HIV/AIDS history through the pages of Out Front

The first obvious HIV/AIDS related news coverage in Out Front was an obscure news brief in the July, 24 1981 issue.

The article, titled “Unique Pnuemonia strikes gay men,” was about a condition that had “taken the lives of several gay men” in major U.S. cities who were otherwise young and healthy, which was odd because the form of pneumonia usually only affects those with severely debilitating illnesses like cancer.

At the time, Hepatitis B was the top gay men’s health issue appearing in Out Front –through public service ads and stories about efforts towards developing a vaccine. There had been a lengthy report on the “stigma” associated with pubic lice and increasing outreach efforts on other kinds of sexually-transmitted infections – but nothing predicting the coming crisis.

Out Front’sfrom before HIV was known or named are a historical record of what the community was thinking in a time of fear and uncertainty around HIV/AIDS – and a time when LGBT media coverage was vital because there was no Internet, and mainstream media that were first dismissive, then sensational about the crisis. The first story, ominous in retrospect, must have been taken as a curiosity – no doubt seen in passing by some of the gay men who would eventually themselves succumb to the epidemic. Some were probably already infected, reading reports of a story that gripped New York and San Francisco unaware of what was already taking place in their own bodies.

The next story was three months later, on “Homosexual Sarcoma Cases” – referring to Karposi’s Sarcoma, a cancer presenting as dark spots or welts that is caused by a separate now known to coincide with AIDS. It appeared linked to the pneumonia cases, and caught the U.S. Center for Disease Control’s attention when incidents spiked from dozens of known cases July 3 to over 700 by October.

There were no additional reports in Out Front on the mysterious “gay syndrome” for several months. In May 1982, Out Front reported that the condition, still unnamed, was associated with many other forms of cancers, but there were still “No clear risk factors,” one researcher said.

In June, it had been reported that the condition was occurring solely in gay men and heterosexuals who injected drugs. The “Gay Disease” had been linked to several different kinds of opportunistic infections and occurred in “20 states and seven foreign countries,” and it was lethal. Fully 40 percent of those with the condition had already died, Out Front reported. As patients presenting symptoms were tracked for a longer period, the 40 percent figure rose to 50 percent, then higher – physicians began seeing it as universally fatal.

It was then that the story took off.