Bay Area Reporter :: 50 years in 50 weeks: 1981 s AIDS editorial ebar.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from ebar.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
While News stories covered the May 21 White Night Riots, in lighter fare, drag theatre in 1979 s Arts section included an interview, ads and a review of Divine s show, The Neon Woman, while porn stars served as a lure to a members-only health club.
AIDS first came to the world s attention with a June 5, 1981, report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about five cases of Pneumocystis pneumonia (PCP) among young gay men in Los Angeles. A second report on cases of PCP and Kaposi sarcoma in New York City and California followed a month later.
The disease that would come to be known as AIDS was first mentioned in the Bay Area Reporter in a July 2 Health Shorts column about Gay Men s Pneumonia potentially linked to poppers buried on page 34.
Dr. Robert Boland s gay health column in the August 13 issue was headlined New Bugs . No Alarm. Boland suggested Kaposi sarcoma (KS) and PCP might be linked to cytomegalovirus, a virus in the herpes family. No one knows what these new bugs have to do with gay life, he wrote. This is a truly hot issue and a number of eager researchers are involved. . Stay tuned for developments.