Victoria Brownworth

It seems forever ago when I first began reporting on AIDS. In 1983–26 years ago–it was handed to me as a regular beat. As a consequence there have been few aspects of the disease I haven’t written about. I was honored to interview the major scientists/doctors/activists of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. 

While detailing the latest news on a disease that has killed millions and currently infects 35 million people worldwide, I have also told innumerable personal stories of people who were the first to be felled from AIDS: gay men, straight black women, children.

I cannot begin to detail the heartbreak in the stories I have heard and reported on over the past 26 years. In all those stories I have always been struck by the incredible degree of courage of those who knew they were dying.

Ryan White–just a child when I first interviewed him–had typical kid dreams but they were tempered by knowing he would likely never grow up. He was sweet and charming and smart and funny and it’s unbearably sad that he was dead at 18 when he should be turning 37 next week and having a full and vibrant life.

My old friend Assoto Saint, a black gay poet born in Haiti, was angry and outraged at having AIDS. He was furious he was dying in his 20s, he was furious that black men were dying. He wanted everyone to know that silence was killing black men and he was determined to try and stop the deaths. His voice was so strong and so powerful. I spoke to his mother in Haiti after his death. She was so proud her son had fought so hard to leave a legacy. 

And then there was Darrell Yates Rist. I had a dream about him about a week before his diagnosis. I called him in New York and asked him if he was okay. He told me he hadnt been feeling well. I told him about the dream. His tests were pending.

Darrell was a life-long activist. He was co-founder of GLAAD, he wrote about the queer community, addressing issues that were otherwise not being addressed. He shouted down men who said lesbians with breast cancer were not a real political issue. He criss-crossed the country interviewing gay men in places no one thinks of as gay. His interview with a poor Louisiana fisherman was so poignant I doubt I shall ever forget it. Darrell wanted to get to the heart of life and seemed to, always.

Darrell died of AIDS  the day before Christmas in 1993. He was 45. I still miss him, still think of things I would like to tell him, arguments I would like to have with him in the Cafe del Arte in Greenwich Village where we often met for coffee. 

There were so many others–men, women, children. The babies in Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx where  the most gut-wrenching for me. They didn’t know why their mothers had abandoned them at birth. They didn’t know that their lives—short lives—would be defined by a disease rather than by the love and protection of a parent.  

We don’t talk much about AIDS anymore. We act as if it is over or is just an African diease now. But it isn’t. This disease has a ripple effect that continues to be catastrophic. In South Africa, for example, the rape of children has become pandemic because many men with HIV/AIDS (there are more cases of HIV/AIDS per capita  in South Africa than in  any other nation) have been told through rumor that having sex with a virgin–especially an infant–will cure them of the disease. (One of the most egregious examples was that of a nine-month-old baby girl who was raped by six men aged 24 to 66.)

Then there are the young girls in Thailand, India and Laos. These girls are sold into the sex trade by parents who cannot afford to feed them or keep them in nations where girl children are already expendable. These children are often infected by HIV/AIDS by the time they are six or seven because they are having unprotected sex with adult men several times a day in brothels that cater largely to Western men.

There are millions of AIDS orphans worldwide, children whose parents have succumbed to the disease. In some nations whole generations of young adults are dead and dying from the disease, leaving a huge hole in both society and the economies of these nations.

AIDS is not over. It is not over in America nor in Europe where the life-saving drugs are available to those who have health insurance to pay for them. AIDS  is on the rise in Africa, Asia, South and Central America and Russia and the former Soviet bloc nations. For some of those nations the pandemic has yet to hit with its fullest force. 

Most at risk in the U.S.: teenagers, people over 60 (there is a shocking rise in AIDS cases among seniors) and women married to or partnered with men who have sex with other men on the down low. But anyone who has unprotected sex or who uses IV drugs is at risk. 

We need to remember that HIV/AIDS is preventable, but not curable. In much of the world an HIV diagnosis still means certain death. Powerful leaders from the president of South Africa  to the Pope refuse to acknowledge that simple measures like using condoms can prevent HIV infection and that religion and politics should not be an impediment to saving lives. AIDS is not over. On this world AIDS day it is essential that we remember not just those who have died—the Ryans and Assottos and Darrells, but those who are right now fighting for their lives with no one to help them. Because that is still the reality for most people with AIDS worldwide. And only we can change that.  —VAB

(The journal Health Affairs has devoted much of its December issue to the topic in all its facets.)