The emergence of AIDS

On June 5, 1981, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published a report describing a rare lung infection known as Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia in five homosexual men in Los Angeles. Expert review of the cases suggested that the disease likely was acquired through sexual contact and that it appeared to be associated with immune dysfunction caused by exposure to some factor that predisposed the affected individuals to opportunistic infection. The following month the CDC published a report describing an outbreak of cases of a rare cancer called Kaposi sarcoma in homosexual men in New York City and San Francisco. The report noted that in many instances the cancers were accompanied by opportunistic infections, such as P. carinii pneumonia. The infections and cancers were later determined to be manifestations of AIDS. In addition to affecting homosexual men, the disease was detected in intravenous drug users, who became infected mainly by sharing contaminated hypodermic needles.

In 1983 French and American researchers isolated the causative agent, HIV. (In 2008 French virologists Françoise Barré-Sinoussi andLuc Montagnier were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for their discovery of HIV.) By 1985 serological tests to detect the virus had been developed./.../