Patti Singer
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Editor's Note: This story by Patti Singer was originally published in 2016. We republish it to acknowledge the 40th anniversary of the first cases that would be linked to HIV/AIDS in a now historic edition of the CDC’s
Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report released June 5, 1981.
At the time, Dr. William Valenti was an infectious disease physician at the University of Rochester. Now Senior Vice President for Strategic Advancement, Chief of Innovation, Co-Founder, and Staff Physician at Trillium Health, he said in a statement Friday;
“Something about it was troubling – it was a cluster of cases in gay men. This was during a time when people rarely talked about sexual health or sexually transmitted infections. It would eventually become a global pandemic,” Valenti recalled.