First article about HIV - 1981

This article is credited with being the first widely noticed report on what would become the AIDS epidemic. It's before they called it AIDS or HIV, and in fact they thought it was actually some sort of cancer.

The medical investigators say some indirect evidence actually points away from contagion as a cause. None of the patients knew each other, although the theoretical possibility that some may have had sexual contact with a person with Kaposi's Sarcoma at some point in the past could not be excluded, Dr. Friedman-Kien said. 

Dr. Curran said there was no apparent danger to nonhomosexuals from contagion. ''The best evidence against contagion,'' he said, ''is that no cases have been reported to date outside the homosexual community or in women.'' 

Dr. Friedman-Kien said he had tested nine of the victims and found severe defects in their immunological systems. The patients had serious malfunctions of two types of cells called T and B cell lymphocytes, which have important roles in fighting infections and cancer. 

But Dr. Friedman-Kien emphasized that the researchers did not know whether the immunological defects were the underlying problem or had developed secondarily to the infections or drug use. more