Quotes About AIDS

I have covered wars, before the epidemic began and since. They are all ugly and painful and unjust, but for me, nothing has matched the dread I felt while walking through the Castro, the Village, or Dupont Circle at the height of the AIDS epidemic.

The U.S. government has in recent years fought what it termed wars against AIDs, drug abuse, poverty, illiteracy and terrorism. Each of those wars has budgets, legislation, offices, officials, letterhead - everything necessary in a bureaucracy to tell you something is real.

C. Everett 'Chic' Koop became U.S. Surgeon General under President Reagan. He was a world renowned pediatric surgeon who had a tumultuous Senate confirmation process due to partisanship. Chic took office in January 1982, a time of 'tobacco wars' and a new and evolving terrifying disease that we ultimately came to know as AIDS.

The advent of AIDS circa 1980 has really forced medicine and biology to take enormous steps just for sheer survival. The same way war propels hard technology, AIDS has created wartime conditions in the field of biology that will have all sorts of spin-offs.

We will not have any of these cases in the Soviet Union," said a Soviet delegate confidently. Don Francis couldn't resist saying to Marc Conant in his loudest stage whisper, "And they won't, all right." In a stern Russian accent, Francis continued: "You have AIDS—bang, bang, bang." The Soviets were not amused.

Most importantly, the epidemic was only news when it was not killing homosexuals. In this sense, AIDS remained a fundamentally gay disease, newsworthy only by the virtue of the fact that it sometimes hit people who weren't gay

The bitter truth was that AIDS did not just happen to America—it was allowed to happen by an array of institutions, all of which failed to perform their appropriate tasks to safeguard the public health.

On June 21, AIDS patients at George Washington University Hospital opened their eyes to see a woman in a white linen gown moving among them. She wore no mask or gloves and was not afraid to approach their beds and ask the young men about their illness. Mother Teresa came to visit the AIDS patients directly from the White House, where President Reagan, who had yet to acknowledge the disease, had awarded her the Medal of Freedom.

The finding of AIDS in infants and children who are household contacts of patients with AIDS or persons with risks for AIDS has enormous implications with regard to ultimate transmissibility of this syndrome," Fauci says. "If routine close contact can spread the disease, AIDS takes on an entirely new dimension," he adds.

When a London gay switchboard's lines broke down because they were so overwhelmed with AIDS calls, telephone company employees refused to fix them because they were afraid of contracting AIDS through the wiring.

In the alley where I last saw Justine, there was no sun. The storefronts displayed carnation bouquets and orthopedic shoes and hearing aids, but in the alley, these same stores were just dark walls, and looking at them was like looking at the back of someone who has turned and walked away from you.

AIDS does not inevitably lead to death, especially if you suppress the co-factors that support the disease. It is very important to tell this to people who are infected.

Listen to the Reverend Jerry Falwell, founder of Liberty University: 'AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals; it is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals.'121

Wouldn't it be great if you could only get AIDS by giving money to television preachers?

On December 17, 1984, I had surgery to remove two inches of my left lung due to pneumonia. After two hours of surgery the doctors told my mother I had AIDS.

I think my apocalyptic feelings went deeper than [heavily influenced by Reagan and AIDS]. I'm really at peace with how afraid I am.

Wouldn't it be wonderful to have a cure for AIDS in the marketplace before Magic Johnson gets AIDS?

It is my mission to ensure that HIV-positive children and children with AIDS are no longer overlooked and that they begin receiving the treatment and care they deserve.

So the experts think we could have an AIDS-free generation in Africa by 2015, even if the mothers are positive.

The songs that I've written about Africa, and AIDS and HIV and about the power of humanitarian love, those songs, I'm gonna sing them because I know that it's real.

Everything changed after AIDS," Dr. Molnár had just explained to him. "From then on, blood was more dangerous than shit.

I lost a very dear friend who lived with AIDS for about 17 years. Rejecting early treatments that were iffy, he thought he saved himself. I really miss him a lot.

I enjoy being the messenger for God in terms of letting people know about HIV and AIDS.

When AIDS was at its most brutal, frightening, my-God-what-are-we-going-to-do era, that was when vampire stories and stories about blood and trust swept the literary world.