What Are The Changes That Occurred During The 1970's

The early 1980s was when the AIDS crisis was brought to doctors in the United States attention. This “gay-related immune deficiency (GRID)” or “gay cancer” was being seen mostly in gay men. People outside the gay community began to be affected so then it was relabeled as AIDS (acquired immune deficiency system). The videos ‘We Were Here’ and ‘How to Survive a Plague’ let us in on how people were affected during this crisis. The interviewees in the ‘We Were Here’ video expressed their thoughts on how life was during this time. A large population of gay men decided to move to San Francisco during the 1970s because thats where they were respected and were surrounded by people with the same sexual preference. The gay community began to form
In 1979, 10% of gay men were infected. Then in 1981 20% were infected, and by the time there was a test to find out if you had it, 50% of gay men in San Francisco were infected(video). 1981 was a huge year because thats when people started to get very worried. Ed, from the ‘We Were Here’ video remembers vividly walking down the street and passing the pharmacy to see photographs of a male with big purple splotches in his mouth and all over his chest. This moment had a huge impact on Ed, and his one friend noticed splotches on himself, and they both realized it was spreading rapidly. The bumps turn were known to be Kaposi Sarcoma which was a rare cancer usually found in the elderly, but instead it was being found in gay men.This was the start of the ‘gay disease’ and people wanted to know who you were getting it from and
Everyone saw that the city was not handling this epidemic correctly at all. People were comparing this to a war because of the amount of lives that were dropping left and right. You saw how stressed and overwhelmed the community was due to the government not doing anything about the situation. The ACT UP(AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) group was vocalizing as best as they could. The FDA had the power to help but they were not. They were not helping release drugs that may be a solution to cure to the epidemic, so people were getting aggravated. As time went on, AZT trials were on the market for $10,000. There was no progress with testing drugs on others, people died from being guinea pigs and too many mistakes were being made. Along with AZT, DDI was also giving negative affects on people and was a complete waste of time and money. Those in the video said that 1993 to 1995 were the worst years, but then they got ‘lucky.’ People believe if Reagan put in money for AIDS earlier, this crazy amount of people would not have died. ACT UP were the ones who got all these drugs that we have today and saved 6,000,000