A man who has Kaposi’s sarcoma, an early manifestation of AIDS, describing his swollen lymph glands to health workers in a San Francisco clinic, 1983
Mickey Pfleger, photographer
“CAROL: So, how did you first hear about AIDS? How did if first happen, when people first started talking about it?
HELEN: When they first started talking about it, it scared the hell out of me, . . . .
CAROL: Do you remember the first person who…
In 1985 the first commercial HIV test became available. Using a technique developed in the 1960s and 1970s, the test identified HIV antibodies. It also sparked intense debates about privacy and the potential misuse of test results.
The work of researchers, such as these National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases scientists, led to dozens of discoveries about the human immune system, cell surface markers, and molecular genetics.
Nathan Benn, photographer
In 1983 Dr. Jay Levy and his lab colleagues at the University of California at San Francisco also isolated the virus. Levy used this equipment to collect cell cultures and tally cells during his HIV research.
In 1983–84, both Dr. Luc Montagnier, Pasteur Institute, Paris, and Dr. Robert Gallo, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, discovered HIV. They resolved the dispute over priority by sharing recognition as co-discoverers and co-patentees…