AIDS

Tracing AIDS-Driven Cultural Production Across Generations

by Mackenzie Lukenbill

The collected papers of AIDS educator and activist Chloe Dzubilo stand as a "counter-archive," which does not just preserve a record of the past but makes it a trigger for thought and action in the present. 

Monkeypox is a Failure to Learn from HIV-AIDS Activists

by Dan Royles

Attention to messaging – efforts to advise communities of gay men at risk of infection without stigma – has hidden a deeper message of AIDS activism in the 1980s: demands for an equitable and affordable health care system. 

Can America Apply Lessons from HIV/AIDS Crisis to Deal with Monkeypox?

by Dan Royles

Public health debates on monkeypox need to look at the history of health messaging about HIV-AIDS to focus on communities of gay men currently at risk while avoiding triggering homophobic responses and stigma. 

René Esparza on AIDS and Health Inequality in Urban History

A new book examines the relationship of sexuality, residential segregation, and class and racial inequality in the AIDS epidemic.

The Agency of the Irresponsible

by Sarah Swedberg

When universities bend to political pressure and adopt "personal responsibility" policies for vaccination, masking, and social distancing they give agency to the irresponsible and take it away from those who are actively working to protect public health. 

AIDS Disappeared from Public View Without Ending. Will Covid-19 do the Same?

by Dan Royles

AIDS activism shifted from framing the epidemic as a political crisis to a medical problem, allowing the ongoing vulnerability of the poor to fade from view as pharmaceutical advances have helped control the spread and impact of HIV among the affluent. 

In Fury We Trust (Review of Sarah Shulman)

Sarah Shulman's book seeks to recover the histories of AIDS activists beyond white gay men, using two decades of oral history work to show the breadth of a coalition including women, lesbians, people of color, drug users, and the incarcerated, who all experienced the stakes of AIDS differently. 

Nancy Reagan’s Real Role in the AIDS Crisis

Washington journalist Karen Tumulty writes that Nancy Reagan worked against the demands of social conservatives to ask her husband's administration to pay attention to the AIDS crisis, but her efforts weren't enough. 

The Original Shock of AIDS in “It’s a Sin”

The British show "It's a Sin" reconstructs the emergence of AIDS in London through the story of a group of flatmates working to reconcile fear and affirmation. 

National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day Reminds Us of the Deep Costs of Inequality

by Dan Royles

"This history shows us that biomedical interventions such as antiretrovirals to treat HIV or the vaccine against the coronavirus yield some progress in the fight against epidemic disease, but do little to alter the underlying inequities that make some communities more vulnerable to illness in the first place."

What Dr. Fauci and Others Learned About Battling Covid-19 from the Fight Against AIDS (Video)

The AIDS pandemic was marked by a slow response and a lack of clear public health messages and testing. Despite those lessons, we were still unprepared for Covid-19.

Lessons From Operation 'Denver,' the KGB’s Massive AIDS Disinformation Campaign

Historian Douglas Selvage sheds light on a conspiracy theory that reverberates to this day.

Larry Kramer, Author and Outspoken AIDS Activist, Dies at 84

Even some of the officials Mr. Kramer accused of “murder” and “genocide” recognized that his outbursts were part of a strategy to shock the country into dealing with AIDS as a public-health emergency.

Trump’s Attacks on the WHO Evoke Nostalgia for George W. Bush

by Jeffrey J. Matthews

George W. Bush's promotion of cooperative international health initiaitves to fight HIV-AIDS is a bright spot in his presidential legacy.

Scapegoating New York Means Ignoring Its Desperate Need

by Kim Phillips-Fein

Blaming the city for coronavirus is a way of letting the federal government off the hook.

The Epidemics America Got Wrong

by Jim Downs

Government inaction or delay have shaped the course of many infectious disease outbreaks in our country, argues history professor Jim Downs.

We Can’t Forget Women as We Tell The Story of COVID-19

by Jennifer Brier

Women who have been medical (and political) subjects of HIV/AIDS also have much to teach us during our current pandemic.

Coronavirus: Three Lessons from the AIDS Crisis

by Laurie Marhoefer

The U.S. made serious mistakes when the HIV virus and AIDS emerged. Those errors cost many lives. But our nation learned a few things, too.

Quest to Solve Assassination Mystery Revives an AIDS Conspiracy Theory

“We were at war,” said the former militia member, Alexander Jones. “Black people in South Africa were the enemy.”

Long Before Facebook, The KGB Spread Fake News About AIDS

Back in the 1980s, the rumor that AIDS was human-made was based partially on a report written in 1986 by Russian-born biophysicist Jakob Segal.