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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Elizabeth Fee, PhD, National Library of Medicine, History of Medicine Division, National Institutes of Health, 8600 Rockville Pike, Building 38, 1E21, Bethesda, MD 20894 and Manon Parry, MA, MSc, Curator, National Library of Medicine, 8600 Rockville Pike MSC 3819, Bldg. 38 Rm. 1E-21, Bethesda, MD 20894, 301.594.1948, parrym@mail.nlm.nih.gov.

When a new immune deficiency disease was recognized in 1981, it was almost immediately characterized as gay-related. The early association of HIV/AIDS with marginal groups—homosexuals and IV drug users--structured social and political responses to the disease. Many countries began to enact restrictive travel policies and to contemplate compulsory testing or even quarantine for people with AIDS. In 1983, a team of specialists went to investigate a series of mysterious deaths in Kinshasa, Zaire, and concluded that these patients were dying of the same disease that was killing young men in New York and California. Jonathan Mann became convinced that the disease was heterosexually transmitted and had potential to become a worldwide pandemic. He in turn convinced Halfdan Mahler, Director General of WHO, that HIV/AIDS was not only killing promiscuous gay men in the western world, but was an immanent threat to the entire developing world. Mann argued that AIDS was a social disease, flourishing in conditions of poverty, oppression, urban migration, gender inequality, and social violence. Convinced, Mahler made Mann the director of the Global Program on AIDS. In that position, and because of his eloquence and passion, Mann was able to build a massive and effective program, mobilizing ministers of health around the world to address the AIDS epidemic, and advocating a human rights framework for understanding the disease. Ousted from WHO in 1990, Mann became the first professor of health and human rights at Harvard University.

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