Excerpt:
What does a new and deadly epidemic look like? The first two AIDS patients admitted to the NIH research hospital arrived six months apart–in June 1981 and in January 1982–but many more filled beds soon thereafter. In the early years, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases recalls, it “was like living in an intensive care unit all day long.” The patients were very sick, and despite the best efforts of NIH’s dedicated doctors and nurses, most patients eventually died.
Annotation:
In their own words documents how NIH researchers answered such questions when asked to recall the early days of HIV/AIDS. In launching this Web site, we commemorate the 20-year struggle to confront the deadly HIV/AIDS pandemic. The site provides the full text oral history transcripts from medical doctors who were involved in the search for and cure of the HIV/AIDS virus from the earliest years of its discovery. A chronology and image archive accompany the site. Also interesting is a document archive that includes both scientific and historical articles as well as National Institutes of Health and Health and Human Services press releases and some unpublished materials. The oral histories and the archives here should be of use to most researchers of the history of the AIDS epidemic in the United States.