History of HIV and AIDS

The history of the HIV and AIDS epidemic began in illness, fear and death as the world faced a new and unknown virus. However, scientific advances, such as the development of antiretroviral drugs, have enabled people with access to treatment to live long and healthy lives with HIV.

  How AIDS Changed Art Forever

Three recent exhibitions show that though HIV is no longer a death sentence, the art world is still grappling with its psychological toll.

  This ‘new’ strain of HIV is actually a good thing

Many outlets are reporting that scientists have spotted a new strain of HIV for the first time in almost two decades. It would be reasonable to assume this was bad news. It certainly sounds as if the virus, which can lead to AIDS if it’s not treated, is suddenly mutating and on the move. But this is far from the truth. In fact, this new strain of HIV is actually *good* news. For starters, the “new” strain is… not new.

 An Open Letter to the Person Who Gave Me HIV

Every time I tell someone I’m positive, I think of you. Not in anger, or resentment, but of the things about you that make me smile.

 Communities can make – or break – strategies to curb HIV

Communities have a critical role to play in ensuring that prevention interventions move from the realm of proven efficacy to real-world effectiveness. A range of new HIV prevention technologies, such as treatment and prevention, including the oral Pre-exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) and voluntary medical male circumcision, are now available. Yet global HIV incidence has declined by less than 2% per year since 2010. Research shows that these new HIV prevention modalities – such as PrEP – are underutilised. In addition, 38.5% of those infected are not receiving treatment. Retention in care remains suboptimal.

 Did Science Miss Its Best Shot at an AIDS Vaccine?

For 35 years, researchers have been trying to beat the virus that causes AIDS. For just as long, Burt Dorman has been advocating another way.

 Everything You Need to Know About HIV and AIDS

HIV is the most feared STD out there—but should it be?

 Most Americans Have Never Been HIV Tested, Why This Is Bad

What does all of this mean for the ongoing battle against HIV? When either making scrambled eggs or battling an infectious disease, you can't beat what you can't find.

 New Strain Of HIV Discovered

Luckily, HIV is not the death sentence it was just 40-years ago and stigma around the disease has waned. With research teams staying vigilant and interconnected there is hope that HIV will never again ravage families as communities, and indeed, that a cure may be in sight.

 PrEP Made HIV Prevention Easier—and It’s Getting Even Simpler

The drug Truvada, or PrEP, has helped drastically reduce new HIV infections, but taking a daily pill can be onerous. Now there might be other options.

 Slowdown in HIV/AIDS Progress Puts Focus on Young Women

Experts say the booming population of young women in sub-Saharan Africa means global infections could start rising.

 Stopping HIV Would Require an Entirely Different Trump

The president said he wants to eradicate the virus. That would mean a radical reversal of his policy and rhetoric.

 The three big studies pushing at the frontiers of HIV prevention

There are an estimated 5000 new HIV transmissions every day. Around 70% of the 37 million people living with HIV globally are in sub-Saharan Africa. Of the 1.8 million new HIV transmissions worldwide in 2017, 800 000 occurred in eastern and southern Africa. New, effective prevention strategies are essential to reducing HIV transmission. So what will it take to reduce HIV transmission? Prevention.

 Treating HIV in the tiniest babies could have huge positive implications for their future

Only a handful of exposed children are currently tested for HIV and started on treatment in the first week of life. South Africa has recently changed its policy to test children at birth and 10 weeks, but it is the only country in Africa to do so. All others have policies to test babies for HIV when they reach between four and six weeks old, by which time the viral burden in the body is high and signs of a weakened immune system may be apparent.

 We Should Treat Everyone Like We Treat HIV-Positive Patients

Don’t look to Canada, France, or Singapore for a world-class health care system. You can get the best health care in the world right here in the United States, for free. But there’s a catch: You have to be HIV-positive. Through a combination of federal and state funding, plus some very clever implementation strategies, Americans infected with HIV are eligible for incredibly comprehensive care, even if they are uninsured or underinsured. It’s amazing the program doesn’t get the attention it deserves. In fact, it should be a model for how we treat all patients.

 What Everyone Needs to Know About HIV

Did you know that 35,000 individuals in the U.S. are diagnosed with HIV each year?

 What’s a Cure, Anyway?

The blockbuster news that a second HIV patient is in full remission shows us the limitations of our language.

 ‘If We Do This Right’ Maybe H.I.V. Will Be Forgotten

A panoply of drugs in recent years has allowed some people with H.I.V. to have almost the same life expectancy as the general population. But perhaps even more striking has been the development of a drug known as PrEP, for pre-exposure prophylaxis. It enables anyone at risk of contracting H.I.V. — through unprotected sex, for example — to ward off the virus by taking a daily pill.

'The Disease of the Century': Reporting on the Origin of AIDS

A veteran medical journalist for The New York Times remembers covering the indifference, confusion, and fear of the epidemic's early years.

AIDS, It, and the Horror of the 1980s

1988 was a weird time to be a 14-year-old gay kid in America. One could find representations of gay men all over the place. They were profiled in People magazine, discussed in segments on the national news, and interviewed by a doggedly sympathetic Phil Donahue before a live studio audience. But they were also dying.

Alicia Keys Keeps Children Alive

Africa is more heavily affected by HIV and AIDS than any other region of the world. The social impact is most evident in Africa’s growing orphan population. Alicia Keys co-founded “Keep a Child Alive” and has become one of the most powerful women in the fight against HIV/AIDS.

America’s Hidden H.I.V. Epidemic

Why do America’s black gay and bisexual men have a higher H.I.V. rate than any country in the world?

At least 30% of people with new HIV infections had no idea they were exposed to the virus

More than 90 percent of new HIV infections come from people not receiving medical care for the disease. And 30 percent of new infections were transmitted from people who don't know they have HIV.

Charting A Course For The Future Of HIV Treatment

The question of whether or not there are promising treatments in development for HIV is complicated. Scientists do have potential paths forward to cure HIV infections but they don’t make any practical sense since physicians shouldn’t resort to aggressive cures for HIV when the current anti-retroviral therapies (ART) for HIV are far less risky.

Europe’s HIV Epidemic Growing at Alarming Rate, WHO Warns

Around 80 percent of those were in eastern Europe, the report found.

Hidden HIV Reservoirs Exposed by Telltale Protein

Attempts to cure HIV have been thwarted by a particular type of immune-system cell that can hide the virus. These long-lived infected T cells can evade detection by the body for years, and are hard to find, study and kill. Reliably identifying these covert reservoirs is top of the wish-list for HIV researchers, but they've had limited success.

HIV Scientists Have Failed to Protect the World's Most At-Risk Women

PrEP drugs like Truvada can drastically lower the risk of HIV transmission. But young women in South Africa are pushing for a different kind of change.

HIV/AIDS, chronic diseases and globalisation

HIV/AIDS has always been one of the most thoroughly global of diseases. In the era of widely available anti-retroviral therapy (ART), it is also commonly recognised as a chronic disease that can be successfully managed on a long-term basis.

How HIV Became a Cancer Cure

About 15 years ago he first considered using HIV to kill cancer cells. At the time, he says, “the rest of the community that did cancer immunotherapy had all been using viruses out of mice, called gammaretroviruses. And it turns out the HIV works better with human T-cells than the mouse virus does.”

I'm witnessing the near defeat of AIDS in Africa. But I fear what comes next

In 2002, when I first started working on HIV/AIDS in southern Africa, my friends and colleagues devoted every weekend to attending funerals. At that time, the antiretroviral drugs that were keeping people alive in New York and San Francisco were almost nowhere to be found in Africa, and the disease swiftly ravaged its victims. Fifteen years later, the epidemic has turned a corner in three African countries that are at the epicenter of the crisis. In Zimbabwe, Malawi, and Zambia...

People living with HIV still face enormous stigma and hate

Three decades after the rise of HIV terrorized the world, many misunderstandings attached to the disease remain — from misconceptions about whom it affects to confusion about how it’s actually transmitted. More than one in three Americans, a Kaiser Family Foundation survey found, hold at least one wrong belief about HIV transmissions.

Russia Doesn’t Want Anyone to Know About Its HIV Epidemic

The government refuses to acknowledge that it isn't supporting more than a million people infected by HIV/AIDS.

The AIDS Cure

Reservoirs of HIV hide deep within the body. Scientists are now closing in on methods to wipe them out.

The C.E.O. of H.I.V.

Michael Weinstein’s AIDS Healthcare Foundation treats an enormous number of patients — and makes an enormous amount of money. Is that why so many activists distrust him?

There's a promising new HIV vaccine candidate in the pipeline

The “mosaic vaccine” tackles the virus’s incredible genetic diversity.

This new research rewrites the history of HIV in America

If you've ever asked who brought AIDS to the United States, you've likely been told that "Patient Zero" was a man called Gaëtan Dugas. The Canadian flight attendant was blamed for carrying the virus from Africa and spreading it around the gay community in North America.

Thousands Of Americans Still Die Of AIDS Every Year

Yet antiretroviral therapy can turn the deadly disease into a manageable chronic condition.

What Will It Take to End the AIDS Epidemic?

W orld AIDS Day is, like other world disease days, a publicity gambit that has a distinctly absurd pageantry. But there is substance beyond candlelight vigils, a red ribbon hung from the White House portico, and proclamations from politicians and public health officials. Most tangibly, each World AIDS Day, held annually on Dec. 1, broadcasts official updates about the damage caused by HIV, which at last count had infected 78 million people since the epidemic surfaced in 1981 and had killed half of them. And beginning in 2012, World AIDS Day began to trumpet a new possibility that a few years earlier would have seemed preposterous, even delusional: ending the epidemic.

What Would It Take to Stop AIDS by 2030?

The United Nations announced today that the global HIV/AIDS epidemic could be slowed to a trickle within the next two decades. Can it be done?