Evidence points to AIDS epidemic peaking but no time soon Most
Americans are already intellectually and emotionally
disconnected from the first 15 years of AIDS. Even for gay men
and lesbians who lived through those days of darkness, who
witnessed the horror first-hand, the terrible reality has faded
to a distant memory. But the recent anniversary of the first
published notice of the disease printed 25 years ago this month
in the June 5, 1981, issue of Morbidity and Mortality Weekly
Report calls us to somber remembrance of a time when hope itself
seemed a fading mirage in the distance. And in the 15 years or
so until the introduction of protease inhibitors in the
mid-1990s, the disease ravaged the gay male community, nearly
wiping out a whole generation of gay men. The first report told
of five young gay men in three Los Angeles hospitals who had
developed an unusual cluster of symptoms. The men were not
acquainted with one another, but the symptoms they developed
were striking: all had Pneumocystis carinii p