 RNA copy, make some protein, and then get to work 0:18:23.440 --> 0:18:28.320 making more viruses. And HIV is really good once more 0:18:28.440 --> 0:18:31.320 viruses are made at spreading from cell to cell. It 0:18:31.400 --> 0:18:34.600 has a bunch of crazy mechanisms that are too complicated 0:18:35.040 --> 0:18:37.640 for our virology one on one course, okay, So we're 0:18:37.800 --> 0:18:41.000 just saying that it basically has several different ways that 0:18:41.119 --> 0:18:43.840 it can perpetuate itself and selectively spread to more and 0:18:43.920 --> 0:18:47.760 more cells. So that's HIV one oh one all right, Okay, 0:18:48.480 --> 0:18:51.920 So there are two main subtypes of HIV, HIV one 0:18:52.040 --> 0:18:52.880 and HIV two. 0:18:53.480 --> 0:18:53.800 All right. 0:18:54.040 --> 0:18:56.919 HIV one is what the overwhelming majority of people are 0:18:57.000 --> 0:18:59.080 infected with, and it's the more virulent strain. 0:18:59.280 --> 0:19:01.080 Okay, that's the pandemic strain. 0:19:01.000 --> 0:19:04.240 Exactly right, HIV T is pretty much confined to West Africa. 0:19:04.440 --> 0:19:06.200 Okay, but within these. 0:19:06.119 --> 0:19:10.720 Two strains there's considerable genetic variability. And if you remember 0:19:10.760 --> 0:19:12.480 all the way back to leprosy. 0:19:12.560 --> 0:19:14.720 I think I can remember that far back, which. 0:19:14.640 --> 0:19:20.520 Was our slowest reproducing pathogen exactly. Well, HIV makes one 0:19:20.640 --> 0:19:23.760 hundred billion copies of itself every. 0:19:23.600 --> 0:19:25.600 Day, what I know. 0:19:26.240 --> 0:19:27.880 Hold on, I feel like I should have double checked 0:19:27.960 --> 0:19:32.120 that number, because it's really over one hundred billion, yeah, 0:19:32.200 --> 0:19:35.680 with a B every day, every day, every day day. 0:19:36.440 --> 0:19:39.399 And because it's an RNA virus and a retrovirus at that, 0:19:39.640 --> 0:19:42.680 it has a super high mutation rate, so it's constantly 0:19:42.760 --> 0:19:46.920 replicating and it's constantly changing, and so it's really hard 0:19:46.960 --> 0:19:49.240 for our immune system to target, and it mutates a 0:19:49.280 --> 0:19:52.920 lot faster than our drug development can keep up with. Yeah, okay, 0:19:53.320 --> 0:19:56.359 So okay, how does this actually end up causing what 0:19:56.440 --> 0:19:58.960 we know of as eights? That's the real question. 0:19:59.119 --> 0:19:59.920 Yeah, tell me about it. 0:20:00.320 --> 0:20:04.000 So HIV is spread via extremely close contact with a 0:20:04.080 --> 0:20:08.040 few bodily fluids, blood, semen, vaginal secretions, that sort of thing. 0:20:08.760 --> 0:20:11.919 So I'll just say it in case anyone listening doesn't 0:20:12.000 --> 0:20:14.000 know which I assume all of our listeners do know 0:20:14.600 --> 0:20:17.959 m You can't get it by kissing, touching, high fiving, 0:20:18.359 --> 0:20:23.840 hiking hands, hugging, none of that. It's really extremely intimate contact, sex, 0:20:24.240 --> 0:20:28.560 sharing of needles, blood products, things like that. So when 0:20:28.760 --> 0:20:32.560 HIV enters your body, it's not just infecting any random cells. 0:20:33.119 --> 0:20:36.720 It infects several different immune cells. You've probably heard of 0:20:37.000 --> 0:20:41.120 CD four counts in relation to HIV, yes, well, CD 0:20:41.280 --> 0:20:43.879 four cells are a type of T cell, which is 0:20:44.000 --> 0:20:46.480 a lymphocyte or a white blood cell. CD four T 0:20:46.640 --> 0:20:49.640 cells are also called helper T cells, so their job 0:20:49.720 --> 0:20:53.200 in your body normally is to help activate other white 0:20:53.240 --> 0:20:56.239 blood cells to promote an immune response. They also make 0:20:56.320 --> 0:20:59.359 something called cytokines, which we've talked a bit before about 0:20:59.440 --> 0:21:02.119 on this show, right, But basically those are proteins that 0:21:02.320 --> 0:21:06.000 help in your immune response. So CD four T cells 0:21:06.480 --> 0:21:10.520 are basically helper cells that are activating your immune response. 0:21:11.320 --> 0:21:13.600 And one thing that they do that's really important is 0:21:13.760 --> 0:21:17.240 activate another type of cell called your B cells, which 0:21:17.280 --> 0:21:19.080 are the cells that make antibodies. 0:21:19.359 --> 0:21:22.480 So it seems like a lot hinges on CD four 0:21:23.200 --> 0:21:24.520 numbers exactly. 0:21:24.920 --> 0:21:27.399 So when people talk about their CD four cell counts 0:21:27.440 --> 0:21:30.240 they're literally talking about how many CD four T cells 0:21:30.280 --> 0:21:34.000 they have left in their body that haven't been destroyed. 0:21:35.119 --> 0:21:38.359 But the mechanism of CD four T cell destruction in 0:21:38.640 --> 0:21:42.280 HIV is actually unclear at this point, even to this day. Yeah, 0:21:42.359 --> 0:21:47.080 I think that's so fascinating. So I would have assumed that, 0:21:47.520 --> 0:21:51.840 like malaria, for example, when malaria parasites replicate in your 0:21:51.880 --> 0:21:54.560 red blood cells, they burst out and destroy your red 0:21:54.600 --> 0:21:57.760 blood cells in the process. Well, that's not what happens 0:21:57.920 --> 0:22:01.440 in HIV. When HIV re implicates in your CD four 0:22:01.480 --> 0:22:03.920 T cells, it actually buds out. 0:22:04.840 --> 0:22:05.040 Huh. 0:22:05.160 --> 0:22:06.960 I tried really hard to think of an analogy for that, 0:22:07.119 --> 0:22:08.240 but I couldn't come up with one. 0:22:08.359 --> 0:22:10.359 Wait, let me think of one for a second, because 0:22:10.400 --> 0:22:11.480 I know that there's one. 0:22:11.560 --> 0:22:13.640 The best I came up with was it's like if 0:22:14.359 --> 0:22:18.480 a bowl of you're making meatballs, and the whole bowl 0:22:18.520 --> 0:22:21.480 of meat is your CD four cell and you take 0:22:21.600 --> 0:22:25.840 one meatball out at a time, Like that's okay, Okay, 0:22:27.160 --> 0:22:29.120 it's not great. I feel like we could do better. 0:22:29.480 --> 0:22:31.840 No, I definitely, I feel like maybe it's just that 0:22:31.920 --> 0:22:33.720 I have seen a YouTube video with. 0:22:33.840 --> 0:22:38.920 This with this butting off right, Yeah, little viral particles 0:22:39.000 --> 0:22:41.959 butting off, they take a piece of that plasma membrane 0:22:42.040 --> 0:22:44.680 with them, so that's again making them harder to see 0:22:44.720 --> 0:22:48.920 in your body because they're covered in your own lymphocyte tissue, right, 0:22:49.040 --> 0:22:53.679 so they hide out exactly. Yeah, but at the end 0:22:53.720 --> 0:22:56.760 of the day, what happens is you have depletion of 0:22:56.840 --> 0:22:59.840 these T cells. Your body's no longer making citokines or 0:23:00.040 --> 0:23:03.320 other proteins. You can't make antibodies as effectively because you're 0:23:03.359 --> 0:23:07.000 not activating B cells. So usually what happens when you 0:23:07.080 --> 0:23:11.119 get infected with HIV is this replication happens really quickly, 0:23:11.440 --> 0:23:15.639 within ten days. The patient usually has really high viremia, 0:23:15.800 --> 0:23:18.920 so tons of viruses in their bloodstream, and at first 0:23:19.119 --> 0:23:21.800 this is going to activate a massive immune response. 0:23:22.119 --> 0:23:25.080 And just to clarify this is a person who has 0:23:25.119 --> 0:23:28.280 been infected with HIV exactly that we're not talking about 0:23:28.280 --> 0:23:30.040 AIDS quite yet, right, we'll get. 0:23:29.920 --> 0:23:32.680 To exactly what happens with AIDS exactly. So when you 0:23:32.760 --> 0:23:35.639 get infected with HIV, at first HIV is going to 0:23:35.720 --> 0:23:38.680 replicate in your body. You'll have a massive immune response 0:23:39.200 --> 0:23:42.480 and a large proportion of those virally infected cells will 0:23:42.520 --> 0:23:46.000 be actually destroyed, which is great. So during this time 0:23:46.359 --> 0:23:50.080 you'll have a primary HIV infection. You might have a fever, 0:23:50.440 --> 0:23:53.439 you might feel like you have the flu, but mostly 0:23:53.600 --> 0:23:56.399 this is a transient illness. You might not even have 0:23:56.560 --> 0:23:59.320 any symptoms at all. Your body is doing what your 0:23:59.320 --> 0:24:01.320 body is supposed to do when you get an infection, 0:24:01.560 --> 0:24:04.840 and it fights it off. So usually by about twenty 0:24:04.880 --> 0:24:08.480 eight days after exposure to HIV, your body has controlled 0:24:08.560 --> 0:24:13.840 or suppressed the initial infection and viriemia is reduced drastically. 0:24:14.320 --> 0:24:17.879 The problem is it doesn't eliminate it. This virus, like 0:24:17.960 --> 0:24:20.240 we've said, is really hard for your body to detect, 0:24:21.160 --> 0:24:24.600 and so you end up with the latent stage of HIV. 0:24:24.960 --> 0:24:25.800 Okay, so it's. 0:24:25.760 --> 0:24:30.600 Hanging out, it's quietly, slowly replicating, and eventually, albeit slowly, 0:24:30.800 --> 0:24:33.520 it will deplete your city for T cells, making it 0:24:33.600 --> 0:24:36.919 impossible for your immune system to fight off opportunistic infection. 0:24:37.680 --> 0:24:41.720 This can take anywhere from three to twenty years. Wow, 0:24:41.960 --> 0:24:45.439 but on average about fifty percent of people who are 0:24:45.480 --> 0:24:49.280 infected with HIV and are untreated will progress to AIDS 0:24:49.520 --> 0:24:50.400 within ten years. 0:24:50.880 --> 0:24:51.359 Ten years. 0:24:51.600 --> 0:24:55.639 Yeah, so the incubation period for HIV itself, the virus 0:24:56.160 --> 0:24:59.160 is only about seven to ten days, but the incubation 0:24:59.280 --> 0:25:03.680 period for AIDS is about ten years. And one thing 0:25:03.920 --> 0:25:08.040 that's really important is that the infectivity of HIV really 0:25:08.200 --> 0:25:12.520 depends on your viremia. So you're far far more infectious 0:25:12.640 --> 0:25:16.080 at that early stage, say within the first month of infection, 0:25:16.560 --> 0:25:20.119 because your viral load is insanely high, whereas after that, 0:25:20.320 --> 0:25:23.240 for a number of years, you're actually not very infectious. 0:25:23.680 --> 0:25:26.280 And then again when you reach the aid stage, your 0:25:26.359 --> 0:25:30.760 viremia increases again and you become extremely infectious. Okay, So 0:25:31.040 --> 0:25:34.439 there are four recognized stages of an HIV infection, all 0:25:34.520 --> 0:25:37.159 of which are classified by measuring your CD four T 0:25:37.280 --> 0:25:40.320 cell count and then also looking for specific symptoms or 0:25:40.400 --> 0:25:45.119 opportunistic infections associated with AIDS, and that is the ultimate 0:25:45.240 --> 0:25:48.520 stage of HIV infection. So that's what those doctors were 0:25:48.560 --> 0:25:50.760 seeing all the way back in the eighties, and at 0:25:50.800 --> 0:25:53.760 the time, they had no idea about everything that had 0:25:53.800 --> 0:25:57.840 been happening in that patient's body for years prior to 0:25:57.920 --> 0:26:01.040 their presentation with AIDS. So tell me how all of 0:26:01.119 --> 0:26:03.760 this happened, Darren, Oh, okay, yeah, So how did we 0:26:03.920 --> 0:26:06.280 end up with this global pandemic. 0:26:15.800 --> 0:26:18.440 I'm going to try to answer that. The history of 0:26:18.720 --> 0:26:21.600 HIV and AIDS is a big one. And I'm dividing 0:26:21.680 --> 0:26:26.159 the history of this modern plague into four acts. This 0:26:26.240 --> 0:26:30.240 American life, right, I said so, from its earliest beginnings 0:26:30.280 --> 0:26:32.879 in Central Africa, to its eruption in the US in 0:26:32.960 --> 0:26:36.320 the eighties and nineties, then to the failures of the government, 0:26:36.600 --> 0:26:39.920 and then the heroic actions of advocacy groups, and finally 0:26:40.000 --> 0:26:43.600 to the development of effective treatments and the emotional fallout 0:26:43.640 --> 0:26:50.200 of the pandemic. Let's start Act one, origin nineteen o 0:26:50.320 --> 0:26:58.879 eight to nineteen eighty two. Let's take a trip in 0:26:58.960 --> 0:27:02.000 space and time back to Central Africa in the early 0:27:02.119 --> 0:27:05.720 nineteen hundreds, to a lush rainforest filled with the sounds 0:27:05.720 --> 0:27:08.680 of exotic birds and a chorus of insects. In this 0:27:08.880 --> 0:27:11.440 rainforest stood a hunter. He was there to check on 0:27:11.480 --> 0:27:14.159 the snares he had so carefully laid a few days earlier, 0:27:14.560 --> 0:27:16.960 and luck in, one of the snares was a chimpanzee. 0:27:17.359 --> 0:27:20.119 The hunter quickly and efficiently killed the chimp, But in 0:27:20.200 --> 0:27:22.840 the process of butchering the chimp, the hunter sliced his 0:27:22.960 --> 0:27:25.520 own hand, and some of the chimp's blood flowed into 0:27:25.560 --> 0:27:28.719 the fresh wound. Unbeknownst to the hunter the blood from 0:27:28.760 --> 0:27:31.160 the chimp. The blood that had just entered the cut 0:27:31.200 --> 0:27:33.640 on his hand contained the virus that would later become 0:27:33.760 --> 0:27:38.600 the human immuno deficiency virus HIV. The hunter hauled his 0:27:38.720 --> 0:27:41.280 killed back home and continued his day to day life. 0:27:42.080 --> 0:27:44.679 Over the next few years, the virus continued to integrate 0:27:44.720 --> 0:27:48.200 itself into the hunter's DNA and more viral particles were produced, 0:27:49.040 --> 0:27:51.320 but it wasn't for years that he felt any effects 0:27:51.320 --> 0:27:53.800 of the virus, and by the time he did, he 0:27:53.920 --> 0:27:56.520 had transmitted the virus to at least one other person. 0:27:57.200 --> 0:28:00.280 This bloody encounter between the hunter and the chimpanzee killed 0:28:00.840 --> 0:28:04.399 is the true ground zero of the AIDS pandemic. We 0:28:04.520 --> 0:28:06.920 have no way of knowing exactly who this hunter was 0:28:07.119 --> 0:28:09.879 or exactly when or where it happened, but we have 0:28:09.960 --> 0:28:13.200 a pretty good guess, which is around nineteen oh eight 0:28:13.640 --> 0:28:14.560 in Central Africa. 0:28:15.359 --> 0:28:19.960 I think that that's a lot earlier than most people think. Definitely, 0:28:20.160 --> 0:28:22.360 so I think that's an important thing. Like nineteen oh eight, 0:28:22.600 --> 0:28:26.200 that's a really long time ago. Highlight that double underline, 0:28:26.280 --> 0:28:29.560 double underline, and it was from most likely a hunter 0:28:30.000 --> 0:28:33.880 hunting bush meat who caught a chimpanzee yes, not anything 0:28:33.960 --> 0:28:36.720 else you might have in mind, right, not you, but 0:28:36.920 --> 0:28:39.040 like the royal you. Yeah. 0:28:41.480 --> 0:28:44.920 The virus moved beyond this hunter, eventually making its way 0:28:44.960 --> 0:28:47.640 to a city where it continued to be transmitted through 0:28:47.720 --> 0:28:52.160 sexual contact, through reuse of dirty needles or some other root. 0:28:53.160 --> 0:28:57.400 And that's when it became HIV type one, the pandemic 0:28:57.480 --> 0:29:00.440 strain of the virus. And slowly, with one one person 0:29:00.560 --> 0:29:03.320 infecting one or two others, and those people infecting one 0:29:03.400 --> 0:29:06.560 or two more. In turn, the virus' distribution grew until 0:29:06.800 --> 0:29:10.480 it had spread across the globe. Later testing of stored 0:29:10.480 --> 0:29:12.640 blood samples helped to flesh out a timeline for the 0:29:12.680 --> 0:29:15.840 spread of HIV. Ooh, I'm going to give you a 0:29:15.920 --> 0:29:18.560 brief rundown of this timeline to bring us up to 0:29:18.680 --> 0:29:20.960 speed to the early days of the AIDS pandemic in 0:29:21.040 --> 0:29:25.920 the US. Great Okay scientists guessed that HIV was circulating 0:29:26.000 --> 0:29:29.520 in Conshasa, which is the capital of the DRC Democratic 0:29:29.560 --> 0:29:33.360 Republic of the Congo by the early nineteen twenties. Wow, 0:29:33.680 --> 0:29:38.200 circulating circulating in that baking population. Yes, And the first 0:29:38.360 --> 0:29:42.080 molecular evidence of HIV infection comes from nineteen fifty nine 0:29:42.680 --> 0:29:46.280 in a man from the DRC. The virus then probably 0:29:46.360 --> 0:29:49.920 arives in Haiti, which became later a big hot spot, 0:29:50.360 --> 0:29:55.560 in nineteen sixty six, and it probably arrived first in 0:29:55.640 --> 0:29:59.160 the US in nineteen sixty eight, though it could have 0:29:59.240 --> 0:30:00.800 been almost ten years earlier. 0:30:01.280 --> 0:30:01.560 Wow. 0:30:01.840 --> 0:30:05.320 So the first AIDS related death in the US was 0:30:05.600 --> 0:30:08.760 in nineteen sixty nine, and that was confirmed by later 0:30:08.920 --> 0:30:12.160 blood testing. And for that to be the case, that 0:30:12.280 --> 0:30:15.480 person had to have been infected, who was a young man, 0:30:15.600 --> 0:30:19.560 had to be infected much earlier, years earlier. So it's 0:30:19.640 --> 0:30:22.080 kind of it's a shaky ground there, but I would 0:30:22.080 --> 0:30:24.800 say nineteen sixty eight is at the latest estimate of 0:30:24.920 --> 0:30:26.240 when the virus arrived. 0:30:26.040 --> 0:30:27.680 In the US the US populations. 0:30:28.600 --> 0:30:31.800 Later testing of blood samples shows HIV infection in a 0:30:31.920 --> 0:30:35.160 Norwegian sailor and his family and a Danish physician in 0:30:35.200 --> 0:30:37.880 the mid to late nineteen seventies. Wow, all of whom 0:30:37.960 --> 0:30:39.600 died of AIDS related illnesses. 0:30:39.800 --> 0:30:40.080 Wow. 0:30:40.880 --> 0:30:43.840 By this time, the virus had firmly established itself in 0:30:43.960 --> 0:30:47.040 major cities in the US, in particular those that would 0:30:47.080 --> 0:30:50.240 later be identified as the epicenters of the AIDS crisis, 0:30:50.840 --> 0:30:55.520 New York City, San Francisco, LA In April nineteen eighty, 0:30:55.720 --> 0:30:59.520 San Francisco resident Ken Horn goes to his doctor complaining 0:30:59.600 --> 0:31:02.440 of dark purple spots on his skin, which his doctor 0:31:02.520 --> 0:31:07.040 diagnoses as Kaposi's sarcoma and as we learned earlier, super 0:31:07.160 --> 0:31:10.640 rare cancer, which is he's not of the right demographic 0:31:10.720 --> 0:31:11.720 or the typical demographic. 0:31:11.800 --> 0:31:13.880 No, not at all. It's like men over the age 0:31:13.880 --> 0:31:14.560 of sixty six. 0:31:14.920 --> 0:31:18.320 Yeah, and of mediterrane or Ashkenazi background. 0:31:18.360 --> 0:31:20.360 Oh, I didn't know that part. That's interesting. 0:31:21.160 --> 0:31:23.320 And his doctor doesn't know what to make of the 0:31:23.400 --> 0:31:27.000 diagnosis or of the unusual blood test results which show 0:31:27.040 --> 0:31:30.880 almost no functional immune system. Something was making ken Horn 0:31:31.400 --> 0:31:32.600 very sick, but he didn't know what. 0:31:33.120 --> 0:31:33.160 So. 0:31:33.280 --> 0:31:35.400 Yeah, as we heard earlier, there were a bunch of 0:31:35.480 --> 0:31:39.040 these other cases, and doctors were baffled. Why were these 0:31:39.120 --> 0:31:42.560 men in otherwise good health struggling to beat these normally 0:31:42.600 --> 0:31:46.040 harmless infections and losing. It would be many years and 0:31:46.120 --> 0:31:48.959 thousands more cases before there would be an answer. By 0:31:49.040 --> 0:31:51.800 the end of nineteen eighty, fifty five men had been 0:31:51.880 --> 0:31:56.160 diagnosed with some infection later recognized as characteristic of AIDS. 0:31:56.520 --> 0:31:56.800 WOW. 0:31:57.480 --> 0:32:01.040 Doctors were beginning to notice a pattern was destroying gay 0:32:01.120 --> 0:32:05.440 men's immune systems, leaving them open to opportunistic infection. Early 0:32:05.560 --> 0:32:08.760 nineteen eighty one, the CDC is alerted to the pandemic 0:32:08.840 --> 0:32:12.400 for the first time by Sandra Ford, a lab tech 0:32:13.120 --> 0:32:16.640 at the CDC who works to fill prescriptions and notices 0:32:16.760 --> 0:32:19.560 an unusual increase in requests for a drug used to 0:32:19.600 --> 0:32:20.760 treat a rare pneumonia. 0:32:20.920 --> 0:32:22.440 I found our firms of stem crossover. 0:32:22.600 --> 0:32:23.720 Here we go, Sandy Ford. 0:32:23.800 --> 0:32:24.440 Andy Ford. 0:32:25.160 --> 0:32:28.680 By May, rumors of a mysterious disease attacking and killing 0:32:28.760 --> 0:32:31.560 gay men are rampant throughout parts of the country. The 0:32:31.680 --> 0:32:34.720 first article in the world in the world about the 0:32:34.800 --> 0:32:38.880 disease is published on May eighteenth in The New York Native, 0:32:38.960 --> 0:32:43.600 which is a gay newspaper, titled Disease Rumors Largely Unfounded. 0:32:44.920 --> 0:32:49.120 Turns out they were founded. Yeah but yeah, so anyway. 0:32:50.120 --> 0:32:56.120 Shortly after that, the Morbidity Immortality Weekly report describing those 0:32:56.440 --> 0:32:59.920 five the cluster of five cases that Aaron talked about 0:33:00.160 --> 0:33:05.720 in the biology section, appears and a task force is 0:33:05.800 --> 0:33:09.240 formed at the CDC. Their immediate goal is to identify 0:33:09.400 --> 0:33:12.760 what is causing this epidemic. So far, this disease has 0:33:12.800 --> 0:33:15.680 seemed to primarily hit gay males, in cities with large 0:33:15.760 --> 0:33:19.240 gay communities, the scientists think, okay, we're dealing with a 0:33:19.280 --> 0:33:24.360 common exposure or an infectious agent. Poppers or nitrial inhalance 0:33:24.680 --> 0:33:28.840 was a contender in the non infectious origin camp, while 0:33:28.920 --> 0:33:32.200 a sexually transmitted virus new to humans was proposed by 0:33:32.240 --> 0:33:36.320 epidemiologist and task Force member Don Francis as the cause. 0:33:37.520 --> 0:33:41.400 Criminally understaffed and suffering from sweeping budget cuts, the CDC 0:33:41.800 --> 0:33:44.880 Task Force set about trying to isolate a common thread 0:33:45.000 --> 0:33:48.480 that would reveal the origin of this epidemic. For those 0:33:48.520 --> 0:33:51.920 physicians an epidemiologist who were seeing the suffering and devastation 0:33:52.120 --> 0:33:54.880 caused by aid's first hand. There was no time for 0:33:54.960 --> 0:33:58.520 a leisurely comprehensive case control study. The house was already 0:33:58.560 --> 0:34:02.560 on fire. To any others, AIDS was an opportunity to 0:34:02.600 --> 0:34:05.640 get an article published in science, to patent a test 0:34:05.720 --> 0:34:08.240 for the disease, or a shot at a Nobel prize. 0:34:08.640 --> 0:34:11.839 The CDC task for set out to conduct some shoe 0:34:11.880 --> 0:34:15.640 leather epidemiology, which, if you remember from the Collar episode, 0:34:15.960 --> 0:34:19.759 includes interviews with people suffering from the disease and physicians 0:34:19.800 --> 0:34:20.680 who had treated. 0:34:20.480 --> 0:34:24.200 Them and all of their friends and family and contact 0:34:24.440 --> 0:34:27.440 contacts exactly, especially if you think that it might be 0:34:27.560 --> 0:34:31.400 something that's transmitted sexually, right, then that's really important to 0:34:31.640 --> 0:34:33.080 trace contacts exactly. 0:34:33.480 --> 0:34:37.120 And two things emerged from these early interviews. One is 0:34:37.200 --> 0:34:40.920 that heterosexual intravenous drug users were also becoming sick with 0:34:41.000 --> 0:34:44.160 the disease. The other is that several of the gay 0:34:44.239 --> 0:34:47.040 men who were among the earliest recognized cases seemed to 0:34:47.120 --> 0:34:51.000 be linked to one another by their sexual history. Both 0:34:51.040 --> 0:34:53.840 of these things pointed to an infectious disease transmitted by 0:34:53.880 --> 0:34:58.239 blood or bodily fluids, not an environmental exposure. I wasn't 0:34:58.320 --> 0:35:01.800 going to talk much about the infamous Patient zero, but 0:35:02.000 --> 0:35:04.560 I feel like I need to just to clear up 0:35:04.600 --> 0:35:07.600 a few things. Okay, First of all, did you know 0:35:07.680 --> 0:35:10.240 that the term patient zero comes from the AIDS crisis 0:35:10.280 --> 0:35:10.759 in the US? 0:35:11.160 --> 0:35:11.200 No? 0:35:11.600 --> 0:35:12.680 I didn't know that at all. 0:35:13.080 --> 0:35:16.600 Yeah, if you've read anything about the early days of 0:35:16.640 --> 0:35:19.719 the AIDS epidemic, it's likely that you've stumbled upon the 0:35:19.840 --> 0:35:25.480 name Gaton Duga, or at least his description a handsome, 0:35:25.680 --> 0:35:29.520 charming gay flat attendant from Montreal, a frequenter of gay 0:35:29.600 --> 0:35:33.520 bath houses in the cities he visited, and in popular history, 0:35:33.719 --> 0:35:36.480 responsible for the AIDS epidemic in the US. In the 0:35:36.560 --> 0:35:39.839 early days of the CDC Task Force, the epidemiologist took 0:35:39.960 --> 0:35:44.400 note of interviewees, social network friends, sexual contacts, etc. Gaton 0:35:44.600 --> 0:35:47.480 had registered on the CDC's radar because he popped up 0:35:47.520 --> 0:35:49.800 in a few of the networks they had mapped, and 0:35:50.120 --> 0:35:52.879 because he had been interviewed and provided a sizable list 0:35:53.040 --> 0:35:56.799 of past contacts himself. His circle on the network map 0:35:56.840 --> 0:36:00.640 of sexual contacts was labeled patient oh, as in the 0:36:00.760 --> 0:36:04.480 letter oh for outside of California, as someone who did 0:36:04.560 --> 0:36:05.600 not live in the study site. 0:36:05.920 --> 0:36:06.120 Huh. 0:36:06.719 --> 0:36:11.120 This was later misread and the term patient zero became 0:36:11.280 --> 0:36:16.320 popularized in And the Band Played On, which was the 0:36:16.680 --> 0:36:21.719 incredible journalistic work by Randy Schiltz published in nineteen eighty seven. 0:36:22.080 --> 0:36:27.440 Dude, yep, that is so interesting. Yeah, so they just 0:36:27.560 --> 0:36:30.439 meant this is a patient that is outside of California 0:36:30.680 --> 0:36:34.120 that is interacting with these patient circles, and now we 0:36:34.400 --> 0:36:36.520 use the term patient zero all the time. 0:36:36.840 --> 0:36:39.800 He was absolutely well yes, so not only that, like 0:36:40.560 --> 0:36:43.520 in terms of the origin of the phrase patient zero, 0:36:43.640 --> 0:36:46.839 but he was demonized in this Oh yeah, I mean 0:36:46.920 --> 0:36:49.680 he was basically portrayed as a sociopath, like he. 0:36:49.840 --> 0:36:51.760 Was like doing it on purpose or something. 0:36:52.040 --> 0:36:56.680 Oh god, absolutely, I don't know anything about the validity 0:36:56.800 --> 0:36:58.880 of any of the claims that he went against public 0:36:58.960 --> 0:37:05.400 health advice or whatever. But regardless of that, later genetic 0:37:05.480 --> 0:37:09.759 analyzes would exonerate him as the US patient zero. The 0:37:09.960 --> 0:37:12.640 virus had been in the US, as we as we've learned, 0:37:12.760 --> 0:37:18.480 in New York and California, long before Katan was sexually active. Unfortunately, 0:37:18.840 --> 0:37:20.880 he would never know that the blame heaped on him 0:37:21.000 --> 0:37:24.120 was unfairly done. He died of AIDS in nineteen eighty four. 0:37:24.440 --> 0:37:25.680 Oh, poor baby. 0:37:25.960 --> 0:37:27.920 I just wanted to clear that up. Yeah, okay. 0:37:28.560 --> 0:37:31.600 That's also a really interesting way that we have a 0:37:31.760 --> 0:37:36.520 term now, right, patient zero on a misreading, on a misreading, 0:37:36.880 --> 0:37:41.720 and then a further victimization. Wow, that is so interesting. 0:37:42.320 --> 0:37:45.680 Yeah, I really wanted to include that. Yeah, okay, moving 0:37:45.760 --> 0:37:48.399 back to the timeline here. Yeah, let's it was clear 0:37:48.520 --> 0:37:50.920 to many of those studying it that this was an 0:37:50.960 --> 0:37:54.920 infectious agent transmitted by the exchange of bodily fluids. But 0:37:55.120 --> 0:37:58.160 where were the front page headlines? Where was the funding 0:37:58.239 --> 0:38:01.400 requested by the CDC task for worse months earlier? 0:38:02.960 --> 0:38:04.399 Who was the president at this time? 0:38:04.880 --> 0:38:05.240 Reagan? 0:38:05.480 --> 0:38:10.160 Okay, we'll get that. Yeah, we'll get that. I just 0:38:10.239 --> 0:38:13.120 want to remind myself. Yeah yeah. 0:38:14.440 --> 0:38:17.640 By the end of nineteen eighty one, one hundred and 0:38:17.719 --> 0:38:21.040 twenty one people in the US had died from the disease, 0:38:21.920 --> 0:38:27.360 with hundreds more infected, likely thousands. And yet among public 0:38:27.400 --> 0:38:31.880 health officials, among politicians, among those whose very job it 0:38:32.120 --> 0:38:34.600 is to protect the health and well being of the 0:38:34.640 --> 0:38:39.400 people they served, all there was was deadly silence. Compare 0:38:39.480 --> 0:38:41.680 this silence and lack of funding to the outbreak of 0:38:41.760 --> 0:38:45.640 Legionnaire's disease in nineteen seventy six, which killed twenty nine 0:38:45.840 --> 0:38:49.640 and infected one hundred and eighty two people, mostly straight 0:38:50.160 --> 0:38:51.160 male veterans. 0:38:51.200 --> 0:38:52.920 I was just gonna say, you have to say who 0:38:53.000 --> 0:38:58.640 it killed? Old white men. Yep, straight white old yeah men. 0:38:59.640 --> 0:39:02.960 The funding records show that the life of a gay 0:39:03.080 --> 0:39:06.640 man with AIDS was worth one tenth of the life 0:39:06.880 --> 0:39:09.800 of a straight legionnaire to those making funding decisions. 0:39:10.000 --> 0:39:11.359 Oh my god. 0:39:12.360 --> 0:39:16.320 Because legionnaires was not a marginalized group, not a group 0:39:16.560 --> 0:39:21.400 that was repeatedly told they were sick, homosexuality as a diagnosis, 0:39:22.200 --> 0:39:25.920 as a pathological diagnosis was not removed from the diagnostic 0:39:26.000 --> 0:39:31.200 and statistical manual used by the American Psychological Association until 0:39:31.320 --> 0:39:36.560 nineteen seventy three, at which point it was replaced by 0:39:36.760 --> 0:39:39.120 quote sexual orientation disturbance. 0:39:39.400 --> 0:39:43.160 Well, they just removed transgender very recently, right from the 0:39:43.239 --> 0:39:47.120 dism five or four or something. Yeah, yeah, it's disgusting. 0:39:49.840 --> 0:39:52.440 Yeah, I mean so this means that if you were 0:39:52.520 --> 0:39:56.760 not heterosexual, you could be diagnosed by a medical professional 0:39:56.840 --> 0:39:57.560 as being sick. 0:39:57.920 --> 0:39:58.040 Right. 0:39:58.880 --> 0:40:02.359 This and the general discrimination by so many others led 0:40:02.400 --> 0:40:06.000 to the complete failure to provide adequate funding and resources 0:40:06.239 --> 0:40:09.800 quickly enough to slow down this building epidemic. In the 0:40:09.880 --> 0:40:13.000 early years of the AIDS crisis, the disease was referred 0:40:13.040 --> 0:40:19.000 to as alternatively gay cancer, gay pneumonia, or GRID for 0:40:19.200 --> 0:40:23.720 Gay related immune deficiency. This labeling of AIDS as unique 0:40:23.760 --> 0:40:28.200 to gay men had profound consequences. First, as Susan Sontag 0:40:28.360 --> 0:40:31.600 points out in her essay AIDS and its metaphors, people 0:40:31.719 --> 0:40:34.759 seek meaning in disease and want to find out why me, 0:40:35.080 --> 0:40:38.520 Oh my god, I know. This labeling allowed people to 0:40:38.640 --> 0:40:43.359 answer because you're gay or because I'm gay, which perpetuated 0:40:43.400 --> 0:40:44.440 feelings of shame and. 0:40:44.520 --> 0:40:48.160 Guilt, and also is just factually untrue, completely untrue. So 0:40:48.360 --> 0:40:51.560 that sucks for people who are infected who are not 0:40:51.840 --> 0:40:53.600 gay or you know. 0:40:54.160 --> 0:40:56.000 I mean in this this is a form of victim 0:40:56.040 --> 0:40:59.680 blaming that were still not passed today. It also allowed 0:40:59.760 --> 0:41:03.040 home I'm aphobic, bigoted people to look at this as 0:41:03.400 --> 0:41:07.920 justified as divine punishment for what they viewed as immoral behavior. 0:41:09.000 --> 0:41:12.960 Many of these bigots, by the way, were politicians who 0:41:13.000 --> 0:41:19.160 would later actively lobby against funding for AIDS research. Jesse Helms, 0:41:19.320 --> 0:41:22.520 I'm looking at you, you piece of human garbage. 0:41:24.120 --> 0:41:27.319 You your rage chilling, your rage inhaling right now. 0:41:28.440 --> 0:41:34.480 Yeah, welcome to the past three weeks life. Finally, these 0:41:34.640 --> 0:41:39.120 labels made silence acceptable. After all, this was a disease 0:41:39.200 --> 0:41:41.720 hitting only a small group of people. It would probably 0:41:41.760 --> 0:41:44.600 burn itself out quickly. What's the point of throwing money away? 0:41:45.640 --> 0:41:47.840 That's not what I believe. That's what the politicians believe. 0:41:47.960 --> 0:41:49.120 Yeah, learn to clear that up. 0:41:49.560 --> 0:41:49.799 Yeah. 0:41:50.000 --> 0:41:55.080 Yeah, Some, however, refuse to be silent. In January of 0:41:55.200 --> 0:41:58.360 nineteen eighty two, Larry Kramer, who was the author of 0:41:58.440 --> 0:42:01.160 the play The Normal Heart, which was just a few 0:42:01.239 --> 0:42:02.239 years ago, turned into an. 0:42:02.280 --> 0:42:04.640 HBO movie Without really beautiful, fantastic. 0:42:04.760 --> 0:42:06.480 You need to see it. It's oh my God, I 0:42:06.600 --> 0:42:11.000 cried a lot. So Larry Kramer, along with Paul Popham, 0:42:11.480 --> 0:42:14.520 formed the Gay Men's Health Crisis in New York City 0:42:14.760 --> 0:42:19.320 GMHC to raise money for AIDS awareness and research. The 0:42:19.440 --> 0:42:23.279 GMHC stepped in where no other public health organization had 0:42:23.320 --> 0:42:27.120 even attempted. This group of men, mostly gay, set up 0:42:27.120 --> 0:42:31.480 a crisis counseling hotline, raised awareness, recruited social workers, and 0:42:31.600 --> 0:42:34.719 provided legal aid and other forms of assistance to gay 0:42:34.840 --> 0:42:37.279 men and their friends and family. Remind me what year 0:42:37.360 --> 0:42:38.880 this is, nineteen eighty. 0:42:38.680 --> 0:42:41.480 Two, Okay, because we're in early years, early years. Yeah, 0:42:42.239 --> 0:42:45.760 No one knows what's causing AIDS, not at all. Yeah, okay. 0:42:46.520 --> 0:42:49.960 Later their mission would extend to anyone affected by AIDS. 0:42:50.680 --> 0:42:53.200 The GMHC would continue to play a big role on 0:42:53.440 --> 0:42:57.200 HIV and AIDS advocacy throughout present day, and their early 0:42:57.520 --> 0:43:01.440 organized approach to raising awareness and providing support set an 0:43:01.480 --> 0:43:04.960 example that many other organizations would later follow. In its 0:43:05.000 --> 0:43:10.320 first year, several internal debates raged at GMHC, one of 0:43:10.400 --> 0:43:12.640 them over whether or not to tell gay men to 0:43:12.800 --> 0:43:16.640 change their sexual behavior, which mirrored a debate among public 0:43:16.680 --> 0:43:20.920 health officials over the closing of gay bathhouses it was 0:43:21.000 --> 0:43:24.719 becoming clear that this disease, whatever it was, was sexually transmitted. 0:43:25.200 --> 0:43:27.799 Telling gay men to stop having sex, or at least 0:43:27.800 --> 0:43:31.840 stop having unprotected sex, even if that message was delivered 0:43:31.880 --> 0:43:35.120 by another gay man, harkened back to a pre stonewall 0:43:35.239 --> 0:43:38.239 time when gay people were even more shunned than they 0:43:38.280 --> 0:43:41.279 were in the eighties. It was viewed by many as 0:43:41.480 --> 0:43:45.840 finger wagging, moralistic bs that served to only shame people 0:43:46.000 --> 0:43:49.040 and stall gay liberation, which had gained so much momentum 0:43:49.080 --> 0:43:52.600 since the sixties. Larry Kramer was on the losing side 0:43:52.640 --> 0:43:55.200 of this argument. He wanted to tell people to stop 0:43:55.280 --> 0:43:58.600 having sex, and this disagreement, along with others, would lead 0:43:58.880 --> 0:44:02.000 to his departure from the group. The discussion at the 0:44:02.040 --> 0:44:06.080 public health level was the forced closure of bathhouses, which 0:44:06.200 --> 0:44:09.640 was supported by some epidemiologists on the CDC Task Force, 0:44:09.880 --> 0:44:14.400 but was obviously illegal, Plus the owners of the bathhouses 0:44:14.440 --> 0:44:17.880 didn't want to lose profit and have their institutions labeled 0:44:17.920 --> 0:44:22.320 as centers of disease. Whether or not bathhouse closure or 0:44:22.400 --> 0:44:26.160 telling gay men to stop having unprotected sex was well intentioned, 0:44:26.840 --> 0:44:31.440 these suggestions replacing the burden of disease prevention not on 0:44:31.520 --> 0:44:34.560 the medical research community, but on the people who may 0:44:34.600 --> 0:44:38.360 become infected or already are infected. And that's just not 0:44:39.440 --> 0:44:40.759 the way to do things. 0:44:40.920 --> 0:44:43.400 That's not the way we do public health, or not 0:44:43.520 --> 0:44:45.400 the way we should do public health right. 0:44:46.440 --> 0:44:50.399 Shortly after the creation of the GMHC, AIDS gets its 0:44:50.480 --> 0:44:54.239 first mention in the Wall Street Journal February nineteen eighty two. 0:44:54.719 --> 0:44:58.120 Buried deep beyond the first page was the headline quote 0:44:58.480 --> 0:45:02.400 new often fatal illness and homosexuals turns up in women 0:45:02.760 --> 0:45:07.960 heterosexual males. If you read between the lines, that headline reads, 0:45:08.520 --> 0:45:10.960 you know, we've known about this disease killing gay people 0:45:11.040 --> 0:45:13.760 for a while, but now that it's also killing straight people, 0:45:13.960 --> 0:45:17.120 we care enough to tell you about it. Yeah, And 0:45:17.239 --> 0:45:21.480 this exemplifies how mainstream news outlets framed HIV and AIDS 0:45:21.680 --> 0:45:26.080 well into the nineties and two thousands. Nineteen eighty two 0:45:26.520 --> 0:45:31.280 saw no slowing of AIDS diagnoses. Instead, epidemiologists and doctors 0:45:31.320 --> 0:45:33.960 were using the word exponential to describe its growth. 0:45:34.239 --> 0:45:34.479 Yeah. 0:45:34.920 --> 0:45:38.800 I was looking at a lot of numbers, and well 0:45:39.360 --> 0:45:43.360 through the nineties it was terrifying just how much not 0:45:43.560 --> 0:45:45.480 only diagnoses but deaths were increasing. 0:45:45.600 --> 0:45:45.719 Oh. 0:45:45.800 --> 0:45:49.560 Absolutely, Yeah, whatever was causing this disease. It had been 0:45:49.640 --> 0:45:53.080 spreading silently for years, and the worst was clearly yet 0:45:53.160 --> 0:45:53.440 to come. 0:45:53.840 --> 0:45:54.040 Yep. 0:45:54.800 --> 0:45:57.879 By the end of nineteen eighty two, the disease's name 0:45:57.960 --> 0:46:02.200 had been officially changed from GRID to AIDS, though GRID 0:46:02.239 --> 0:46:04.480 would continue to be used well into the nineties. 0:46:04.760 --> 0:46:05.040 Wow. 0:46:05.440 --> 0:46:08.239 Yeah, and the estimated number of people with AIDS in 0:46:08.280 --> 0:46:12.200 the US was around nine hundred. The last year that 0:46:12.320 --> 0:46:14.000 number would be in the triple digits. 0:46:14.120 --> 0:46:15.000 In nineteen eighty two. 0:46:15.160 --> 0:46:15.839 Nineteen eighty two. 0:46:16.080 --> 0:46:19.360 Wow, and already in nineteen eighty two, nine hundred. 0:46:19.400 --> 0:46:20.840 I know we're I know we're at the beginning of 0:46:20.840 --> 0:46:24.040 our history here so much. It's a long one in it. 0:46:24.160 --> 0:46:25.760 Buckle up for three more hours. 0:46:25.920 --> 0:46:29.160 I it is so important. I wanted to tell it. 0:46:29.880 --> 0:46:30.960 I wanted to tell all parts of it. 0:46:31.080 --> 0:46:31.279 Good. 0:46:32.880 --> 0:46:37.399 Act two Explosion nineteen eighty three to nineteen eighty seven. 0:46:43.360 --> 0:46:46.200 Nineteen eighty three would later be viewed as a turning 0:46:46.280 --> 0:46:49.360 point for AIDS research and AIDS awareness. But don't expect 0:46:49.400 --> 0:46:53.560 any great advancements or justice yet. The before is just 0:46:53.719 --> 0:46:56.600 that AIDS wasn't recognized as a problem by the general public, 0:46:57.239 --> 0:46:59.719 while the after was that it was suddenly making the 0:46:59.800 --> 0:47:02.720 news and popping up on scientist radar as the hottest 0:47:02.800 --> 0:47:03.560 new thing to research. 0:47:03.800 --> 0:47:05.640 Oh god, don't we all know about that. You get 0:47:05.719 --> 0:47:07.719 funding for like a day, and then your funding is 0:47:07.760 --> 0:47:11.080 taken away. Uh huh, that's what the next new thing is. 0:47:11.320 --> 0:47:11.520 Yeah. 0:47:12.560 --> 0:47:15.480 By the time that the National Cancer Institute announced in 0:47:15.600 --> 0:47:18.560 April of nineteen eighty three that it was committed to 0:47:18.640 --> 0:47:22.240 finding the cause of the disease, one thousand, two hundred 0:47:22.239 --> 0:47:25.640 and ninety five Americans had contracted AIDS and four hundred 0:47:25.640 --> 0:47:27.040 and ninety two had died. 0:47:27.280 --> 0:47:27.520 Wow. 0:47:28.360 --> 0:47:31.320 Add in the extremely long latent period of the virus, 0:47:31.840 --> 0:47:35.720 which was still undiscovered at this point, and the estimates 0:47:35.760 --> 0:47:38.320 of current and future infections ran into the tens and 0:47:38.520 --> 0:47:42.400 hundreds of thousands. Contributing to the recognition of AIDS as 0:47:42.440 --> 0:47:45.680 a public health problem were reports of people with AIDS 0:47:45.680 --> 0:47:48.719 who seemed to have gotten it from a blood transfusion, 0:47:49.840 --> 0:47:54.920 people who tended to not belong to marginalized groups. Suddenly, 0:47:55.280 --> 0:47:58.480 to many Americans, this became a it could happen to 0:47:58.600 --> 0:48:00.879 you disease and a reason to care. 0:48:01.760 --> 0:48:06.040 God, yeah, it's really humans man, horrible. 0:48:07.000 --> 0:48:07.359 Uh huh. 0:48:08.320 --> 0:48:11.400 The CDC had been wary of blood transfusion cases for 0:48:11.560 --> 0:48:16.600 several years and their fears were confirmed. Bringing their reports 0:48:16.640 --> 0:48:19.200 to the heads of the blood banks, the CDC was 0:48:19.280 --> 0:48:24.960 met with scorn and resistance. The chances of developing AIDS 0:48:25.000 --> 0:48:28.640 from infective blood banks was, according to one official, less 0:48:28.760 --> 0:48:29.640 than one in a million. 0:48:29.760 --> 0:48:31.720 Oh my gosh, it's over ninety percent. 0:48:32.120 --> 0:48:32.359 Yeah. 0:48:32.560 --> 0:48:37.040 So, the infectivity of HIV from what we'll call maybe 0:48:37.160 --> 0:48:41.320 standard roots of transmission, sexual contact, intravenous drug use, or 0:48:41.480 --> 0:48:45.880 needlesticks is extremely low, like, well under one percent. Usually 0:48:46.200 --> 0:48:49.520 per contact it's only abou zero point three percent, but 0:48:49.880 --> 0:48:53.680 with blood transfusions it's over ninety percent. Like, I can't 0:48:53.719 --> 0:48:55.440 believe that people would be like, don't worry about it, 0:48:55.480 --> 0:48:56.040 it's fine. 0:48:56.200 --> 0:48:57.000 Uh huh uh huh. 0:48:57.160 --> 0:48:58.120 Oh my god. 0:48:58.320 --> 0:48:59.759 Well, I think that that one in a million was 0:48:59.760 --> 0:49:04.920 referring to the number of bags of blood that were 0:49:05.040 --> 0:49:08.800 infected with HIV or whatever they Yeah, but that's crazy. 0:49:09.080 --> 0:49:11.880 I mean, it was an incredible, incredible underestimate. 0:49:11.920 --> 0:49:13.839 They had no idea what they were dealing with at 0:49:13.840 --> 0:49:15.839 that time, so to just throw a number out there 0:49:15.960 --> 0:49:17.880 is so incredibly. 0:49:18.560 --> 0:49:22.640 Well, let's let's find the motivation. Screening was too expensive? 0:49:23.000 --> 0:49:26.239 Well, and what were they going to screen for? Well, actually, there. 0:49:26.200 --> 0:49:30.360 Wasn't a test for the disease itself, but there still 0:49:30.840 --> 0:49:35.840 was a test for hepatitis B for screens of hepatitis, 0:49:36.200 --> 0:49:39.240 and it was found I think that those who weren't 0:49:39.480 --> 0:49:42.720 had AIDS or were diagnosed with AIDS, eighty eight percent 0:49:42.760 --> 0:49:44.680 of them also had that makes sense be so it 0:49:44.760 --> 0:49:46.600 was like one way to do it. Yeah, it was 0:49:46.640 --> 0:49:47.160 a proxy. 0:49:47.280 --> 0:49:48.840 Yeah, interesting, Okay, And so. 0:49:49.400 --> 0:49:55.080 A very small minority did screen, okay, but so many didn't. Yeah, 0:49:55.600 --> 0:49:58.640 And so many just waited until the cost of being 0:49:58.800 --> 0:50:04.080 sued by infected transfusion recipients outweighed the cost of testing. 0:50:04.360 --> 0:50:09.520 Oh my god, money, money money, Wow. And about that 0:50:09.680 --> 0:50:11.680 cause of agent thing, Yeah, let's get to that. 0:50:11.920 --> 0:50:12.600 Let's talk about it. 0:50:12.640 --> 0:50:15.120 It's nineteen eighty three. Where do we stand? Where do 0:50:15.280 --> 0:50:18.959 we Well, let me fill you in. Are you ready 0:50:19.080 --> 0:50:21.879 for your daily dose of toxic masculinity? 0:50:21.920 --> 0:50:25.320 Oh my god, we need it every episode? Can we 0:50:25.400 --> 0:50:30.600 have a toxic masculinity jingle? Toxic masculinity time? 0:50:32.400 --> 0:50:32.680 Love it? 0:50:33.640 --> 0:50:38.200 I hate it? Actually? Yeah? Love your jingle? Hate toxic masculinity? Yeah? 0:50:38.200 --> 0:50:38.439 Okay. 0:50:40.000 --> 0:50:44.840 Well, here it comes in the form of old Bob Gallo, 0:50:46.400 --> 0:50:50.120 former researcher for the National Cancer institute still alive. 0:50:50.200 --> 0:50:52.320 By the way, Wow Gallo. 0:50:54.440 --> 0:50:57.800 When Gallo first heard about AIDS, and in particular the 0:50:57.920 --> 0:51:03.120 high rate of Caposi's sarcoma, immediately thought retrovirus. He happened 0:51:03.160 --> 0:51:05.479 to be right, and he would go to great length 0:51:05.640 --> 0:51:08.319 to show this. Although the vast majority of what I've 0:51:08.360 --> 0:51:10.680 talked about so far has taken place in the US, 0:51:10.920 --> 0:51:13.560 that does not mean that AIDS wasn't being diagnosed or 0:51:13.719 --> 0:51:17.600 researched across the world, because it was. And one of 0:51:17.640 --> 0:51:20.759 those places is France, where a team of researchers had 0:51:21.160 --> 0:51:24.520 in May nineteen eighty three, published their discovery of a 0:51:24.640 --> 0:51:28.799 virus they called lav Bob Gallo had read the article heck. 0:51:29.280 --> 0:51:31.799 Bob Gallo had reviewed the article. 0:51:34.680 --> 0:51:34.960 Heck. 0:51:37.560 --> 0:51:41.000 And now Gallo was paralyzed with fear that he would 0:51:41.040 --> 0:51:45.120 get no credit for the discovery. He made angry, threatening 0:51:45.239 --> 0:51:48.760 calls to Don Francis at the CDC, pledging to withhold 0:51:48.880 --> 0:51:52.400 funds and refusing to send any specimens or antibodies because 0:51:52.440 --> 0:51:55.960 he feared that the CDC was collaborating with this French 0:51:56.080 --> 0:52:01.479 team behind his back. Oh my god, All this while 0:52:01.600 --> 0:52:08.200 people were dying, and this narcissism slowed research considerably. Oh 0:52:08.280 --> 0:52:13.160 my god, rumors began circulating, probably started by Gallo himself, 0:52:13.880 --> 0:52:17.040 that the French specimens were contaminated and that the true 0:52:17.120 --> 0:52:19.560 virus could only come from Gallo's lab. 0:52:19.920 --> 0:52:21.520 Oh my god, I hate this person. 0:52:22.120 --> 0:52:22.520 Oh yeah. 0:52:23.480 --> 0:52:26.320 So, even though there was a likely candidate for the 0:52:26.400 --> 0:52:30.320 virus that caused AIDS, testing or development of anti virals 0:52:30.400 --> 0:52:34.520 wouldn't start for another year, when Gallo would announce that 0:52:34.760 --> 0:52:37.759 he had discovered the cause of AIDS, a virus he 0:52:38.040 --> 0:52:39.680 called HTLV three. 0:52:39.960 --> 0:52:44.479 Oh my god, I hate people who just care about 0:52:44.520 --> 0:52:48.600 themselves and their own How are you going to research 0:52:49.120 --> 0:52:53.040 cancer and diseases and this and not care about human 0:52:53.120 --> 0:52:54.600 being like lives. 0:52:54.960 --> 0:52:58.640 Well, he's doing research for himself. Yeah, he's doing research 0:52:58.680 --> 0:53:01.400 for the people that the research should be done for. 0:53:01.760 --> 0:53:02.640 No, not at all. 0:53:03.000 --> 0:53:07.000 Yeah, it's a messed up system and messed up people. 0:53:07.239 --> 0:53:07.399 Yea. 0:53:08.640 --> 0:53:13.360 So, when Gallo finally got his discovery papers safely published, 0:53:14.160 --> 0:53:18.040 he included images of his virus, which looked, oddly enough, 0:53:18.239 --> 0:53:22.200 exactly like the French lav But the real revelation and 0:53:22.280 --> 0:53:25.880 scandal wouldn't come until nineteen eighty five. What at a 0:53:25.960 --> 0:53:30.400 press conference came the announcement that tests had revealed that 0:53:30.520 --> 0:53:35.600 when comparing Gallow's HTLV three and the French la v 0:53:36.239 --> 0:53:39.520 they were shown to be less than one percent different. 0:53:40.920 --> 0:53:42.200 He stole their samples. 0:53:43.000 --> 0:53:49.960 Yeah, oh my god, yeah he basically Gallo had simply 0:53:50.160 --> 0:53:55.440 re isolated the lav that the French virus that the 0:53:55.600 --> 0:54:00.239 French team had sent him on previous samples are a 0:54:00.400 --> 0:54:01.840 year before. 0:54:02.280 --> 0:54:05.440 Okay, So not only is he a horrible person who 0:54:05.520 --> 0:54:08.160 cares only about himself, but he's not even fast and 0:54:08.320 --> 0:54:11.960 good at science because it takes him forever. Are you serious? 0:54:12.440 --> 0:54:13.680 I'm one hundred percent serious. 0:54:13.880 --> 0:54:15.319 That's infuriating. 0:54:16.440 --> 0:54:21.120 Whether this was an intentional theft by Gallo or just 0:54:21.280 --> 0:54:26.600 an accidental bs BRO contamination remains unclear. No, I know, 0:54:26.920 --> 0:54:28.480 Oh I know, I know, I know deep in my 0:54:28.520 --> 0:54:28.960 heart of heart. 0:54:29.040 --> 0:54:29.200 Yep. 0:54:30.440 --> 0:54:34.520 A nineteen ninety one federal inquiry did find Gallo guilty 0:54:34.600 --> 0:54:36.440 of misconduct during this research. 0:54:36.560 --> 0:54:39.320 Misconduct was I get you absolutely nothing. 0:54:39.640 --> 0:54:40.080 I'll tell you. 0:54:40.239 --> 0:54:42.759 Except a lot of hate on this podcast and kill you. 0:54:43.440 --> 0:54:45.279 There is a little bit of justice, wait for it. 0:54:47.160 --> 0:54:51.040 The relationship between the French and US research teams had soured, 0:54:51.200 --> 0:54:54.560 and tensions continued to build, with a legal dispute over 0:54:54.640 --> 0:54:56.319 a patent for an antibody test. 0:54:56.480 --> 0:54:57.960 I hate these people. 0:54:58.160 --> 0:55:01.479 I know. It got so bad that in nineteen eighty 0:55:01.560 --> 0:55:05.840 five the US President Reagan and the French President Jacques 0:55:05.840 --> 0:55:10.280 Schiac had to settle this Oh my person. The result, 0:55:10.719 --> 0:55:14.360 Gallo and the French researchers would share co discoverer credit 0:55:14.440 --> 0:55:16.960 and the virus would be called HIV, which is how 0:55:17.000 --> 0:55:17.640 it got its name. 0:55:17.840 --> 0:55:18.080 Wow. 0:55:19.080 --> 0:55:22.040 This ugly chapter in AIDS research would cost Gallo the 0:55:22.120 --> 0:55:25.080 Nobel Prize in two thousand and eight, which was granted 0:55:25.280 --> 0:55:28.360 not to him but to the French discoverers of the 0:55:28.560 --> 0:55:29.920 viral cause of AIDS. 0:55:30.239 --> 0:55:31.640 I don't want either of them to get it, to 0:55:31.719 --> 0:55:33.480 be honest, they both annoyed me. 0:55:33.719 --> 0:55:33.919 Yeah. 0:55:34.080 --> 0:55:38.840 Well, and while all this posturing and shameless self promotion 0:55:39.040 --> 0:55:42.880 was going on, people were dying by the thousands. Although 0:55:43.000 --> 0:55:45.800 the mid nineteen eighties saw increased awareness of AIDS and 0:55:45.840 --> 0:55:49.600 news reports, this wasn't accompanied by increased compassion or treatment. 0:55:50.200 --> 0:55:54.120 Quite the opposite. Violence toward gay men increased enormously and 0:55:54.239 --> 0:55:58.440 fear took hold. Hospitals refused to treat AIDS patients. Morge 0:55:58.480 --> 0:56:00.760 refused to handle the bodies of those who had succumb 0:56:00.800 --> 0:56:04.560 to AIDS. Schools refused to admit children who were HIV positive, 0:56:05.480 --> 0:56:09.160 and the availability of an antibody test, while hugely valuable 0:56:09.440 --> 0:56:11.600 for an individual who could now keep an eye out 0:56:11.680 --> 0:56:14.520 for their own well being and for also for public 0:56:14.560 --> 0:56:16.640 health officials to try to get an idea of the 0:56:16.800 --> 0:56:19.640 number of people that were HIV positive, but on the 0:56:19.800 --> 0:56:22.360 other side of things, this test brought with it the 0:56:22.480 --> 0:56:25.440 fear that huge screening campaigns would be forced upon the 0:56:25.480 --> 0:56:28.120 populations that had been hardest hit by AIDS. 0:56:28.320 --> 0:56:31.200 Right, and it's not like they're offering anything like, Okay, 0:56:31.280 --> 0:56:32.160 you know you're positive. 0:56:32.280 --> 0:56:34.960 Now what now we can give you drugs for free 0:56:35.120 --> 0:56:38.560 to treat it. No, no, there was nothing. Yeah, countries 0:56:38.640 --> 0:56:41.760 were closing their borders to those who tested HIV positive, 0:56:41.800 --> 0:56:42.560 including the US. 0:56:43.040 --> 0:56:46.200 Really, Oh yeah, I didn't know that. Oh my god. 0:56:46.719 --> 0:56:49.960 So yeah, so there was a test, there was no treatment. 0:56:50.320 --> 0:56:55.840 Right when in nineteen eighty five, Rock Hudson announced to 0:56:55.920 --> 0:57:00.440 the world that he was suffering from AIDS, finally, in fury, aidingly, 0:57:00.520 --> 0:57:02.680 finally the world paid attention. 0:57:03.200 --> 0:57:04.160 Who's Rock Hudson. 0:57:04.320 --> 0:57:08.600 Who's a movie star? Yeah, So, all of a sudden, 0:57:08.680 --> 0:57:11.600 there were articles in the New York Times in Newsweek, 0:57:12.120 --> 0:57:15.320 all of a sudden people cared. Rock Hudson was handsome 0:57:15.440 --> 0:57:18.400 and all American movie star, good friends with Ronald and 0:57:18.480 --> 0:57:22.840 Nancy Reagan. Oh my god, yeah, iye roll and I 0:57:23.200 --> 0:57:26.880 do like I feel, I feel really bad of course 0:57:27.000 --> 0:57:30.560 that he controlled that he died of AIDS. He eventually 0:57:30.600 --> 0:57:33.520 did diet of AIDES in nineteen eighty five. It just 0:57:33.720 --> 0:57:39.000 is such a shame that it took that famous person 0:57:39.360 --> 0:57:40.400 for people to care about it. 0:57:40.480 --> 0:57:42.600 It so often does, I mean still to this day? 0:57:42.880 --> 0:57:43.080 I know? 0:57:44.640 --> 0:57:48.880 And where was the president in all of this? What 0:57:49.080 --> 0:57:51.560 was he doing about the disease that was killing thousands 0:57:51.640 --> 0:57:55.640 of US citizens? Reagan would first publicly say the word 0:57:55.760 --> 0:58:00.400 AIDS in nineteen eighty five, Wow, And that was only 0:58:00.520 --> 0:58:03.720 in response to a reporter's question. It would be another 0:58:03.960 --> 0:58:08.600 two years before Reagan would deliver his first speech on 0:58:08.680 --> 0:58:09.560 the AIDS epidemic. 0:58:09.800 --> 0:58:10.720 Are you serious? 0:58:10.920 --> 0:58:15.520 Nineteen eighty seven, eighty seven. He had been president for 0:58:16.040 --> 0:58:17.720 seven years at this point. 0:58:17.920 --> 0:58:21.960 That's disgusting. The entirety of the AIDS epidemic to that 0:58:22.120 --> 0:58:23.720 point was during his presidency. 0:58:23.760 --> 0:58:27.640 Yes, at the time of his speech, which did not 0:58:27.840 --> 0:58:31.040 mention gay men as one of the hardest hit groups. 0:58:32.160 --> 0:58:36.760 Thirty six thousand and fifty eight Americans had been diagnosed 0:58:36.800 --> 0:58:40.240 with AIDS and twenty thousand, eight hundred and forty nine 0:58:40.280 --> 0:58:43.840 had died. Oh, those numbers don't include the global figures, 0:58:43.920 --> 0:58:46.760 which by now are climbing into the hundreds of thousands. 0:58:47.160 --> 0:58:47.400 Yeah. 0:58:51.240 --> 0:58:53.280 Act three outrage. 0:58:53.840 --> 0:58:56.959 I'm already feeling that. So, my god. 0:58:58.920 --> 0:59:06.800 Nineteen eighty seven to nonineteen ninety six. The year was 0:59:06.920 --> 0:59:10.200 nineteen eighty seven. The AIDS crisis in the US was 0:59:10.240 --> 0:59:13.480 in its seventh year. Scientists had identified the virus that 0:59:13.600 --> 0:59:16.800 caused the disease and even developed a test to determine 0:59:16.840 --> 0:59:20.960 the infection status, but with five hundred thousand cases of 0:59:21.040 --> 0:59:25.840 AIDS worldwide and still no reliable, effective treatment, the diagnosis 0:59:25.920 --> 0:59:27.840 of AIDS was basically a death sentence. 0:59:28.240 --> 0:59:28.439 Yeah. 0:59:29.160 --> 0:59:32.200 Years of delays in starting research on the disease and 0:59:32.320 --> 0:59:36.560 providing adequate funding in isolating its cause had a cascading 0:59:36.680 --> 0:59:40.600 effect on the development, testing, and approval of treatment to 0:59:40.760 --> 0:59:44.320 manage or cure the disease. The timeline for a pharmaceutical 0:59:44.400 --> 0:59:47.240 drug to be approved by the FDA is on average 0:59:47.880 --> 0:59:48.600 ten years. 0:59:48.800 --> 0:59:51.520 Yeah that's still true. Yeah, still true today? 0:59:51.760 --> 0:59:51.960 Yeah? 0:59:52.080 --> 0:59:56.640 Oh was that's current numbers? Yeah, Yeah, that's an incredibly 0:59:57.080 --> 0:59:59.680 long time for people who are dying within a year 1:00:00.240 --> 1:00:04.680 of diagnosis. The later this process started, the more people 1:00:04.800 --> 1:00:08.919 died without ever receiving treatment. It's not exaggerating to say 1:00:09.000 --> 1:00:12.320 that tens or hundreds of thousands of lives were lost 1:00:12.800 --> 1:00:15.720 due to the apathy which with the US government responded 1:00:15.720 --> 1:00:18.520 to the AIDS crisis in its early years, and people 1:00:18.640 --> 1:00:21.960 saw this and they would not stand for it. In 1:00:22.080 --> 1:00:26.080 March nineteen eighty seven, Larry Kramer, remember him from GMHC 1:00:26.320 --> 1:00:29.960 Ideal Gay Mens Health Crisis, helped to found act UP, 1:00:30.360 --> 1:00:33.760 an advocacy group focused on improving the lives of people 1:00:33.880 --> 1:00:38.240 with AIDS by direct actions aimed at changing policy, affecting 1:00:38.280 --> 1:00:42.120 the medical research pipeline, and helping to get treatment to 1:00:42.240 --> 1:00:44.840 those in needs. Act UP, by the way, stands for 1:00:45.400 --> 1:00:51.000 Aid's Coalition to Unleash Power. The actions of act UP 1:00:51.080 --> 1:00:53.840 are the subject of the twenty twelve documentary How to 1:00:53.920 --> 1:00:56.360 Survive a Plague in the twenty sixteen book of the 1:00:56.440 --> 1:00:59.320 same name. If you haven't seen or read it, go 1:00:59.560 --> 1:01:03.000 do that immediately. If you have seen or read it, 1:01:03.440 --> 1:01:08.240 go do it again. We'll wait, Yeah, you really should. 1:01:08.920 --> 1:01:12.280 By nineteen eighty seven, one drug had been approved to 1:01:12.360 --> 1:01:14.840 treat AIDS. AZT in the US. 1:01:15.040 --> 1:01:15.240 Yep. 1:01:15.480 --> 1:01:17.880 Developed initially as an anti cancer drug. 1:01:18.000 --> 1:01:20.360 I didn't know that. So that explains how they were 1:01:20.360 --> 1:01:22.160 able to get it on the market faster than they 1:01:22.200 --> 1:01:24.120 would have if it had already been developed. Yep. 1:01:24.400 --> 1:01:28.200 Yeah, and so yeah. It had gone through clinical trials 1:01:28.440 --> 1:01:33.600 in nineteen eighty five to treat AIDS and shown some promise, 1:01:33.960 --> 1:01:38.920 although many patients experienced strong negative reactions like anemia, it 1:01:39.000 --> 1:01:40.480 was uncontrollable. Yeah. 1:01:40.600 --> 1:01:40.800 Yeah. 1:01:42.040 --> 1:01:45.360 When FDA approval went through in March of nineteen eighty seven, 1:01:45.720 --> 1:01:49.560 the pharmaceutical company that held the single patent on the drug, 1:01:49.920 --> 1:01:54.240 Burrows Welcome, announced that it would charge ten thousand dollars 1:01:54.360 --> 1:01:59.040 a year for the treatment, a price well out of 1:01:59.160 --> 1:02:00.520 reach of many. 1:02:00.400 --> 1:02:03.440 People with AIDS, not just many, like literally everyone. Uh huh, 1:02:03.600 --> 1:02:04.280 that's absurd. 1:02:05.640 --> 1:02:05.880 Yeah. 1:02:06.560 --> 1:02:07.520 I hate money. 1:02:08.200 --> 1:02:09.160 I hate I hate people. 1:02:09.480 --> 1:02:12.040 Yeah, I hate people and money, people and money together. 1:02:12.320 --> 1:02:14.120 Like if you took the money away from the people 1:02:14.240 --> 1:02:17.440 then and then would be too much? Okay continue. 1:02:19.120 --> 1:02:22.640 This announcement inspired one of the earliest actions of Act UP, 1:02:22.920 --> 1:02:26.560 a demonstration on Wall Street to protest this criminally high 1:02:26.680 --> 1:02:29.480 cost of AZT. Though it would take a couple of 1:02:29.600 --> 1:02:33.720 years and many more demonstrations, act UP would finally get 1:02:33.840 --> 1:02:37.760 Burrows Welcome to reduce that price to eight thousand dollars. 1:02:37.880 --> 1:02:38.520 Oh my god. 1:02:38.880 --> 1:02:41.520 Yeah, but still it was, I mean it was. That's 1:02:41.560 --> 1:02:46.120 amazing to me that this advocacy group actually made like 1:02:46.440 --> 1:02:49.880 made a change, made an impact on a pharmaceutical company. 1:02:50.000 --> 1:02:50.200 I know. 1:02:50.320 --> 1:02:53.360 But that's still just like so infuriating that they can 1:02:53.480 --> 1:02:55.320 just charge whatever the hell they want. I know. 1:02:55.560 --> 1:02:58.840 Well, it's we've got glass half full, glass half there 1:02:58.840 --> 1:03:00.640 we go. We need both say, that's why we do 1:03:00.720 --> 1:03:03.680 this together. It is when one of us is up 1:03:03.680 --> 1:03:05.720 to the other, one is the way in the whole. 1:03:07.160 --> 1:03:07.280 Oh. 1:03:07.400 --> 1:03:07.640 True. 1:03:10.560 --> 1:03:15.680 But even when AZT was more easily accessible, many people 1:03:15.720 --> 1:03:19.120 with aids couldn't take it. As I mentioned, So what 1:03:19.240 --> 1:03:21.960 other drugs were being researched? What else was out there? 1:03:22.160 --> 1:03:22.360 Yeah? 1:03:23.040 --> 1:03:26.560 Not very much, it turns out no. No, So a 1:03:26.680 --> 1:03:29.240 lot of the US research efforts seemed to be focused 1:03:29.280 --> 1:03:34.280 on honing AZT without developing new drugs. It was well, 1:03:34.320 --> 1:03:37.439 it was money making, right, and that's where the incentives were. Yeah, 1:03:37.800 --> 1:03:40.680 but there were some drugs. In their early infancy, act 1:03:40.760 --> 1:03:44.360 UP members read the latest medical journals to do their 1:03:44.440 --> 1:03:46.919 own research on the status of new drugs to treat 1:03:47.160 --> 1:03:54.560 HIV or AIDS, educating themselves reading textbooks about pharmacology, immunology, virology. 1:03:55.480 --> 1:03:57.880 In the words of Derek Hotle, who's one of the 1:03:58.160 --> 1:04:02.280 act UP members, quote, in the absence of adequate healthcare, 1:04:02.560 --> 1:04:07.120 we have learned to become our own clinicians, researchers, lobbyists, 1:04:07.520 --> 1:04:13.760 drug smugglers, pharmacists. We have our own libraries, newspapers, drug stores, 1:04:13.840 --> 1:04:16.640 and laboratories. And that's exactly what they did. 1:04:16.920 --> 1:04:17.200 Dude. 1:04:17.640 --> 1:04:20.080 This is why I'm sorry to get off topic for 1:04:20.160 --> 1:04:23.240 a second, but I'm feeling the outrage, so I just need. 1:04:23.200 --> 1:04:25.280 Too that we're in Act three outrage. 1:04:25.320 --> 1:04:28.880 Yeah, I feel like this is such a beautiful example 1:04:29.080 --> 1:04:32.880 of why it is so important that we have diverse 1:04:33.040 --> 1:04:36.600 people in diverse roles, because then you wouldn't end up 1:04:36.640 --> 1:04:38.640 in this situation in the first place. If it wasn't 1:04:38.720 --> 1:04:43.360 all old white men in politics, research, medicine, everything at 1:04:43.400 --> 1:04:45.320 this point in time, I don't think you would have 1:04:45.360 --> 1:04:49.280 seen the same situation, you know what I mean. Like, 1:04:49.400 --> 1:04:52.880 that's so, it's just because if everyone in your office 1:04:53.040 --> 1:04:55.520 in your lab is the same, then you all have 1:04:55.640 --> 1:04:58.320 the same viewpoint then no one is going, hey, but 1:04:58.560 --> 1:05:01.680 what about this thing, what about this new drug, or 1:05:01.720 --> 1:05:03.640 what about looking at it from this perspective? 1:05:04.640 --> 1:05:08.680 And yes, multidisciplinary is such a word that's thrown around, 1:05:09.120 --> 1:05:12.840 you know, but it actually is can really make a 1:05:12.880 --> 1:05:16.120 big impact in terms of thinking reframing things in a 1:05:16.160 --> 1:05:17.920 way that you wouldn't have thought of earlier. 1:05:18.640 --> 1:05:22.600 Well, and just having like like intersectional workplaces where you 1:05:22.800 --> 1:05:27.640 have multiple literal people of different colors and different creeds 1:05:27.720 --> 1:05:31.040 and different genders and everything, you know, And that's that's 1:05:31.200 --> 1:05:31.680 very true. 1:05:31.800 --> 1:05:34.800 The problem though, that is that still remains is the 1:05:34.880 --> 1:05:38.760 fact that the money is all held primarily and the 1:05:38.920 --> 1:05:44.720 policies are all held primarily by old rich exactly men. Yeah, 1:05:44.840 --> 1:05:46.960 an agenda that is only self serving. 1:05:47.120 --> 1:05:50.520 Yep, exactly totally And so yeah, one hundred percent on 1:05:50.640 --> 1:05:52.200 board with hating that. 1:05:52.480 --> 1:05:56.720 Yeah, I mean we could go on forever talking about 1:05:56.800 --> 1:06:04.840 the injustice. Yeah and yeah, yep, okay, So so yeah, 1:06:05.720 --> 1:06:10.720 the members of act UP affected real measurable change in 1:06:10.800 --> 1:06:14.480 the turnaround time for experimental HIV or AIDS drugs. 1:06:14.520 --> 1:06:15.040 That's awesome. 1:06:15.080 --> 1:06:17.440 They made it like, let's get it to the market faster, 1:06:17.720 --> 1:06:22.000 yet's get these these experiments done faster. They also brought 1:06:22.000 --> 1:06:26.200 about the early the long long overdue approval of drugs 1:06:26.320 --> 1:06:30.640 used to treat AIDS related opportunistic infections in terms of preventatives, 1:06:33.240 --> 1:06:37.440 the development of educational materials about AIDS for people with 1:06:37.680 --> 1:06:40.760 AIDS and their advocates. So a lot of distribution of 1:06:40.920 --> 1:06:46.160 materials and compiling it into packets that were accessible, that 1:06:46.520 --> 1:06:49.720 that could be read by people without a PhD In 1:06:49.880 --> 1:06:52.800 biophysics and molecular genetics. 1:06:52.440 --> 1:06:55.280 So that the research is actually reaching the people they need. 1:06:55.760 --> 1:06:59.880 Yea, what They're bridged the gap from primary research to 1:07:00.160 --> 1:07:04.800 communication so amazingly. It was really it's so. 1:07:04.880 --> 1:07:06.720 Inspiring sycom at its finest. 1:07:07.400 --> 1:07:07.600 Yeah. 1:07:08.760 --> 1:07:14.000 Their demonstrations were unignorable, shutting down the FDA for a 1:07:14.120 --> 1:07:19.040 day during one awesome protest. In another, some members chained 1:07:19.080 --> 1:07:21.840 themselves to a balcony at the New York Stock Exchange. 1:07:21.880 --> 1:07:22.200 Wow. 1:07:23.040 --> 1:07:27.840 My personal favorite is when thag Tag Treatment Action Group, 1:07:27.960 --> 1:07:31.320 which had split off from act UP, put a giant 1:07:31.480 --> 1:07:37.560 inflatable condom over North Carolina Republican Senator Jesse Helms House 1:07:38.200 --> 1:07:42.720 what Yeah, Oh my god. Helms was one of the 1:07:42.960 --> 1:07:49.800 politicians actively campaigning on the Senate floor against federal funding 1:07:50.320 --> 1:07:53.240 for AIDS related research or treatment on the basis of 1:07:53.520 --> 1:07:55.120 moral outrage. 1:07:55.240 --> 1:07:57.600 Oh my god, I hate him. How did they get 1:07:57.680 --> 1:07:59.320 an inflatable condom that big? 1:08:00.080 --> 1:08:03.360 There's an entire story that actually, like Peter Staley tells 1:08:03.400 --> 1:08:06.520 the story in a blog. I can't remember the exact website, 1:08:06.640 --> 1:08:09.560 but he tells the story. It's in the documentary. 1:08:09.680 --> 1:08:11.760 We'll link to it. We'll find that it's so great 1:08:11.800 --> 1:08:12.800 because that sounds amazing. 1:08:13.520 --> 1:08:18.840 Yeah, yeah, so, Jesse Helms was an enormous piece of garbage. 1:08:21.920 --> 1:08:26.080 On the condom was written quote, a condom to stop 1:08:26.439 --> 1:08:30.120 unsafe politics. Helms is deadlier than a virus. 1:08:30.200 --> 1:08:31.519 Oh my god. I love that. 1:08:32.200 --> 1:08:34.120 And I don't think they got in trouble for it, 1:08:34.120 --> 1:08:36.920 which is the best part. I think they got like 1:08:36.960 --> 1:08:38.160 a parking ticket or something. 1:08:38.280 --> 1:08:40.000 Oh that's so funny, so happy. 1:08:41.800 --> 1:08:45.360 Perhaps the most recognizable demonstration, or the most the one 1:08:45.400 --> 1:08:48.080 that you may have heard of from the late eighties 1:08:48.320 --> 1:08:51.120 was the second National March on Washington for Lesbian and 1:08:51.200 --> 1:08:54.759 Gay Rights, an event which marked the first national media 1:08:54.920 --> 1:08:58.280 coverage of act UP and which revealed the AIDS quilt 1:08:59.520 --> 1:09:02.960 three and a half tons one nine hundred squares. 1:09:03.280 --> 1:09:03.920 Oh my god. 1:09:04.080 --> 1:09:07.080 At the time, it's since grown. Yeah, with each square 1:09:07.200 --> 1:09:10.479 representing someone who had died of AIDS. This march was 1:09:10.520 --> 1:09:15.040 attended by an estimated seven hundred and fifty thousand people. Wow, 1:09:15.680 --> 1:09:20.280 way more, way more than attended Trump's inauguration. 1:09:20.479 --> 1:09:27.080 By the way, there's like seven people there, so oh 1:09:27.760 --> 1:09:31.200 so probably it could be as many as three times 1:09:31.320 --> 1:09:38.120 more than attended Trump's inauguration. Throughout the late eighties and 1:09:38.200 --> 1:09:41.880 early nineties, Act UP chapters started in cities across the 1:09:42.040 --> 1:09:46.200 US and continued to educate, demonstrate, and advocate. Meanwhile, the 1:09:46.320 --> 1:09:49.160 number of people with AIDS around the world was steeply climbing. 1:09:49.600 --> 1:09:53.639 By nineteen ninety one, it was at an estimated ten million, wow, 1:09:53.800 --> 1:09:55.080 ten million, ten. 1:09:55.000 --> 1:09:59.240 Million people with AIDS, not just with HIV mm hmm wow, and. 1:09:59.320 --> 1:10:02.639 An estimated one hundred thousand people in the US had 1:10:02.800 --> 1:10:05.680 died from AIDS since the start of the epidemic by 1:10:05.800 --> 1:10:07.400 nineteen ninety one, eleven years. 1:10:08.680 --> 1:10:09.360 Oh my god. 1:10:09.840 --> 1:10:12.920 It is during these years that we see the highest 1:10:12.960 --> 1:10:16.439 death tolls in the US. Yeah, with fifteen thousand, twenty 1:10:16.960 --> 1:10:19.400 twenty five thousand dead each year in. 1:10:19.439 --> 1:10:22.920 The early nineties, Yeah, I saw some numbers es made 1:10:22.960 --> 1:10:25.080 it even higher than that, Like in the thirties and 1:10:25.120 --> 1:10:25.559 forty five. 1:10:25.720 --> 1:10:28.160 Yeah, thirties and forties were around ninety four to ninety five. 1:10:28.479 --> 1:10:33.679 Ninety six, Yeah, Jesus. New experimental antivirals came onto the scene, 1:10:34.080 --> 1:10:37.160 sometimes cooked up at home, sometimes brought into the country. 1:10:37.520 --> 1:10:41.599 Buyers clubs are all over, providing people with experimental drugs, which, 1:10:41.720 --> 1:10:44.439 if they didn't offer a cure, may be offered hope. 1:10:45.560 --> 1:10:49.599 Real measurable qualified hope didn't come until nineteen ninety five, 1:10:49.920 --> 1:10:53.640 the year the first proteas inhibitors were approved. People with 1:10:53.760 --> 1:10:55.720 AIDS who seemed to be nearing the end of their 1:10:55.840 --> 1:10:58.240 days rebounded after taking these drugs. 1:10:58.439 --> 1:10:58.679 Wow. 1:10:59.240 --> 1:11:03.879 Doctors called it the Lazarus effect. It was very dramatic. 1:11:05.160 --> 1:11:07.840 Within two years, death rates in the US and in 1:11:08.000 --> 1:11:11.760 much of Europe plummeted. But this miracle cure would come 1:11:11.880 --> 1:11:16.960 too late for so so many people, For over three 1:11:17.080 --> 1:11:21.920 hundred thousand dead in the US, for the millions dead worldwide. 1:11:22.320 --> 1:11:25.760 The members of act UP number in the thousands. But 1:11:25.880 --> 1:11:27.560 I want to mention the names of just some of 1:11:27.640 --> 1:11:30.479 those who were instrumental in the fight to improve the 1:11:30.560 --> 1:11:34.000 lives of people with AIDS through act UP. David Barr, 1:11:34.320 --> 1:11:40.240 Spencer Cox, David France, jim Igo Grants, Frank Ruda, Larry Kramer, 1:11:40.520 --> 1:11:45.160 Iris Long, Mark Harrington, Bob Rafsky, Peter Staley. These people 1:11:45.400 --> 1:11:52.080 are heroes. Act for Persistence nineteen ninety seven to two thousand. 1:11:57.960 --> 1:12:00.599 The first few years in gay communities after the release 1:12:00.640 --> 1:12:03.639 of proteas inhibitors have been compared to coming up from 1:12:03.640 --> 1:12:06.439 the trenches only to realize that the world had no 1:12:06.600 --> 1:12:10.600 idea you were even fighting a war. Entire neighborhoods in 1:12:10.640 --> 1:12:14.080 San Francisco and New York City were empty. People had 1:12:14.160 --> 1:12:17.759 watched as hundreds of their friends died. It wasn't uncommon 1:12:17.840 --> 1:12:21.280 to attend one or more funerals a week. These were 1:12:21.400 --> 1:12:25.479 young men, and so many of them died. PTSD and 1:12:25.560 --> 1:12:28.880 survivor's guilt were prevalent among those who had escaped the epidemic, 1:12:29.439 --> 1:12:33.160 But escape isn't really an appropriate word. There was no 1:12:33.400 --> 1:12:36.400 escape from the experience and it would stay with them forever. 1:12:37.360 --> 1:12:39.720 As we heard in our first hand account, there was 1:12:39.800 --> 1:12:44.000 no parade, no march, no rally to signify the end 1:12:44.160 --> 1:12:48.200 of the AIDS crisis. In the US. Slowly, AIDS treatment 1:12:48.320 --> 1:12:52.800 centers closed their doors, demonstrations became more infrequent, although an 1:12:52.960 --> 1:12:55.880 HIV positive result no longer carried the death sentence it 1:12:55.960 --> 1:13:00.240 had before proteas inhibitors, AIDS diagnoses continued to c i'm 1:13:00.280 --> 1:13:05.280 worldwide and in regions where treatment is completely unaffordable. In 1:13:05.439 --> 1:13:08.360 nineteen ninety seven, the worldwide death count is six point 1:13:08.439 --> 1:13:11.120 four million and current cases twenty million. 1:13:11.600 --> 1:13:11.840 Wow. 1:13:13.560 --> 1:13:19.280 Before getting in to current status of HIV and AIDS today, 1:13:19.720 --> 1:13:23.160 I want to say one more thing. At the end 1:13:23.200 --> 1:13:27.200 of each episode, we usually ask the question how scared 1:13:27.240 --> 1:13:31.080 to you need to be of X disease? But researching 1:13:31.280 --> 1:13:33.640 the history of HIV and AIDS made me realize that 1:13:33.760 --> 1:13:36.360 that's not the question we should have been asking all along. 1:13:36.960 --> 1:13:37.160 Yeah. 1:13:37.520 --> 1:13:41.639 Instead we should be asking what should scare you about 1:13:41.680 --> 1:13:45.400 this disease? For smallpox, I would have said that it 1:13:45.520 --> 1:13:49.280 was historical accounts of intentional infection or the future threat 1:13:49.360 --> 1:13:53.120 of bio warfare. For leprosy, it's the mistreatment of people 1:13:53.160 --> 1:13:56.400 with leprosy. In every case, the answer has something to 1:13:56.520 --> 1:13:59.479 do with the failings of humanity, and the story of 1:13:59.600 --> 1:14:03.759 AIDS is no different. There are towering villains in this story, 1:14:04.360 --> 1:14:06.880 the people that you would have thought you could have 1:14:07.040 --> 1:14:10.519 trusted to do something about the disease. The thing that 1:14:10.600 --> 1:14:13.080 we should be most scared about in terms of HIV 1:14:13.200 --> 1:14:16.000 and AIDS is not the disease itself, but the response 1:14:16.240 --> 1:14:19.320 or lack of response of the government and public health 1:14:19.400 --> 1:14:23.479 agencies to this crisis, the discrimination and disregard for this 1:14:23.600 --> 1:14:26.960 disease because in the US it happened to pop up 1:14:27.040 --> 1:14:30.880 in a marginalized and long ostracized group of people. For 1:14:31.000 --> 1:14:33.519 every villain in this story, though, there is a hero 1:14:34.320 --> 1:14:37.240 or several heroes, those brave men and women who took 1:14:37.240 --> 1:14:41.640 it upon themselves to organize, mobilize, and effect change. And 1:14:41.760 --> 1:14:45.240 while the history of AIDS is full of heartbreak and injustice, 1:14:46.080 --> 1:14:48.280 these heroes should give you hope and a belief that 1:14:48.439 --> 1:14:51.200 some people will have the courage to fight and prevail. 1:15:05.200 --> 1:15:09.400 And with that handing off to you, how. 1:15:09.360 --> 1:15:13.719 On earth am I supposed to follow that? Oh God, 1:15:14.160 --> 1:15:15.680 that was beautifully written there. 1:15:16.000 --> 1:15:19.080 Thanks, that was That was the first thing I wrote. Actually, 1:15:19.200 --> 1:15:20.400 it was really the end. 1:15:20.760 --> 1:15:22.320 You have little cries in your eyes. 1:15:22.400 --> 1:15:23.679 I do little cries of my ass. 1:15:24.439 --> 1:15:25.960 Oh my god, I just like. 1:15:28.720 --> 1:15:32.320 Mm okay, So, so what's happening today? 1:15:32.400 --> 1:15:33.800 What's happening? I want to know about it? 1:15:35.360 --> 1:15:38.120 Well, I could sit here and hit you with number 1:15:38.200 --> 1:15:41.200 after number, which is what I did to myself while 1:15:41.240 --> 1:15:46.600 I was researching this. Yeah, it was like table table infections, deaths, deaths. 1:15:46.560 --> 1:15:52.120 Death It's it kind of detaches you real it does. 1:15:53.400 --> 1:15:55.840 So I really appreciate what you said because that's it's 1:15:56.120 --> 1:16:00.160 very true, and it's yeah, sometimes it's there's two too 1:16:00.200 --> 1:16:02.439 many numbers when I'm just staring at them to deal with. 1:16:02.720 --> 1:16:07.040 So here's what I want to say. HIV AIDS is 1:16:07.120 --> 1:16:11.040 still a huge problem today. It's not a problem of 1:16:11.120 --> 1:16:15.400 the past. Like tens of thousands of people in the 1:16:15.560 --> 1:16:19.800 US are diagnosed with HIV and with AIDS every year, 1:16:20.479 --> 1:16:24.040 and thousands are still dying from it in the US 1:16:24.720 --> 1:16:27.480 my gosh. But what I think is the most important 1:16:27.560 --> 1:16:32.040 thing to realize is that this risk still to this day, 1:16:32.360 --> 1:16:36.280 is not homogeneous. And if you thought that we learned 1:16:36.479 --> 1:16:39.320 from how marginalized groups were treated at the start of 1:16:39.400 --> 1:16:43.519 the HIV AIDS eponemic, you're very much mistaken. Because while 1:16:43.560 --> 1:16:46.559 advocacy groups did a lot to raise awareness, and it's 1:16:46.720 --> 1:16:50.360 true that HIV AIDS research is very well funded in 1:16:50.479 --> 1:16:56.760 comparison to many other very inadequately funded diseases, and while 1:16:57.080 --> 1:17:00.960 CDC and who say things on their website, like rates 1:17:01.000 --> 1:17:05.160 of HIV infections are decreasing and aid's debts are decreasing, 1:17:05.960 --> 1:17:10.679 it's not happening across the board. By far, the largest 1:17:10.720 --> 1:17:15.360 population at risk and getting diagnosed with HIV every year 1:17:15.479 --> 1:17:20.360 in the US are gay African American men, followed by 1:17:20.479 --> 1:17:24.200 gay Hispanic and Latino men. And for years, while the 1:17:24.280 --> 1:17:27.599 number of new diagnoses in other groups, especially in white 1:17:27.680 --> 1:17:32.040 gay men, were declining, they've been increasing in African American 1:17:32.120 --> 1:17:35.599 men and Latino men. And just finally, over the last 1:17:35.680 --> 1:17:38.760 year or two have these numbers seem to have stabilized. 1:17:39.280 --> 1:17:44.160 Stabilized exactly. They're not decreasing by any rate. African Americans 1:17:44.280 --> 1:17:48.160 men and women represent only twelve percent of the US population, 1:17:48.680 --> 1:17:52.479 but accounted for forty four percent of HIV diagnoses last year. 1:17:52.600 --> 1:17:53.160 Oh my god. 1:17:54.360 --> 1:17:58.000 And to make it even worse, because why not, the 1:17:58.080 --> 1:18:00.479 most neglected group that has the worst out comes are 1:18:00.560 --> 1:18:05.080 transgender women. In the US, transgender women are diagnosed with 1:18:05.320 --> 1:18:09.799 HIV at rates three times higher than the general population. 1:18:10.200 --> 1:18:10.479 Wow. 1:18:10.840 --> 1:18:13.479 And a meta analysis in twenty thirteen that will link 1:18:13.600 --> 1:18:19.320 to estimated that infection prevalence and transgender women worldwide was 1:18:19.640 --> 1:18:25.400 seventeen percent and in high income countries, including the United 1:18:25.479 --> 1:18:27.759 States twenty two percent. 1:18:28.600 --> 1:18:28.640 What. 1:18:29.680 --> 1:18:35.439 Yeah, that's ridiculous. Two, it's ridiculous. It's unacceptable. And there 1:18:35.520 --> 1:18:38.040 is essentially no research being done on how to stop 1:18:38.120 --> 1:18:39.960 this from happening in these communities. 1:18:42.120 --> 1:18:43.920 We haven't I mean, we haven't learned anything. 1:18:44.240 --> 1:18:44.439 Yeah. 1:18:45.320 --> 1:18:48.920 Yeah, And now we've talked a lot today about HIV 1:18:49.000 --> 1:18:51.759 AIDS in the US, but this is by no means 1:18:51.800 --> 1:18:54.160 a disease of the US. This is a global pandemic. 1:18:54.960 --> 1:18:58.599 The WHO currently estimates that there are over thirty six 1:18:58.840 --> 1:19:04.719 million people globally living with HIV wow, including two million children. 1:19:05.240 --> 1:19:09.400 And there were almost two million cases new cases diagnosed. 1:19:08.960 --> 1:19:10.839 Last year, two million new cases. 1:19:11.040 --> 1:19:15.560 And remember that these new cases don't necessarily represent new infections. 1:19:15.640 --> 1:19:18.160 They just mean that people are finally coming and seeking 1:19:18.240 --> 1:19:19.720 treatment or getting. 1:19:19.520 --> 1:19:21.880 Tested, and so those are HIV. 1:19:22.400 --> 1:19:26.760 Those are HIV cases, right. The saddest statistic is that 1:19:27.040 --> 1:19:30.400 only around fifty percent of adults and forty three percent 1:19:30.439 --> 1:19:34.559 of children that currently live with HIV are actually receiving 1:19:34.680 --> 1:19:36.439 any sort of antiretroviral therapy. 1:19:36.960 --> 1:19:39.439 Why, like, why is that number fifty percent? Why is 1:19:39.439 --> 1:19:41.640 that number not one hundred percent? Oh right, Yeah, So 1:19:41.720 --> 1:19:42.840 I think accessibility. 1:19:42.960 --> 1:19:44.400 Yeah, I think it's lack of access. 1:19:45.400 --> 1:19:49.640 And this lack of access means oftentimes not just logistics 1:19:49.720 --> 1:19:51.600 but actual financial. 1:19:51.280 --> 1:19:56.920 Yes, definitely, definitely financials. And the WHL also estimates that 1:19:57.080 --> 1:20:00.439 only about seventy percent of people living with HIV or 1:20:00.880 --> 1:20:03.519 seventy percent of people who are HIV positive actually know 1:20:03.640 --> 1:20:09.120 their status. And even today in twenty it's twenty eighteen. Now, Yeah, 1:20:09.840 --> 1:20:13.680 one in three people that present with HIV for the 1:20:13.760 --> 1:20:17.040 first time are presenting with advanced disease, which means they're 1:20:17.040 --> 1:20:20.240 not getting tested early. They're waiting, you know, they don't 1:20:20.360 --> 1:20:23.040 know that they're infected until the disease has already progressed 1:20:23.080 --> 1:20:27.360 to either AIDS or you know, stage two or something 1:20:27.479 --> 1:20:29.479 like that. So wow. 1:20:29.840 --> 1:20:33.519 And the thing about getting tested, which I didn't I 1:20:33.560 --> 1:20:36.519 didn't talk much about, but the term disease is so 1:20:37.000 --> 1:20:39.920 or diseased is so interesting. And if part of the 1:20:40.760 --> 1:20:44.400 fear of getting tested, and it's a completely legitimate fear, 1:20:44.600 --> 1:20:46.800 is that if, even if, if you get an HIV 1:20:47.080 --> 1:20:50.559 positive result, even though that's no longer the death sentence 1:20:50.600 --> 1:20:54.599 that it used to be, you are automatically lumped into 1:20:54.720 --> 1:20:57.560 this diseased category. Yeah, and if you and if you 1:20:58.000 --> 1:21:00.880 have no symptoms or seem perfect health, and. 1:21:01.200 --> 1:21:04.160 If you are part of an already marginalized group, you 1:21:04.439 --> 1:21:10.000 just then further marginalize and potentially ostracize ourself are ostracized 1:21:10.120 --> 1:21:16.599 by that. Yeah, and yeah, it's it's horrible. And even 1:21:16.720 --> 1:21:22.200 though I mean, with treatment you can effectively reduce the 1:21:22.400 --> 1:21:27.720 risk of transmission to other people to very small and 1:21:28.320 --> 1:21:31.360 treatment is not perfect by any means. Drug resistance is 1:21:31.520 --> 1:21:35.880 very real, and treatment has serious side effects and complications, 1:21:36.360 --> 1:21:43.080 but it does greatly prolong your life expectancy and decreases 1:21:43.160 --> 1:21:48.000 the risk of progressing to AIDS if you are HIV positive. So, 1:21:48.120 --> 1:21:51.960 I mean, yeah, it sucks that there's such such a 1:21:52.040 --> 1:21:55.120 huge stigma associated with it, where there might be many 1:21:55.160 --> 1:21:58.320 people out there who don't get tested because they don't 1:21:58.360 --> 1:21:58.720 want to know. 1:21:59.160 --> 1:22:01.800 What's so frustrated is that, you know, public health officials 1:22:01.920 --> 1:22:06.719 or government officials complain about this lack of people testing themselves, 1:22:06.760 --> 1:22:09.680 but they're the ones who created the stigma. They're the 1:22:09.720 --> 1:22:14.320 ones who created these conditions which being tested is not 1:22:14.479 --> 1:22:18.000 a desirable thing to do, right, It's so frustrating. Yep, 1:22:19.160 --> 1:22:23.599 So is there anything? Is there any not silver lighting, 1:22:23.680 --> 1:22:26.840 but is there any sort of like, what about PREP. 1:22:27.360 --> 1:22:30.360 Yeah, so let's talk about PREP. So PREP is pre 1:22:30.520 --> 1:22:34.320 exposure prophylaxis, which is it's when zero negative people, so 1:22:34.520 --> 1:22:39.040 HIV negative people are taking retrovirals to prevent infection with HIV. 1:22:39.760 --> 1:22:41.880 The good news is it's very effective. 1:22:42.080 --> 1:22:42.439 Awesome. 1:22:42.640 --> 1:22:45.639 This has actually been around for at least ten years. 1:22:45.800 --> 1:22:48.759 Trials started in two thousand and five, was the earliest 1:22:48.800 --> 1:22:53.519 that I saw. It wasn't licensed. Oral use of PREP, 1:22:54.000 --> 1:22:57.639 the trade name I think is Truevada or something wasn't 1:22:57.680 --> 1:23:01.080 licensed in the US until twenty twelve. But it's been 1:23:01.200 --> 1:23:06.439 around since long before that, and it's really effective. Dozens 1:23:06.479 --> 1:23:09.120 and dozens of clinical trials and cohort studies have shown 1:23:09.200 --> 1:23:12.519 that the use of these oral antiretrovirals can reduce risk 1:23:12.680 --> 1:23:17.120 of infection by around ninety percent. That's more effective than 1:23:17.200 --> 1:23:20.040 condom use. Condoms are about eighty five percent effective when 1:23:20.160 --> 1:23:20.879 used correctly. 1:23:21.120 --> 1:23:21.400 Wow. 1:23:21.720 --> 1:23:26.400 Yeah, so that's great. There is also a gel that 1:23:26.840 --> 1:23:30.400 is an antiretroviral gel that is used. I don't think 1:23:30.479 --> 1:23:33.719 that it's licensed that I know of. Someone can correct 1:23:33.760 --> 1:23:35.519 me if I'm wrong in the US, but it is 1:23:35.640 --> 1:23:37.720 used in a lot of other countries that you can 1:23:37.840 --> 1:23:42.080 use either before or sometime during I think I would 1:23:42.120 --> 1:23:47.400 assume before sexual intercourse. And that is an anti retroviral gel, 1:23:48.040 --> 1:23:50.880 not a spermicidal gel. And that's also very effective, so 1:23:50.960 --> 1:23:52.800 it's not something that you have to take all the time. 1:23:53.720 --> 1:23:54.200 Very cool. 1:23:54.520 --> 1:23:57.360 Yeah, And so I want to point out that there 1:23:57.439 --> 1:24:01.880 have been a lot of criticisms of this drug PREP 1:24:02.560 --> 1:24:06.639 because people claim that since it can prevent HIV infection, 1:24:07.640 --> 1:24:10.000 it will then lead to an increase in the rates 1:24:10.120 --> 1:24:15.360 of other STDs because people are no longer using condoms essentially, 1:24:15.880 --> 1:24:18.960 And to that, I just want to say, yeah, like, 1:24:19.080 --> 1:24:23.280 that's the same that's the same BS argument that people 1:24:23.360 --> 1:24:25.479 try to use to say that women shouldn't have access 1:24:25.479 --> 1:24:26.479 to birth control options. 1:24:26.560 --> 1:24:26.920 Uh huh. 1:24:27.479 --> 1:24:30.439 Any option that is available that can prevent the spread 1:24:30.520 --> 1:24:33.759 of a disease as gnarly and devastating as HIV should 1:24:33.880 --> 1:24:36.519 be available to people who could benefit from it. 1:24:36.640 --> 1:24:36.800 Yep. 1:24:37.320 --> 1:24:40.080 Should people practice safe sex in general, da da da da. 1:24:40.160 --> 1:24:43.360 Of course, yeah, that would be great, but also they 1:24:43.400 --> 1:24:46.439 should use PREP if they can benefit from it. Yeah, 1:24:46.600 --> 1:24:49.960 I mean I was reading that. I was just it's 1:24:50.040 --> 1:24:55.120 so demeaning. It's insulting to assume that humans aren't capable 1:24:55.120 --> 1:24:57.680 of making our own decisions about our own healthcare and 1:24:57.760 --> 1:24:59.920 what is best for us. Uh uh, it's just plain wrong. 1:25:00.000 --> 1:25:03.640 We're looking at you, conservatives, yet out of our bedrooms. 1:25:04.640 --> 1:25:06.040 I also want to point out that this is a 1:25:06.160 --> 1:25:09.200 very expensive drug. I was looking for coupons for it. 1:25:09.320 --> 1:25:12.280 It's like sixteen hundred dollars for thirty tablets, So that's 1:25:12.320 --> 1:25:15.680 for a one month's supply. What it is covered by 1:25:15.840 --> 1:25:16.839 most health insurance. 1:25:16.920 --> 1:25:17.519 That's awesome. 1:25:17.720 --> 1:25:20.160 Yes, I didn't know that, and it seems like it is. 1:25:20.400 --> 1:25:23.559 It's not covered under Medicaid or Medicare or any other 1:25:23.640 --> 1:25:24.679 government insurance policy. 1:25:24.720 --> 1:25:26.679 Government insurance, oh my mm hmm. 1:25:26.880 --> 1:25:29.880 Which means guess what the most vulnerable sections of our 1:25:29.920 --> 1:25:33.120 populations aren't don't have access? 1:25:33.400 --> 1:25:36.679 Exactly cool yet again, thumbs up, thumbs up government. 1:25:36.960 --> 1:25:39.320 We give you something good and then we take it back. 1:25:39.960 --> 1:25:42.560 So it's not surprising to know that these are the 1:25:42.600 --> 1:25:45.920 same populations that we see having the highest rates of 1:25:46.120 --> 1:25:46.960 HIV and AIDS. 1:25:47.120 --> 1:25:47.280 Right. 1:25:48.200 --> 1:25:51.320 So, honestly, because of all this, I feel like we 1:25:51.360 --> 1:25:53.320 don't even have time to talk about the research that 1:25:53.479 --> 1:25:58.120 is being done on HIV. Sorry, there is a ton 1:25:58.360 --> 1:26:03.719 everything from better rapid diagnostic tools more effective anti retroviral therapies, 1:26:03.880 --> 1:26:05.400 and of course a vaccine. 1:26:05.960 --> 1:26:06.799 That'd be awesome. 1:26:06.880 --> 1:26:09.520 It would be great. There are tons of different strategies 1:26:09.560 --> 1:26:12.960 that people are exploring, and I'm sure there's a podcast 1:26:13.040 --> 1:26:16.040 episode out there somewhere about all of these different options, 1:26:16.080 --> 1:26:17.680 and maybe we can find it and link to it. 1:26:18.800 --> 1:26:21.679 But just to end it off with some numbers, yeah, 1:26:21.920 --> 1:26:25.200 because I didn't do a lot of numbers. In total, 1:26:25.520 --> 1:26:28.360 from the beginning of the epidemic in nineteen eighty one 1:26:28.800 --> 1:26:32.080 or nineteen eighty until twenty sixteen, there have been an 1:26:32.320 --> 1:26:36.320 estimated one million, two hundred and thirty two thousand, three 1:26:36.400 --> 1:26:40.000 hundred and forty six people diagnosed with AIDS in the US. 1:26:40.800 --> 1:26:41.120 Wow. 1:26:41.439 --> 1:26:45.400 Cumulatively, six hundred and ninety two thousand and seven hundred 1:26:45.400 --> 1:26:48.439 and eighty nine people have died since the beginning of 1:26:48.520 --> 1:26:52.559 the epidemic in the US. In the US, yes, oh 1:26:52.680 --> 1:26:58.519 my god, millions and millions more worldwide. And that is 1:26:58.560 --> 1:26:59.840 the state of HIV today. 1:27:01.360 --> 1:27:04.040 Well, i'd say that's a pretty sorry state. 1:27:04.200 --> 1:27:05.280 Yep, I'd agree. 1:27:06.080 --> 1:27:11.880 Okay, Well, there you have it, the biology, history, and 1:27:12.080 --> 1:27:15.920 current status of HIV and AIDS in the world. 1:27:17.360 --> 1:27:18.559 Thanks for sticking with us. 1:27:18.760 --> 1:27:20.120 Thank you. So much for listening. 1:27:20.360 --> 1:27:22.280 We really really appreciate it. 1:27:22.520 --> 1:27:22.720 Yeah. 1:27:23.120 --> 1:27:26.680 I hope that you guys feel that you learned something new. 1:27:26.760 --> 1:27:28.760 I know I definitely did. I didn't know a lot 1:27:28.880 --> 1:27:30.000 about this history. 1:27:30.240 --> 1:27:35.000 So yeah, and again, thank you so so much to 1:27:35.120 --> 1:27:37.360 the providers of our first hand accounts. 1:27:37.320 --> 1:27:40.640 Brian, hellel and Frank. We really really appreciate it. It 1:27:40.760 --> 1:27:44.800 was wonderful talking to you and listeners. Hold your breath 1:27:44.840 --> 1:27:47.000 for next week because you're going to get to hear 1:27:47.040 --> 1:27:50.160 more of these stories. So should we talk about what 1:27:50.320 --> 1:27:51.040 our sources were? 1:27:51.800 --> 1:27:55.040 Let's do it. I have a few books here. The 1:27:55.160 --> 1:27:58.519 first is The Chimp and the River by David Kwaman 1:27:59.080 --> 1:28:02.680 and the Band Played On by Randy Schiltz, How to 1:28:02.760 --> 1:28:05.840 Survive a Plague by David France I mentioned, And the 1:28:05.920 --> 1:28:09.080 final book I'll mention is called Aids and it's metaphors 1:28:09.160 --> 1:28:11.479 and it's really more of an essay by Susan Sontag. 1:28:11.680 --> 1:28:11.920 Cool. 1:28:12.560 --> 1:28:18.680 I've got honestly too many things to cite here, so 1:28:18.880 --> 1:28:23.280 we will post just because they're too long to read. Yeah. 1:28:24.040 --> 1:28:26.320 You can find all of these books and articles on 1:28:26.760 --> 1:28:29.519 a Google doc list that we have a link to 1:28:29.680 --> 1:28:30.879 on our podbeam website. 1:28:31.120 --> 1:28:33.559 Yeah, and We'll also make sure that that's posted on Facebook, 1:28:33.600 --> 1:28:36.599 so if you're interested in getting a list of everything 1:28:36.720 --> 1:28:39.800 that we've ever cited from all of our episodes, that'll be. 1:28:39.840 --> 1:28:47.080 There as always. Thanks for listening, Yeah, thank you so much, 1:28:47.280 --> 1:28:50.639 we really like it. And thanks to Bloodmobile for providing 1:28:50.680 --> 1:28:55.200 the music in this episode. And finally, wash your hands. 1:28:55.560 --> 1:29:03.880 Yeah, filthy animals and be kind of relationsh