International Health Partnership

Posts Tagged ‘initially homosexual men’

Before we can start looking for a cause, we need first to clarify exactly what kind of disease we are talking about.

In early 1981, several physicians in New York and California began to report some strange new disease outbreaks.

In both places, previously healthy young men appeared with rare diseases including Kaposi’s sarcoma (a type of tumor) and PCP (a type of pneumonia), something hitherto unprecedented in this type of people.

Within months, dozens of similar cases were reported in 23 states across the U.S. and the UK, representing the beginning of a massive and unprecedented epidemic. 5

Doctors quickly discovered a distinctive feature of these cases. More than anything, these men lacked a particular type of white blood cells essential to a healthy immune system. Read the rest of this entry »