AIDS Emerges: Medical Community Warned
The first medical report describing what would become known as AIDS appeared on June 5, 1981, in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Dr. Michael Gottlieb described five young, previously healthy gay men in Los Angeles who had developed Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, a rare fungal infection typically seen only in severely immunocompromised patients. Two had already died. Within weeks, similar cases were reported in New York and San Francisco, along with a rare cancer called Kaposi's sarcoma. The disease was initially called GRID (Gay-Related Immune Deficiency) before being renamed AIDS in 1982. The virus (HIV) was identified in 1983. AIDS has killed over 40 million people worldwide. Antiretroviral therapy, introduced in 1996, transformed it from a death sentence into a manageable chronic condition.
June 5, 1981
45 years ago
Key Figures & Places
What Else Happened on June 5
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