My cousin died of aids in 1986 he came to see me a week before he passed. Noone would let him come near me I was a newborn I haven't even had my shots yet. I always think of him im sad he never got to greet me all he wanted was to say goodbye. Everyone in my house was afraid of him cus they said he was skin and bones he brought over a cake and grandma said when he left they threw the cake away. I love my cousin he will always be in my heart. 35 years later.
Um.... no your cousin didn't die from AIDS. If he was gay and hung out in night clubs doing poppers, he died from that. If he was merely diagnosed HIV positive then he died from AZT. Watch HOUSE OF NUMBERS here on RU-vid.
I always felt so bad for the Ray brothers, I was just a couple years older than the eldest and was kinda an outcast in my southern town too, so I very much empathized with their plight. When I heard of their home being burned down I can't forget how sickened with humanity I felt. I hope they have found the peace in death they weren't given in life. RIP Ricky and Robert
@@nikicarrie4071There was no one to sue. They couldn't prove who burned down their house, so there was nothing they could do except leave town. They moved to Sarasota I believe, and the people of that city weren't a bunch of ignorant rednecks, so the town embraced them and they were allowed to attend school and grow up there.
Joey DiPaolo is still alive, as well as the youngest Ray brother Randy. It's so sad that people's ignorance caused them to put _SICK CHILDREN_ through such immense pain.
Jason Browne gay guys should of been less promiscuous too.. I mean I’m all for sex and fun but fuck sake, barebacking 100’s of different guys a year is ridiculous... ain’t no wonder that shit spread like wildfire
^^^^^^^Just exactly and precisely like slutty whorish STRAIGHTS/HETERO-sexuals and constant PREGNANCIES and unwanted babies or abortions and heavily increased over population, DUH! Don't throw stones if you live in a Glass House, Bubba! Wow talk about a universal and highly long historical "Wildfire" that should and needs to be put out immediately!
@@lilbirdie8463 - Read "And the Band Played On". It's written by a gay man & he makes it clear that gay/bi men definitely were irresponsible in the early days. At least SOME of them. But part of the reason was because the gov't was not issuing any definitive statements about how it was spread. There were tons of theories ranging from drugs to Crisco (yep) to everything else under the sun as the cause. These were official theories put forth by the CDC. But without funding they weren't able to PROVE what caused AIDS until late '83, and there was no HIV test until '84. There's no excuse for the president's radio silence on the issue until 1987 or the Red Cross's suppression of the fact that HIV was tainting the blood supply (they didn't start testing until '85 though they could've tested for the presence of Hep B which co-existed with AIDS about 90% of the time much earlier). EVERYONE DROPPED THE BALL except for the LGBT community who picked up the slack & formed advocacy groups, passing out information leaflets & protesting the unfair treatment of this disease compared to toxic shock, Legionnaire's disease & the Tylenol poisonings--all of which killed FAR fewer people. Gay people were merely the first group (in America) to be noticed with the disease, but it's existed in Africa for much longer in heterosexuals. To blame gays is short-sighted & ignorant. Almost instantly, within 1981 even, cases were popping up in drug users & female prostitutes. But of course since it was labeled a gay disease (GRID), doctors were reluctant to count those as AIDS cases when they most certainly were. #knowyourhistory #factsoverfeelings
Mac TonyMicMac HIV was affecting the homosexual community way worse than the heterosexual community. It is way easier to transfer through anal sex. Don’t let emotion overtake logic. The homosexual community didn’t do enough and neither did the government. Both were wrong.
Why Michael Callen? Because he had sex with 3,000+ gay guys? J/K. Honestly I admire him being so honest about all the STD’s he contracted, it’s genuinely mind-blowing to me.
They were indeed challenging times i was a young man 18 when it was hitting the news when i was in sydney. The terror was palable i remember walking down oxford street and feeling the stress coming from people but not having the emotional intellegence to comprehend it made it all the more frightening. People had not faced anything like it and did not know what and how to cope. fortunately there were people who having experienced trauma themselves and processed it from past experiences were able to begin to form groups to help out the community. A lot of thanks goes to these guys in america who informed the local australian community on possible approachs to supporting our own. Though australia had a lot of its own heros too. My respects go out to those individuals some of whom are still with us. And to those fellow long term surivors i hope you all landed yourselves a wonderful lives in the aftermath of our truama.
he/his mother falsely labeled himself as having AIDS for publicity or to sensationalize his story - he never had AIDS...everyone diagnosed with AIDS in the 80s is deceased without exception. Those diagnosed with HIV in the 80s may or may not have progressed to AIDS before Anti-retrovirals changed everything. Obviously Joe only had HIV and it never progressed
It made me cry listening to it. I was there, in NYC from 1983 to 1989, then I moved to SF. I was in my 20s. And here I am today, 61, miraculoulsy uninfected and still trying to forge new friendships with contemporaries, but is seems difficult to do as my generation of gay men was essentially wiped-out.
@@Genuinelybeautiful1985 That's just not true. The majority of gay men changed their sexual practices as the info about how it was transmitted came out, and because their friends were dying in front of them! By the time they came out with the Aids test in 1985, the disease had been circulating in the major cities in the US for 8 years, and 50% of the gay men in San Fransisco were already infected. In addition to IV drug users, hemophiliacs, transfusion recipients, prostitutes, and straight people started to get it as well. And given that the disease started in Africa where it was transmitted primarily heterosexually, it's more than past time people like you stop placing all the blame on the gay community! They've already paid a high enough price as it is without homophobic losers causing them more pain and grief! It's not your job to judge them...you're infringing on God's territory!
@LamelKendrick That's a low blow. Callen did not knowingly have unprotected sex once he knew he was infected. He was a true warrior in a horrific battle, @ a time when few were in the corner of AIDS patients. I think his passion & determination to fight kept him alive as long as it did.
I hope the people who treated those boys like that and burned the house down are living with guilt. Or better yet have been judged by the Jesus they no don’t claim to believe in.
Why do you believe the people who did that were non believers? Statistically atheists have the lowest prison population of any demographic and commit less crime than the religious.
There's a major rockstar @ 20:46. He's not Freddie Mercury; he's America's favorite immunologist. Something tells me decades later he'll still be in the same role.
@morganmadison AZT brought the mother-to-infant HIV transmission rate from 68% to 8% & became a cornerstone of pregnancy care in women infected w/ HIV. It was also administered for the first 18 months of life to babies born infected, to help ensure their seroconversion to negative once their mothers' antibodies ceased to be present in their blood.
Morton Downey Jr's brother was a guest on his show. He announced that he was gay and tested positive for HIV and that he loved his brother. What year and when was the sudden change of heart? He was an awful person.
because he was his brother and he loved him so now he cares i guess. This is a Peopless article about the episode people.com/archive/his-love-for-a-brother-with-aids-brings-morton-downeys-compassion-out-of-the-closet-vol-29-no-24/
No excuse, hut hindsight is always 20/20, isn't it. Do you remember the feeling of not knowing what causes AIDS and how it's spread? HIV was discovered first in 1985, but that didn't clear all the questions either.
People need to be more understanding and less judgmental about people who wouldn’t come into the rooms, touch patients, etc. , hindsight is 20/20. At first nobody knew how it was transmitted. It COULD have been airborne. If you got it, it was a death sentence. let’s all keep that in mind.
@@laurarichter1780 Someone has to and TB is also rampant amongst healthcare workers. It is a risk you take, but not knowing AT THAT TIME, was a frightening experience.
The problem here was multipronged. 1st conservative Govt on both sides of Atlantic that saw early Aids Epidemic in homosexuals 2nd a very unique new virus which wasnt understood as to the way it caused disease 3rd pharmaceutical companies that only had a handful of researchers. For any treatment to surface an adequate size sample size is necessary to carry out the necessary studies. It seems the flood gates of funding were opened once Aids emerged in not just the homosexual communities but also in heterosexual population in particular women.
It was not taken seriously because they thought that hiv existed only in homosexuals or iv drug users They thought it was a a disease for just minorities not that anyone and everyone could get it so the world was just not really treating it as a serious threats to the entire population that's why they kind of wasn't really on it right away.
@@agatamalecka8209 - you need to take IV drug users out of your minority theory and say gay men as gay women were and are the least likely to contract it via 'sex'. It was called GRID for a reason and it was not known that it transferred via blood (thus IV needle sharing). If that was known/provable then testing blood donations for Hepatitis B would've happened a lot sooner; like was suggested. Also the whole world didn't see it through the same eyes America did. The first cases in Europe weren't of gay men and it was taken very seriously. The case numbers however were very low compared to America where it ran rampant through the gay community. So that stigma did direct public perception (naturally so) as well as scientists who weren't going to spend their own money (on the seemingly impossible) or others couldn't get funding to study a disease sexually transmitted between men. - _fortunately the main research group in the U.S.A. were communicating with other countries and were aware it wasn't just gay men. Unfortunately it did spread easily via sex and the people presenting with the illness continued to be gay men which made it very difficult to research on a very limited budget. Until cases outside the gay population started to arise doctors and scientists could only trace the spread. So a baby being born positive certainly helped research in the main facilities around the world. So many cases went un-diagnosed or misdiagnosed because there was no reason to even consider a middle-aged woman had GRID.
@@Dee-zy5gh so I didn’t word to your perfection, no need to jump on others comments cause you don’t like their wording, this is the comment section, I used a wrong word, so what, life has bigger issues
You are correct. There was a lot of ignorance in the gay community, and not just from government agencies and representatives. It's sad, but it's true! I don't have gay people, and I don't call them ignorant out of hatred. However, you need to take some responsibility.
We should never forget the victims …everyone who knew someone who died - should think about them once a day - they all died way too young. Imagine in your 20s being given a death sentence. We should all be thankful at the wonders of science now that the disease is almost clinically cured.
Zidovudine (AZT) was first created in 1964. So I am soooooo very curious why those drug companies were acting like it was a new invention and that they put R&D into a novel drug and therefore ‘give me zillions pls’?
Thalidomide. It was an anti-nausea medication that was prescribed to pengnant women dealing with morning sickness but it ended up creating severe fetal deformities (eg. missing limbs etc.)
@aleixoqs Thalidomide administered to pregnant women caused a malformation called phocomelia in their fetuses, shortened or absent limbs w/ absent or underdeveloped hands or fingers.
I appreciate how this people felt let down by the government, but those of us who are older didn't expect our Presidents to make public pronouncements about sex or any disease. Presidents were for foreign policy mainly. With the exception of Legionnaire's disease, which was air borne and killed people quickly, I can't remember any President mentioning any other disease in my lifetime. There were also a lot of poor whites in ''fly over country'' that didn't have health care/access.
i feel bad for the kids and anyone who go the virus thru blood transfusions, clotting factor etc and others who got it thru no fault of their own but the gays who slept with thousands of complete strangers and got countless std's...nope no sympathy at all
These homosexuals need to take responsibility. They were the ones who apread it. Even when they had enough warning, they still carried on sleeping around
Stop it..wives caught it kids caught it..if it spread thru hetero sex,would that population not have sex?These holier than thou people are pretty much the definition of evil
@mandyclark6602 when Nietzsche wrote that he was lamenting the vacuum that removing religion would cause and the subsequent nihilism that would replace Christian morality. His fear of nihilism and our reaction to it was shown in The Will to Power, in which he wrote: “What I relate is the history of the next two centuries. I describe what is coming, what can no longer come differently: the advent of nihilism… For some time now our whole European culture has been moving as toward a catastrophe.” And in the 20th century his prediction came true. FEATURED
