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Rare Cancer Seen In 41 Homosexuals (1981)

nytimes.com

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Re: Rare Cancer Seen In 41 Homosexuals (1981)

#31

Post by kmfrk »

seiji wrote: post #29
kmfrk wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an important distinction - and a mistake that many make - but more than anything, I didn't want some asshat to derail the message of my comment by nitpicking about this to appear smart and insightful. This sometimes happens, unfortunately. Even I can't remember the details, but for anyone whose curiosity has been picqued, this explains it well: http://www.aids.org/topics/aids-faqs/difference-between-hiv-... .

Ah, got it. At first I thought you were one of those crazy people saying AIDS isn't caused by HIV.

Those people exist?

This world, man ...

Re: Rare Cancer Seen In 41 Homosexuals (1981)

#32

Post by enraged_camel »

asveikau wrote: post #22
lawn wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow! I love Forrest Gump and I've seen it a few times at least, but I never realized the connection to AIDS. Thanks.

I wonder if it's the younger YN crowd that is not seeing the connection? I was pretty young when I saw that movie in 1994, but it never occurred to me that it could be anything other than AIDS; the reference was completely unambiguous. I guess things had changed in the 12 years between the coinage of "AIDS" and that movie, but it still resembled the way people talked about it, and I think the memory of not knowing wh…

I think it being a movie may have caused people to overlook the reference. I can see how easy it would be to think that Jenny's mystery disease is actually just a made-up plot device to move the story forward, as opposed to a reference to a real disease. I only caught it because my parents are doctors and I happened to be watching it with them - I asked them if she had AIDS and they said that's probably what it was.

Re: Rare Cancer Seen In 41 Homosexuals (1981)

#33

Post by azinman2 »

So sad to read that article especially seeing that they were giving people chemotherapy right away. As if dying from AIDS weren't bad enough. Yet the article did dance around the core problem in talking about a group of promiscuous people, but the connection was not made. I hope medicine has learned better the signs of a viral outbreak.

Re: Rare Cancer Seen In 41 Homosexuals (1981)

#35

Post by seiji »

kmfrk wrote: post #31
seiji wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, got it. At first I thought you were one of those crazy people saying AIDS isn't caused by HIV.

Those people exist ? This world, man ...

They show up here every so often: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5317157 and http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=231238

There's even a wikipedia page with a horrible URL that made me think wikipedia suddenly had hierarchical categories: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV/AIDS_denialism

Gotta keep speaking truth to crazy.

Re: Rare Cancer Seen In 41 Homosexuals (1981)

#36

Post by snowwrestler »

tptacek wrote: post #5
res0nat0r wrote: post #4

I'm currently reading And The Band Played On which is a detailed account of the rise of the AIDS epidemic and how it was ignored and mishandled back in the 80s. Definitely check it out if this subject interests you.

Curious: if we call t_0 1981, the Kaposi's Sarcoma article, and t_x 1996, the advent of HAART, and consider (t_x - t_0) "the AIDS epidemic" --- ignoring the ongoing epidemics in Sub-Saharan African and India, which are enormous problems but somewhat orthogonal to the problem described by your book --- what comparably lethal disease in human history was more effectively addressed by the medical establishment? How can…

I don't have the exact citations at hand, but I believe a key difference with AIDS is that professional epidemiologists themselves are of the opinion that the early stages of the AIDS epidemic were mishandled, primarily due to lack of funds and/or power by the Reagan administration.

Re: Rare Cancer Seen In 41 Homosexuals (1981)

#37

Post by lrei »

asveikau wrote: post #22
lawn wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow! I love Forrest Gump and I've seen it a few times at least, but I never realized the connection to AIDS. Thanks.

I wonder if it's the younger YN crowd that is not seeing the connection? I was pretty young when I saw that movie in 1994, but it never occurred to me that it could be anything other than AIDS; the reference was completely unambiguous. I guess things had changed in the 12 years between the coinage of "AIDS" and that movie, but it still resembled the way people talked about it, and I think the memory of not knowing wh…

I saw the movie only a few years ago in my early twenties and I didn't get it. It never occurred to me 'not knowing what it is' meant AIDS back then. I'm not North American so the reference was totally lost on me. Also I didn't think it was an important detail and I never thought about it.

Re: Rare Cancer Seen In 41 Homosexuals (1981)

#38

Post by bruceb »

enraged_camel wrote: post #6

In the movie Forrest Gump, there is a scene taking place in the late 70s or early 80s where Jenny is explaining to Forrest that she is ill and the doctors do not know what it is. She dies a few years later. It is never stated explicitly, but the idea is that she was suffering from AIDS, which she contacted during her years as a promiscuous drug addict groupie. In my opinion it is one of the most powerful scenes in th…

I thought it was pretty obvious. Was also a tad annoying as because she was liberal and anti war and was a sexually liberated woman...well then she is a whore that will get her payback by being given aids.

I thought it was a good movie but it had touches of right-wing propaganda.

Re: Rare Cancer Seen In 41 Homosexuals (1981)

#39

Post by GhotiFish »

run4yourlives wrote: post #7

An article like this makes you wonder how many different diseases (answer - over 200) get lumped together under the large "cancer" umbrella. One wonders if we are doing ourselves a disservice maintaining a term more inline with shared symptoms instead of separating the diseases into shared causes. At any rate I'm digressing, but cancer is a fascinating (while horrible) concept that exists in our reality. When you thi…

I always though cancer was an umbrella term for when a cell mutates in such a fashion to lose it's reproductive throttle, and consequently starts consuming as many resources as possible, eventually fragmenting and spreading throughout the body.

What kind of cancers don't fit this definition?

Re: Rare Cancer Seen In 41 Homosexuals (1981)

#40

Post by varjag »

bruceb wrote: post #38
enraged_camel wrote: post #6

In the movie Forrest Gump, there is a scene taking place in the late 70s or early 80s where Jenny is explaining to Forrest that she is ill and the doctors do not know what it is. She dies a few years later. It is never stated explicitly, but the idea is that she was suffering from AIDS, which she contacted during her years as a promiscuous drug addict groupie. In my opinion it is one of the most powerful scenes in th…

I thought it was pretty obvious. Was also a tad annoying as because she was liberal and anti war and was a sexually liberated woman...well then she is a whore that will get her payback by being given aids. I thought it was a good movie but it had touches of right-wing propaganda.

STDs are hardly propaganda, and promiscuity does indeed increase the risk.

Besides she was clearly a troubled youth, with sexual abuse home and her further abusive relationships conveyed early in the movie.

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