Thirty years ago, AIDS was a total mystery to us.
Six years into what CDC already termed an epidemic, 358 AIDS cases in twenty states had been confirmed and 136 people had died. No one knew why.
Several people I knew were probably already infected with HIV. I learned this only as they died over the next few years. One was a popular Connecticut Congressman, Stew McKinney, who was a moving force behind federal funding for services for homeless people. Another was a lawyer named Jim Hurley.
I first met Jim when we were high school debaters.
His school debated against my school at several local and regional debate tournaments. I remembered him as bright, easy-going, and friendly.
We reintroduced ourselves during our first year in college, when we crossed paths in his dormitory one day. He hadn’t changed much. He was personable, still friendly, and happy to exchange a few stories about Catholic high schools and debating.
I transferred to Wesleyan and lost track of him after that. I became active in Connecticut politics and government after college, and Jim went to law school. With his skill set, he must have been a very good lawyer.
Our paths crossed just one more time, but not in person.
The next time I saw him, it was years later on a videotape that was played in 1987 at an AIDS conference at Central Connecticut State University. On tape, he still looked pretty much the same as I remembered him. But he was 34 years old and dying of AIDS.
One of the points Jim made on that videotape stayed with me. He said that it didn’t really matter how he got AIDS. What mattered was what we would do to prevent others from getting it in the future.
By that simple standard, there are now well over a million reasons why we haven’t done enough.
There was a time when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tracked and reported on AIDS cases every single week. Now we have to wait years to find data about how many people have HIV and die from AIDS.
In 2009 – the year for which most recent data are available – there were 48,100 new HIV infections in the United States, and 17,774 people died as a result of AIDS.
Last year, CDC also reported that in 2009:
- New HIV infection was as common in men as salmonella poisoning and as common in women as pertussis.
- Among all people between 15 and 24, new HIV infection was twice as common as Valley Fever – a disease well-known and frequently diagnosed in the southwest.
- Among men between 40 and 64 – the population most likely to have been directly affected by AIDS over the years – new HIV infection was more common than Lyme Disease – a disease well-known and frequently diagnosed in the northeast.
AIDS-related deaths declined dramatically when drug cocktails were introduced during the 1990s, and so we began to forget about how serious it is. People are living longer with HIV infection than they ever did before, but HIV still shaves up to 30 years from life expectancy, and still accounts for more deaths in the under 45 population than diabetes and stroke.
The AIDS epidemic isn’t nearly as under control as we might think.
And it is worse in some places than others. Connecticut, for example, has more new HIV infections than any other state in New England.
But for the most part, the HIV/AIDS epidemic has moved south.
Florida leads the nation in new HIV infections, with over 5,400 in 2009 alone – nearly as many as New York City and the entire State of California, two other “ports of entry,” combined.
HIV death rates are also highest in Florida, Louisiana and Maryland. New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Tennessee, Mississippi, Georgia, and South Carolina are all in the next tier.
The half million Americans who have died and the 1.2 million who are living with HIV are also evidence that Jim’s Hurley’s message was poorly heeded.
Nearly all of them got it after he made his videotape and was featured by Newsweek Magazine in its August 1987 “Faces of AIDs” issue.
We can do better than this. Even since the most recent HIV data were published, over 100,000 more American men, women, and children have been infected.
April is STD awareness month. In memory of our lost friends and to save lives in the future, we must do more to eradicate this relentless and deadly disease.
April is STD Awareness Month. To increase awareness about AIDS, please consider sharing this column with friends and colleagues. If you have questions about this column or would like to receive an email notifying you when new Our Health Policy Matters columns are published, please email gionfriddopaul@gmail.com.
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