archivedeaths

In 1981, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a report on a rare lung infection in five 'previously healthy young men in Los Angeles'. It suggested a 'cellular-immune dysfunction related to a common exposure' and a 'disease acquired through sexual contact'. The patients were described as 'homosexuals'. Two had died.It was the first mention of what a little over a year later became known as acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, or AIDS.Although the link hadn't yet been made, at the same time, worried doctors in San Francisco and New York were...