AIDS: A memorial
service in Central Park tallies the dead in 1983
July 27, 1982
A Name for the Plague
By Unmesh Kher
Almost
everybody who had an interest in the situation was represented there
that pleasant summer Tuesday in Washington, including gay-community
leaders, federal bureaucrats and the investigative team from the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that had taken a lead role in
tracking the situation. What was it? A disease that just 13 months
earlier had blipped on the CDC's radar screen was rapidly turning
epidemic, particularly among gay men and drug addicts. Yet no one agreed
on what to call it.
Because the disease critically weakened the
immune system and was often accompanied by a rare cancer, it had been
labeled gay-related immune deficiency, or GRID, by some people, gay
cancer by others. It wasn't, however, restricted to gays. At the
meeting, a less exclusive name was suggested: acquired immunodeficiency
syndrome, or AIDS. The acronym had staying power—as has the
epidemic. More than 22 million people worldwide have died of AIDS over
the past two decades, and today 42 million others live with the virus
that causes it. New medicines have made it possible for those who have
the disease to lead productive lives, but there is still no cure.
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