A father comforts his son on deathbed. The photo that changed the face of AIDS | Hacker News Reader

A father comforts his son on deathbed. The photo that changed the face of AIDS

rarehistoricalphotos.com

82 pointsmarcodiego24 comments

Thanks for sharing this.

I don't think I've seen this photo before, but I recognize the scene.

My uncle died from AIDS related causes in 1992. He looked a lot like David at the end.

AIDS is a horrific disease. It's amazing how different outcomes are for people with access to modern treatments.

I didn't know my uncle had AIDS until after his death. At the time, the stigma against people infected by the disease was so great that he moved across the country to live with my family, and they kept his diagnosis a secret until his passing.

I remember traveling with him on a road trip to California when I was 12. It was a great adventure, and I'm really happy we got to do something like that together.

this is why i fear people judging others for their sicknesses. my uncle died of aids in the 90s, it was very upsetting losing him and i remember how horrible the stigmatization was, the thing i heard the most often was, “well they shouldn’t have been messing around” and “shoot them all so we can stop the spread of the virus” and “this is god’s judgement on america”.

there was a lot of fear and hatred towards people in the early days, not everyone but it was a real fear in a lot of people’s minds.

it’s hard for me when i see similar things happening today, i really wish we could approach these rogue viruses in a different way, at least from the public relations perspective. i get the fear part but we gotta realize that these are humans who ended up in a terrible unfortunate situation.

this photo almost made me cry because it hurts me to remember what happened with him.

Perhaps the most important contrast that can be made here is between the ideas about causality. When AIDS first hit hard it was gay men in coastal cities, so people quickly became comfortable with the idea that rampant decadent buttsex was the cause and the issue and that allowed them to frame the whole mess in a more comfortable way. Later it was found that the virus had been for some time percolating in the Caribbean. Many stayed stuck to the original narrative and others came up with a minor variation that decadent travelers were the cause and the spread and the only at risk. Only much later was it found that the virus started in the wilds of Africa, and by that point many had already locked in their own preferred framing and causality story.

When COVID-19 hit people saw Wuhan, the wet market there, and the virology institute as being obvious scapegoats. Seriously studying and pinpointing the origins of infectious agents often takes decades and much rigorous science, but once again a simple story was quickly set to assign blame and explain the tragedy in simple terms. Now it is common knowledge worldwide that the virus was created or accidentally caused in a lab in Wuhan even though the true inception story may be quite different and perhaps will remain unknown to us for decades. The desire for simple stories to direct blame ends up being even more powerful than the killing power of a pandemic virus. Such is the human condition.

It also doesn't help that there are entities out there will actively make it hard to do proper investigations.

> The biggest opponents of doing anything about AIDS, anything at all, were conservatives trumpeting family values.

Reagan’s response to HIV/AIDS should be a shameful memory for all republicans. Mike Pence willfully made the HIV pandemic in Indiana worse. Americans learned nothing and instead history repeated itself.

>Reagan’s response to HIV/AIDS should be a shameful memory for all republicans.

Shame is not a characteristic that republicans are renowned for.

I don’t understand.

> The biggest opponents of doing anything about AIDS, anything at all, were conservatives trumpeting family values.

And then later in the article:

> The notion of “pregnancy is the only drawback to sex” ended up setting the groundwork for HIV spread amongst the gay community, as there was no need for the use of condoms.

Diseases which can be sexually transmitted among humans have existed a lot longer than AIDS. Syphilis (as the first STD that comes to mind) does not discriminate by gender or sexual orientation, and while it isn’t a death sentence, it can be fatal, and many of its symptoms can drastically reduce quality of life.

I’m not sure I understand what this article is saying. Did gay men at the time not consider syphilis a threat worthy of protecting themselves?

The 1950s through 1970s were the golden ages of antibiotics. New ones discovered all the time, and minimal resistance. Stuff like syphilis was readily curable.

So Hep B, herpes, HPV and anything else that is viral and not readily cured by a course of antibiotics is simply not a concern?

I’m not a doctor, gay man, or a sexually active person, but it doesn’t take much research to figure out that unprotected sex with random people will cause health problems that cannot be waved off with a simple pill.

Believe it or not, sexually transmitted diseases were not much of a concern from the sexual revolution of the 1960s until the arrival of herpes, or at least the re-branding of herpes as a very bad thing. [1]

So everyone was afraid of the herps, an untreatable condition.

Then AIDS came along!

[1] https://slate.com/technology/2019/12/genital-herpes-stigma-h...

> So Hep B, herpes, HPV and anything else that is viral and not readily cured by a course of antibiotics is simply not a concern?

For the most part, correct. Herpes and HPV hit basically everyone; chances are you've had one or both. Hep B is less prevalent, but still quite widespread (Wiki says 1/3 of people will get it eventually), and in most cases has minimal symptoms.

They're nothing like HIV.

All of the known STDs at the time we’re bacterial and cured with antibiotics. Syphilis was curable for decades. AIDS scared the shit out of everyone because science didn’t know what was going on. Fauci is a damn hero.

>. All of the known STDs...

herpes and human papilloma virus are both viral stds long known.

I was in college then and with recurrent strep (bacterial) treated in infectious diseases at a major hospital in Chicago, where HIV patients were also treated; they (science, doctors) knew what was going on very well, but how to effectively treat it was totally the unknown, to your point.

Were you around when this came about?

There was a lot of fear and uncertainty. There was also a strong undercurrent of hate, and that these gay men deserve to die for being "bad".

There still is a lot of hate (hat tip to Mitch Hedberg), but it was worse back then.

I lost several friends to this disease -- it was, and remains, heartbreaking.

I’m not questioning the reality of AIDS or its impact. I’m trying to understand the climate and people’s outlook of the time.

You’re right: I wasn’t around during that era. I was born in ‘86 in a faraway society that did not see these issues the same way. However, I was taught from a young age that sexual promiscuity lacking precautions was a sure pathway to disease and possibly early death.

Was this not common knowledge in the US? Were gay men fundamentally more reckless than a baseline American?

> However, I was taught from a young age that sexual promiscuity lacking precautions was a sure pathway to disease and possibly early death.

Sex ed changed pretty significantly in the 80s/90s, yes.

> Were gay men fundamentally more reckless than a baseline American?

The attitude of "baseline Americans" was likely fairly similar - if you catch something, you can get a shot of penicillin. The US military in WWII got pretty comfortable treating "venereal disease" after shore leave.

>However, I was taught from a young age that sexual promiscuity lacking precautions was a sure pathway to disease and possibly early death

Yes, because you grew up post-AIDs. Pre-AIDs, it was different.

If you grew up before AIDs, you would have been taught the greatest danger of promiscuous sex was unwanted pregnancy.

Actually getting condoms used to be a highly stigmatized pain in the ass back in the "caveman" days in large swaths of the world (especially in large swaths of the US). You came up in a very different environment.

Not really. You just didn't want everyone knowing you're having sex. Especially in small communities.

Other commenters are appropriately addressing the nature of other STDs and attitudes at the time.

Yes, they were more reckless because until then they pretty much could be (caveats for the risks already known, but those were equal opportunity offenders).

Your lessons on the dangers were based on those learned at this time. When it hit there was no understanding and it was frightening for all.

You could theoretically argue that you reap what you sow in regards to gay men having unprotected sex with many partners. Some biblical/moral whatever.

Let us suppose this argument for a minute. Very quickly it wasn’t just gay men, but innocent housewives who those men infected and then babies as well.

For that reason, if for no other reason, research into treatment was necessary. What, you’re going to let someone die because someone else you don’t like dies of the same thing?

The trouble with “god’s punishment” has always been that his punishments have always been rather gangster-esque. That is, lots of peripheral casualties.

>Did gay men at the time not consider syphilis a threat worthy of protecting themselves?

Well, there was penicillin. I think most just preferred 'rawdogging' it.

The culture told gay men that they were impossible and sex was bad. Gay men discovered on their own that they actually were possible and did in fact exist and when they had sex it was good. So there was a cultural idea that sex being dangerous was created by the church and other large social structures in order to control people. If you were straight and wanted a family, as is the case with many, then this might not be such a big deal.

This is similar to modern conflicts such as the projection that drug users or gun owners are inherently malicious.

> The biggest opponents of doing anything about AIDS, anything at all, were conservatives trumpeting family values.

Hard to take an article seriously after reading this part.

> The outbreak of HIV and AIDS in the USA was largely due to how the government handled it and the Sexual Revolution that took place from the 1960s to the 1980s.

These sorts of articles playing the blame game without evidence are really part of the problem with modern political dialogue.

Throughout the article, the word "bath house" isn't even mentioned despite being the real reason for the outbreak in the gay community.

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