It was July 23, 1985, and veteran Daily Variety columnist Army Archerd broke the biggest scoop of his career with that first line. In his story, Archerd revealed that movie star Rock Hudson was being treated for AIDS, marking the first time that a well-known celebrity was revealed to have the dreaded disease.
Hudson, although rumored to be gay for many years, had never publicly admitted his sexuality and was deeply closeted to the general public. Unfortunately, it was a time when hysteria about AIDS and its transmission was common, and any revelation would be career suicide.
Although Archerd initially was vilified when Hudson’s public relations machine denied the story, the truth eventually came out. As the New York Times later acknowledged, “Without Army Archerd’s column, there is a very real chance that the world might have suspected but never known what killed Rock Hudson." Hudson died in October 1985.
The world has since come a long way from those days, which date to a time when the HIV link to AIDS was little known. Today, we know that the HIV is the cause of what eventually becomes AIDS. The good news is that HIV infections can be controlled, thanks to the development of a drug cocktail that helps suppress HIV’s devastating effects on cells.
Initial Symptoms of HIV
When the virus passes into the body, HIV attacks immune system cells called CD4 cells (or T-cells, as some call them). The HIV inserts itself and works to destroy the cells, lowering the overall immune system function to where opportunistic infections and diseases can take hold, leading to full-blown AIDS.
HIV infection doesn’t announce itself loudly. Most people who acquire HIV will get a flu-like illness within a month or so after the virus takes hold. The symptoms are often mild and may even be unnoticed for busy professionals, who power through even though they may be under the weather. Viral load is highest at this point – a period called seroconversion -- and HIV can spread more efficiently during this primary phase of infection.
The symptoms of HIV infection:
1) Fever – Although it won’t be high, a slightly higher temperature can occur
2) Headache – This won’t be debilitating, but will be noticeable
3) Muscle and joint pain – This may be dismissed as flu symptoms, the result of athletic activities or even a hangover.
4) Sore throat – One of the components that may be dismissed as part of an oncoming cold, the sore throat rarely reaches high levels of pain.
5) Swollen lymph glands – Usually appearing in the neck area, the swollen glands may again be mistaken for the onset of a cold or flu.
The initial and acute stage of HIV infection can last for a few weeks.
An Unknown Plague
Most researchers believe it was originally animal-to-human transmission that is responsible for HIV infections. West African chimpanzees are the likely source of the immunodeficiency virus, acquired when the beasts were hunted for meat, and hunters came into contact with their blood, as well as consuming the kill. The initial transmission may have happened long ago, but the virus gradually mutated and was passed between humans over the course of the years.
In the pre-jet age, sexual contact between people was limited globally, which helped slow the spread of the virus. It is believed that the first AIDS cases in the United States did not occur until the 1970s, although not every researcher buys that theory, believing that prior cases were not identified properly.
In the early days of AIDS, circa 1981, people were dying from a disease that no one understood, wasting away from a plague that not only made people very sick but for which there was no apparent cure.
There were thousands of medical professionals and researchers working on the problem, intellectually and emotionally challenged by having sick people who had an unknown disease that had never been seen before. The questions loomed: How did they get it? Was it contagious? How was it transmitted? Is there anything that can be done to stop it?
Fortunately, medical researchers soon had a name for what had been informally called gay cancer, so named because large numbers of the gay community were among the initially stricken. It seemed that the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) was the cause of the illness. Without treatment, it attacks the body’s cells, leaving sufferers at risk of contracting diseases like Kaposi’s sarcoma, a rare cancer that was hardly ever seen in younger men.
Eventually – and probably because such well-known celebrities as Magic Johnson and Rock Hudson were diagnosed, putting a familiar face on the issue – panic subsided, funding specifically for HIV/AIDS was made available and research continued. That led to breakthroughs in treating HIV and AIDS, to the point where today it is no longer considered a death sentence, and most HIV-positive people can expect to live close to their normal lifespan, albeit with treatments that will suppress HIV.
Current HIV/AIDS Statistics
Even though being diagnosed with HIV is no longer the grim news it once was, it still occurs and can be lethal if improperly treated.
In the United States, more than 1 million people older than 13 are infected with HIV. Of those, more than 10 percent of them are unaware of their infection, according to statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Black men who are bisexual and men who have sex with other men are the largest groups of those infected.
Despite massive education efforts, HIV infections are increasing, although the annual numbers remain relatively stable. Each year, there are an estimated 50,000 new infections. To date, there have been close to 1.2 million people in the United States diagnosed with AIDS, and an estimated 658,000 people with an AIDS diagnosis have died in the United States.
One thing all medical professionals now know is that if it is left untreated, HIV will eventually kill its host. Treatments slow the progression to AIDS in most cases, allowing the infected to take steps to build up their systems.
The vast majority of people who acquire HIV do so through sexual contact, with the rest passing it via sharing needles or (increasingly rarely) blood transfusions. Unfortunately, HIV still has no cure.
That means a regimen of antiretroviral therapy will become part of the patient’s lifestyle. This chemical cocktail of drugs, first introduced in the mid-1990s, halted the AIDS plague, lowered the chances of infecting others and extended the lives of those already living with HIV/AIDS.
Fortunately, antiretroviral treatments are widely available, and if a blood or oral test identifies the HIV infection, immediate treatment can begin. With early intervention, HIV-positive people can avoid serious complications and go on to lead healthy and productive lives.