WI Rock Hudson is diagnosed with AIDS earlier

[ggarner57]

What if Hudson is diagnosed with the disease somewhere between 81-83? Given that it was a major catalyst to get people to act on the AIDS epidemic, would funding for research begin earlier? Would the Federal Government and White House act as they did after Hudson died, or remain just as aloof?

How much faster would AZT and other drugs come online?

 

[Knoxville Jim]

With Reagan in the white house, probably not much. My wife was in pharmacy school and rounded at Duke in 91. She said AIDS patients were still in isolation. I *think* the cocktail drugs from what she told me came about quickly. She said the FDA approved it very quickly.

It's not that people did not know there was a problem. I guess it took Rock Hudson and later Ryan White to put a human face. I doubt you see a huge difference if any.

 

[Mr_ Bondoc]

It would have gone badly. Consider that it was considered a "f**'s disease". It was just 2 years after Dan White was released after shooting Harvey Milk after claiming the "Twinkies defense " (essentially that he was compelled to kill after eating too many Twinkies). Second, Lyndon La Rouche was pushing legislation to "register all HIV carriers..." It would take until 1984, with the diagnosis of 13-year Ryan White of Indianapolis, Indiana when you started seeing a positive or at least less blatantly homophobic response to the disease...

 

[Admiral Beez]

Would have been nice to save Freddie Mercury.

 

[ggarner57]

So even with him dying a couple years earlier nothing would happen? I always read that his death actually sparked a lot more research into the disease.

 

[Dayton Kitchens]

It would have gone badly. Consider that it was considered a "f**'s disease". It was just 2 years after Dan White was released after shooting Harvey Milk after claiming the "Twinkies defense " (essentially that he was compelled to kill after eating too many Twinkies). QUOTE]

You don't know that the "Twinkies Defense" was not actually a real thing? Twinkies were never mentioned and Dan White's defense never claimed that junk food contributed to his murders of Milk and Mascone.

 

[Knoxville Jim]

Well, he put a face to the virus, he was also close to the Reagans'. That being said, there was a real feeling it was "gay cancer" and/or punishment for being a moral sinner. Reagan was not going to lift a finger any sooner. If you continue other than Rock, I see no changes.
Now give Ryan White a sooner diagnosis, start the bombardment of hetro's can get this too.

But that is pretty much did happen in our OTL. People freaked out when you got blood, hetro sex. The best thing the Feds did was stay out of the way the FDA just basically Oh ok, done. The FDA cut years off the approval and boom AZT, the coctail.

As a disclaimer, I am in no way a medical professional. My Wife is a Doctor of Pharmacology and a Biology undergrad. In the past 20 years I have picked up here and there. She was always interested in HIV stuff since she rounded at Duke.

I guess to sum it up, Rock didn't do all that much. It was more when innocent people ( Ryan White) and they said oh PS it is a death sentence. People flipped out, all those ribbons. Big Pharm got real busy getting real busy, the FDA rolls over and boom so less deaths, people have to payback their insurance policies they borrowed against. Big Pharm gets that more wealthy.

My 2 cents. I really don't know what the current meds treatments are now. My wife is in the corporate world, she always put my vocation ahead of hers following me to Army basis.

One final thought. If there had never been an AIDS, I doubt that the LGBT COMMUNITY goes anywhere as close to the acceptance without HIV

 

[Gannt the chartist]

No effect.

Its not until May 83 that Montagnier et al describe LAV (HIV) until then GRID as it was called had no known cause. it then takes a while ( a year I think) for Gallo to convince the world that GRID and HIV were the same thing.

The clinical trials happen pretty quickly after that.

For those interested today (9 feb) the BBC Radio 4 had a long radio interview with Montagnier on a programme called A Life Scientific which should be available to download.

He was also in charge of the Ebola containment programme recently, interesting guy.

 

[Dayton Kitchens]

AIDS advocates way overhyped the dangers of people contracting the virus through heterosexual sex in order to get support for more funding for research.

In reality a man has only a 1 in 300 chance of contracting HIV from a woman who is HIV positive if she has no active symptoms.

 

[Mr_ Bondoc]

It would have gone badly. Consider that it was considered a "f**'s disease". It was just 2 years after Dan White was released after shooting Harvey Milk after claiming the "Twinkies defense " (essentially that he was compelled to kill after eating too many Twinkies). QUOTE]

You don't know that the "Twinkies Defense" was not actually a real thing? Twinkies were never mentioned and Dan White's defense never claimed that junk food contributed to his murders of Milk and Mascone.

Yes, but consider that was what was considered the popular narrative, even being perpetuated in a few Saturday Night Live (NBC-TV) sketches at the time and was the line of thinking even in San Francisco.