How HIV/AIDS got its name – the words Americans used to explain the crisis were steeped in science, stigma and spiritual language

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention first used the term “AIDS“On September 24, 1982, greater than a yr after the primary cases appeared in medical records, the disease was first diagnosed. These early years of the crisis were marked by great confusion about what caused the disease, who it affected, and the way it spread.

But the name itself – acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, which we now know is attributable to the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) – was a milestone. The way people talked about and named the AIDS crisis shaped perceptions of the disease and promoted or combatted a culture of stigma.

In the Eighties and Nineteen Nineties, for instance, conservative Christian leaders reminiscent of Rev. Jerry Falwell described AIDS as “God's punishment” for sexual immorality. Many AIDS activistsOn the opposite hand, additionally they recognized the importance of giving a reputation to those affected. Rather than being known as “AIDS victims,” ​​they preferred terms reminiscent of “people with AIDS” and “people living with HIV” to emphasise their status as people and not only as patients or victims.

As a historian of faith, sexuality and public healthI used to be taken with how moral and spiritual rhetoric has shaped this global pandemic from the start. In my book “After the wrath of God“, I argue that the AIDS crisis can’t be separated from the broader cultural contexts wherein it occurred, including the history of LGBTQ+ people and the Christian right.

In other words, this medical epidemic was also an ethical epidemic from the start.

Before “AIDS”

The naming of AIDS in 1982 got here greater than a yr after the CDC first reported Cases of young, otherwise healthy men diagnosed with rare types of cancer, pneumonia and other infections that occur in individuals with weakened immune systems.

CDC researchers searched for a connection and located that these men “all lively homosexuals.” This confirmed what many gay and bisexual men in places like New York City and San Francisco already knew: There was a mysterious disease of their community.

The first news reports spoke of a brand new “gay cancer” or “gay pneumonia.” Some medical researchers called it GRID – homosexual immunodeficiency – or acquired immunodeficiency. When CDC leaders settled on AIDS as a substitute, they wanted to acknowledge the prevalence of cases in lots of other groups, including heterosexuals.

Despite these efforts, this early connection to homosexuality remained.

In fact, the history of homosexuality was crucial to the invention of AIDS. Scientists have now shown that HIV was in circulation long before 1981particularly amongst intravenous drug users, lots of whom were homeless. However, unusual illnesses and deaths inside this population group went largely unnoticed.

Meanwhile, the trendy LGBTQ+ rights movement had been gaining momentum since 1969, when a Police raid on the Stonewall Inna gay bar in New York City, sparked a series of riots that ignited a brand new wave of LGBTQ+ activism. In the Eighties, queer and trans people gained greater political and cultural influence.

This visibility and increasing cultural influence were crucial to the invention of this recent disease.

Arousing the “wrath of God”

The early link between AIDS and homosexuality also meant that this public health crisis sparked moral and spiritual debates.

As early because the Seventies, conservative Christian leaders warned most people about what they called Epidemic of homosexualityThey argued that social acceptance of LGBTQ+ people is a Signs of ethical decayand warned that if the United States did not eradicate this “moral disease,” the country would face the identical fate because the biblical cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, which were destroyed by God.

In other words, the Christian Right had already his own way of talking about homosexuality as an epidemic, as a threat to society itself. The AIDS crisis only looked as if it would confirm their belief within the wrath of God.

Medical and public health officials weren’t resistant to this rhetoric. In the Eighties, hospitals across New York readily invoked WOGS – the Wrath of God Syndrome. Doctor on the Medical College of Georgia wrote an editorial for the Southern Medical Journal, which questioned whether AIDS fulfilled a biblical statement about “due punishment” for sexual sins and beneficial conversion therapy for homosexuals.

In the White House, as Historian Jennifer Brier has shownPresident Ronald Reagan's conservative advisers Gary Bauer and William Bennett formulated a method to combat AIDS that emphasized the moral rightness of heterosexuality and abstinence outside of marriage.

They were frustrated by the resistance of Reagan-appointed Surgeon General C. Everett Koopa pediatric surgeon who was also a frontrunner of the evangelical pro-life movement. He insisted that national AIDS policy should concentrate on comprehensive sex education.

In 1988, Koop sent a mailing called Understanding AIDS in virtually every household in America. Conservatives balked at Koop's approach, although he nonetheless touted abstinence for single people as the most effective type of protection.

Bauer and Bennett complained that the flyer contained details about condoms and described the risks of infection through oral and anal sex. Phyllis Schlafly, the conservative Catholic crusader against feminism, abortion and gay rights, accused the Surgeon General of attempting to teach: “protected sodomy“ to 3rd graders.

Beyond the Christian Right

Not all conservative Christians understood AIDS as God's punishment for sexual sin. Many evangelical groups and Catholic leaders even opposed this concept – and yet spoke of it in religious and moral terms.

Cardinal John O'Connor, the Archbishop of New York, drew the ire of many AIDS activists when He spoke about AIDS within the Vatican in 1989. “Good morals,” he proclaimed, “are good medicine.”

Many Christians took more progressive positions. The Southern Baptist ethicist Earl Shelp and Chaplain Ronald Sunderland worked as research fellows on the Texas Medical Center, where they first encountered individuals with AIDS. Together they began certainly one of the primary AIDS programs focused on helping gay men with AIDS without prejudice.

And many queer and feminist Christian and Jewish leaders, including Jim Mitulski, Yvette Flounder And Joel Kahnformulated queer-affirming and justice-oriented responses to the stigma of AIDS. They challenged the notion that AIDS was a “gay disease,” but additionally focused on how AIDS harmed populations that were often marginalized, including people of color, women, and drug users.

What's in a reputation?

Today, once I teach the history of the HIV/AIDS crisis, my students are sometimes confused by this early reference to homosexuality. They associate AIDS with sub-Saharan Africa, which the epicenter of the pandemic within the Nineteen Nineties.

Yet my students have grown up in a world where AIDS is significantly better understood. Thanks to the work of Activists and scientistsMany more people now know that HIV could be blocked by condoms and sterile needles. Antiretroviral therapy has proven to be very effective in Treatment of individuals in a position to receive and tolerate the medication.

But irrespective of how scientific or objective people could also be, epidemics are shaped by culture. And studying this history helps us understand more about ourselves.