38 years ago: RARE CANCER SEEN IN 41 HOMOSEXUALS

[Behind the Aegis]

Doctors in New York and California have diagnosed among homosexual men 41 cases of a rare and often rapidly fatal form of cancer. Eight of the victims died less than 24 months after the diagnosis was made.

The cause of the outbreak is unknown, and there is as yet no evidence of contagion. But the doctors who have made the diagnoses, mostly in New York City and the San Francisco Bay area, are alerting other physicians who treat large numbers of homosexual men to the problem in an effort to help identify more cases and to reduce the delay in offering chemotherapy treatment.

The sudden appearance of the cancer, called Kaposi's Sarcoma, has prompted a medical investigation that experts say could have as much scientific as public health importance because of what it may teach about determining the causes of more common types of cancer. First Appears in Spots

Doctors have been taught in the past that the cancer usually appeared first in spots on the legs and that the disease took a slow course of up to 10 years. But these recent cases have shown that it appears in one or more violet-colored spots anywhere on the body. The spots generally do not itch or cause other symptoms, often can be mistaken for bruises, sometimes appear as lumps and can turn brown after a period of time. The cancer often causes swollen lymph glands, and then kills by spreading throughout the body.

Doctors investigating the outbreak believe that many cases have gone undetected because of the rarity of the condition and the difficulty even dermatologists may have in diagnosing it.

more...

This was AIDS making its unholy debut and would mark a plague that devastated the gay community, and continues to do so to this day!

SILENCE = DEATH!

Jim, Bill, Mary, and so many others. I remember!

[Skittles]

1. I actually remember reading the initial small article about that

I have always been a news hound

I do remember thinking if felt ominous.

[Behind the Aegis]

2. You never cease to amaze me.

I was 12 at the time. I remember one small article about an accident in Monaco with a former movie star, Grace Kelly. Of course, she later died.

Of course, at 12, I was also realizing there was something "wrong" with me. I don't know what would have happened had I read such an article.

So many people are living with this disease, and still dying from it.

[Skittles]

7. one of the victims was my second cousin

she was an artist in San Francisco who contracted AIDS from a blood transfusion....she was very upset when people would ask her if she "blamed gay people", she said the hatred, it never ends, even here

[Behind the Aegis]

8. To this day, we are still blamed.

Those living with AIDS or those living with HIV still face unbearable stigmas, including getting treatment. It has gotten better in some respects, but there is still a long way to go.

I think your cousin's attitude was admirable and so uncommon then, even now.

[Skittles]

9. here's the kicker

she WAS gay - it's quite a story.....she was my dad's cousin, and had run away from home at age 15. Her mum had died and she hated her step-mother. She re-surfaced after over 30 years. I contacted her and she invited me to California to meet her. I flew to San Diego and stayed with her and her partner. It was a couple of years later she received her diagnosis. She died less than a year later.

On the plus side, I still correspond with a friend (also in California) who has been HIV+ for decades. I worked with him back in the 80's, in Austin Texas. He used to refer to him and his "girlfriend" and one day I snapped and said, you don't have a girlfriend, you're gay. If you're gonna be gay, but be gay already! No one here cares! He came out and no one did care. Heck, all of us coworkers went to one of the gay bars he and his partner frequented for a night on the town. Austin in the 80's was a very special place.

[Hekate]

3. I remember reading about it early on when it was a mysterious ripple...

...that became a devastating tsunami. As the epidemic grew ever worse, one of my favorite columnists in the LA Times, the late Al Lopez, wrote: "The poets are dying," about his friends in the gay community. The poets are dying and nobody knows why.

[RandySF]

4. Someone described the Castro neighborhood of the 80's to me as a 'war zone'

[still_one]

5. My wife was a city planner for the City of SF at the time, and people in their prime were dying

left and right from it. San Francisco, and the Mayor at the time, Dianne Feinstein, led country in efforts against this terrible disease, and the ignorance, and prejudice that accompanied it.

[pnwmom]

6. Almost all of my father's friends from that era died of AIDS, except

for his partner, who has reached retirement age without contracting the virus. (Dad also never contracted it.)

I think some in the NY medical community knew about the problem in the months before this article came out, though, because the fear of "the gay man's disease," as they called it then, was what finally brought about my parent's separation earlier that spring. My mother was so worried that somehow it might be contagious. No one really knew back then.