HISTORY OF THE AIDS
AIDS was first reported June 5, 1981,
when the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recorded a
cluster of Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (now still classified as PCP
but known to be caused by Pneumocystis jirovecii) in five homosexual men
in Los Angeles. In the beginning, the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention (CDC) did not have an official name for the disease, often
referring to it by way of the diseases that were associated with it, for
example, lymphadenopathy, the disease after which the discoverers of
HIV originally named the virus. They also used Kaposi's Sarcoma and
Opportunistic Infections, the name by which a task force had been set up
in 1981. In the general press, the term GRID, which stood for
Gay-related immune deficiency, had been coined. The CDC, in search of a
name, and looking at the infected communities coined “the 4H disease,”
as it seemed to single out Haitians, homosexuals, hemophiliacs, and
heroin users. However, after determining that AIDS was not isolated to
the homosexual community, the term GRID became misleading and AIDS was
introduced at a meeting in July 1982. By September 1982 the CDC started
using the name AIDS, and properly defined the illness.
