The New England Journal of Medicine has an article that discusses the history of the AIDS epidemic in respect to Ebola today. It's called "Panic, Paranoia and Public Health --- the AIDS Epidemic's Lessons for Ebola." It's a (mostly) non-medical look at the hysteria and terror that AIDS generated and the responses that were sparked by fear and politics.
Come below the squared serpentine of the shepherd's crook virus for the historical comparison.
Even though this article is published in the New England Journal of Medicine, it's authors aren't physicians. One of the authors is Peter Staley, AIDS activist, member of ACT UP, who later founded AIDSMeds.com. Peter lived through the AIDS crisis. The other author is Gregg Gonsalves another AIDS activist who has been working on AIDS-related problems since the 1990s. He has worked with AIDS support in Africa and studied AIDS research that was funded by the NIH.
They use a first-hand perspective to compare the history of the AIDS epidemic to what we're experiencing now with Ebola. The Ebolaphobia, fear-mongering, the overt politicization of Ebola leading to irrational responses. Irrational responses sometimes from people who should know much better.
The first decade of the AIDS epidemic spawned a similar kind of hysteria, predominantly targeted at people living with HIV–AIDS, but also directed against what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) unfortunately called the four Hs, the four high-risk groups: homosexuals, heroin addicts, hemophiliacs, and Haitians. Various politicians called for quarantining of anyone who tested positive for HIV, and commentator William F. Buckley infamously penned an op-ed in the New York Times saying that “everyone detected with AIDS should be tattooed.” There was an AIDS-quarantine ballot initiative in California, and various states threatened or passed conditional quarantine measures. Fortunately, such measures were used infrequently. Far more common then and now is the use of criminal law to target people who may have exposed their partners or others to HIV or transmitted the virus to them; between 2008 and 2013 alone, there were at least 180 such prosecutions.
People living with HIV–AIDS in the 1980s and 1990s also faced other kinds of discrimination, including the loss of employment and housing, as well as outright violence, including assault and murder. Some HIV-positive children were excluded from school; two such cases — those of the three Ray brothers in Arcadia, Florida, and of Ryan White in Kokomo, Indiana — received national attention.
Much of this sounds all too familiar to what is happening with Ebola today in the United States. Quarantines; focusing on West Africans (or all Africans, for the geographically challenged) and health care workers. Making threats against patients, family members, uninfected individuals and others suspected of being in contact with Ebola patients. Politicians an public figures weighing in spewing uninformed oratory with an eye to the spotlight. The similarities are amazing.
As are the differences. AIDS actually killed many of its victims. Yet everyone who has contracted Ebola in the US has survived. There were thousands of AIDS victims. We have less than a double handful of native Ebola patients.
Influenza, and influenza-related complications will kill thousands in the US. Yet no one is demanding that patients with flu be quarantined. We are not demanding that they stay home from work, keep their children out of school and avoid public events. Yet influenza sufferers are much more of a health risk to thousands of people than Ebola patients.
This is a great article, not only for those who may have forgotten some of the panic generated by the AIDS epidemic, but for those who didn't live through it. Reading it will be a few minutes well-spent.
http://www.nejm.org/...