FRONTLINE: THE AGE OF AIDS: PART 1 (TV)
Summary
One in this documentary series. This program, the first in a two-part series, explores the origins and history of HIV/AIDS. Several American doctors begin by describing their memories from the early 1980s of treating young, otherwise healthy homosexual men for pneumocystis pneumonia, among other things, and discovering that they had very few "helper" T-cells for no obvious reason. The Center for Disease Control's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) noted the new illness in June 1981, and several other large cities with significant gay populations began reporting similar cases of young men growing ill and rapidly dying of an inexplicable "gay-related immune deficiency," which most assumed was connected to their "complicated social lifestyle." In Florida, however, the disease was soon found in women and people of Haitian descent, and France and Belgium too began seeing cases in heterosexuals. In the Bronx, many intravenous drug users, who frequently "rented" used needles, were also diagnosed, and several patients describe feeling ostracized from their friends, family and jobs. Assistant Secretary of Health Edward Brandt, Jr. notes that those afflicted were mostly "socially unacceptable" people – gays and addicts – and many conservative figures opined that the mysterious illness was "killing all the right people."
In late 1981, however, a baby in San Francisco was found to have been infected from a blood donation, and soon many hemophiliacs were also diagnosed, confirming to the medical community that the illness was in fact a virus. The CDC appealed to the nation's blood banks to seriously investigate the matter, but they put off testing their stocks for two more years, leading to 35,000 more infections. The CDC also suffered significant budget cuts under President Reagan, though Secretary of Health and Human Services Margaret Heckler maintains that more money would not have significantly helped the problem. A group of doctors traveled to Africa and were shocked to find many more patients, including women, in the Congo, and Brandt realized that America's view of the illness as a "gay disease" was presenting an inaccurate picture. When independence was declared in the Congo in 1960, many Haitian professionals were brought in to fill the jobs vacated by departing Europeans, but many impoverished Haitians had been struck with the "new wasting disease" back in the 1970s. Dr. Jean Pape notes that the unexplained illness was widespread throughout the country, though largely confined to the island until residents began fleeing the country's poverty and heading to America via Florida. Haitians were blamed and stigmatized for allegedly bringing the virus to America, further harming the country's economy.
In America, director of health Mervyn Silverman struggled with the decision to close the San Francisco bathhouses, known to be a popular site of gay social and sexual life, though activist Cleve Jones was concerned about the ramifications of the government's involvement with the increasingly "political disease." At the National Institute of Health, Dr. Robert Gallo was surprised to find that the illness was not the same as HTLV, the virus found to cause leukemia, while in France Drs. Willy Rozenbaum and Francoise Barré-Sinoussi figured out how to "feed" the virus with white blood cells in order to isolate it, eventually photographing the unique HIV strain in summer 1983. Dr. Beatrice Hahn further determined that it had evolved from a chimp virus (SIV) in central Africa that adapted to human hunters somewhere in the 1930s, then spreading into cities as Africa became more urbanized. The illness was further spread by shared vaccinations needles, and the first death occurred in the Congo in 1959, created from a single transmission from one chimp to one human. In April 1984, Heckler arranged a press conference at which Gallo described their findings, though failed to give appropriate credit to the French scientists, and resolved to create a vaccine.
However, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci explains that HIV can have a long incubation period in which a patient can be asymptomatic and therefore unaware of the infection. The body does not recognize the virus as "foreign," and it can therefore "protect itself" from eradication, thus making it difficult to study and treat. Jones recalls seeing a vast number of his friends and acquaintances waste away and die as little medical progress was made, and President Reagan entered his second term without mentioning the crisis publicly. The public's attention was harnessed only when popular Hollywood actor Rock Hudson announced that he was HIV positive and died shortly thereafter, and soon many more people began to fear the social ramifications of getting tested and possibly diagnosed. Many HIV+ hemophiliac children, including Ryan White, were ousted from their schools and harassed, and Reagan gave an unhelpful speech in which, acting on attorney John Roberts' advice, refused to "unequivocally" promise that normal socialization with infected persons was not dangerous.
Uganda was found to have the highest infection rates in Africa thanks to commercial trade and the "taboo" nature of sex and homosexuality, and Noerine Kaleeba explains that her husband was infected through his brother's transfusion, prompting her to seek out Dr. Jonathan Mann in Geneva. Though he had no cure, he spoke compassionately to her about the need to fight prejudice and stigma surrounding the disease, and Kaleeba, inspired by Mann's "heart of gold," went on to found The AIDS Support Organization. "Hero" President Yoweri Museveni also worked hard to educate Ugandans on the "ABCs" (abstinence, being faithful and condom use) of HIV/AIDS, and infection numbers soon dropped. In Thailand, the disease spread through sex tourism and heavy heroin use, particularly in prisons, but Prime Minister Anand Panyarachun promoted meaningful health education and a free-condom program, noting that the compassionate principles of Buddhism helped to destigmatize the illness. A needle-exchange program was established in the United Kingdom, despite accusations of its condoning drug use, though similar American programs were denied federal funding and its determined activists frequently arrested. North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms condemned an educational pamphlet that spoke frankly of gay sexual practices, declaring that such education should receive no federal money.
An "off-the-shelf" cancer drug, AZT, was soon proven effective in blocking the virus, though pharmaceutical companies began charging exorbitant prices for the drug, ostensibly to fund future research. Activist group ACT UP protested at the Burroughs Wellcome Company and forced them to lower their prices, and a similar rally at the FDA sought to speed up the approval process for various other experimental drugs. Many drugs failed, however, and AZT was not the "cure" that many believed it to be. Jones organized the AIDS Memorial Quilt project, and at actress Elizabeth Taylor's request, Reagan finally spoke out in 1987, though speechwriter Landon Parvin notes that the president had not even conversed with Surgeon General C. Everett Koop at that point. Reagan confirmed that one could not be infected through everyday encounters with patients, though added that immigrants suspected of infection would be denied entry into the country, which further angered many. Congress officially funded HIV/AIDS research in August 1990, though many activists were upset when the crusading Dr. Mann departed the World Health Organization over "personality conflicts" with his bosses, who felt that he was "overshadowing" them as the face of the organization. By the 1990s, the epidemic had become a global pandemic, affecting millions in many countries around the world.
Details
- NETWORK: PBS WGBH Boston, MA
- DATE: May 30, 2006 9:00 PM
- RUNNING TIME: 1:56:47
- COLOR/B&W: Color
- CATALOG ID: 103302
- GENRE: Education/Information
- SUBJECT HEADING: Education/Information; Public affairs/Documentaries; HIV/AIDS
- SERIES RUN: PBS - TV series, 1983-
- COMMERCIALS: N/A
CREDITS
- Mark Reynolds … Executive Producer
- Michael Sullivan … Executive Producer
- David Fanning … Executive Producer
- Robin Parmelee … Coordinating Producer
- Sharon Tiller … Senior Producer
- William Cran … Producer, Director, Writer
- Renata Simone … Series Producer, Writer, Reporter
- Sarah Anthony … Associate Producer
- Martin Berthelsen … Associate Producer
- Ann Kim … Associate Producer
- Jeanne Hallacy … Field Producer
- Jamlong Saiyot … Field Producer
- Missy Frederick … On-Air Promotion Producer
- Sarah Moughty … Website Coordinating Producer
- Richard Parr … Website Producer
- Kennan Knudson … Website Associate Producer
- Mason Daring … Music by
- Paul Foss … Music by
- Martin Brody … Theme Music by
- Will Lyman … Narrator
- Edward Brandt Jr. … Interviewee
- Jean Pape … Interviewee
- Margaret Heckler … Interviewee
- Mervyn Silverman … Interviewee
- Cleve Jones … Interviewee
- Willy Rozenbaum … Interviewee
- Francoise Barré-Sinoussi … Interviewee
- Anthony S. Fauci … Interviewee
- Noerine Kaleeba … Interviewee
- Yoweri Museveni … Interviewee
- Anand Panyarachun … Interviewee
- Landon Parvin … Interviewee
- Robert Gallo
- Jesse Helms
- Rock Hudson
- C. Everett Koop
- Jonathan Mann
- Ronald Reagan
- John Roberts
- Elizabeth Taylor
- Margaret Thatcher
- Ryan White