San Francisco and Oakland are set to co-host the 23rd global AIDS conference beginning tomorrow July 6, 2020. Reports about the still-destructive AIDS pandemic will compete with the daily slog of frustrating, frightening, and maddening COVID-19 updates.  While we wait for the latest iteration of the global gathering to begin, let’s take a look at the very First International Conference on AIDS, convened 35 years earlier in Atlanta, GA.
 
I arrived in Atlanta a day early to get oriented to what would become the pre-eminent annual convention of scientists, behavioral researchers, health education specialists, activists, and the media. Sponsored by the Department of Health and Human Services and the World Health Organization, more than 2,000 participants had registered for the four-day event. Although the conference was a prestigious affair, President Ronald Reagan did not attend, as became the rule for heads of state at future international AIDS conferences. But then, four years had passed and 10,000 Americans were AIDS-infected and Reagan had still not voiced the word “AIDS.”
 
No one warned me about Atlanta at that time of the year. San Francisco has its shape-obliterating fog, but the Georgia city was thickly layered with pollen from surrounding pine, oak, and mulberry trees, and various grasses as well. I hadn’t suffered like this with the barrage of explosive sneezing, sniffling, soaked tissues, poor sleep and fatigue as I did with the Atlanta pollen.

​Familiar Territory
I covered the Atlanta AIDS conference as a reporter for the LGBTQ newspaper Coming Up! in San Francisco. Afterwards I stitched together a national readership by syndicalizing my articles in other media that served New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Seattle, Phoenix, Portland, and Oakland. I had worked the “AIDS beat” for nearly three years before I registered for the Atlanta conference. More importantly, I began collaborating in mid-1982 with Mark Feldman, one of the first 50 men in San Francisco diagnosed with AIDS. We began writing about his experience of having “the condition.” The stigma and pain, depression and defiance, the horrors, and the treasured calm periods of relief and joy. Mark Feldman was the first to coin the term “People with AIDS (PWA).”  This became a fundamental aspect of his message; he wanted to counter the notion that those with the disease were “victims,” “helpless,” and to be pitied. Mark went on to become one of the best known PWA speakers in that early wave of AIDS in 1981-1985. He died of AIDS at age 31 on June 2, 1983. The experience of being present with Mark and loving him changed me in ways I try to understand fully even today.
 
Why Atlanta?
I don’t know the backstory on why Atlanta was selected to host this stand-out AIDS conference, but the city had the Centers for Disease Control within its boundaries. The CDC connection was likely enough. The U.S. bid for sponsorship easily drew upon the prestige of the vast federal bureaucracy; including the CDC, the National Cancer Institute, the National Institutes of Health, and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Those realms of scientific expertise included Robert Gallo, MD, the prominent virologist who misappropriated credit for being the first to identify the AIDS virus.
 
U.S. Scientist Takes Credit for French Discovery of AIDS Virus
For those unfamiliar with the scandal triggered by Robert Gallo’s lab, the episode was a dark period in the history of AIDS science. Gallo and his colleagues, purposefully or not, misidentified the virus sample shared with him by researchers at the Pasteur Institute in Paris and called it their own. Drs. Francoise Barre-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier had already announced in May 1983 that they identified the AIDS virus which they named “Lymphadenopathy-Associated Virus, LAV.” But wait, Gallo declared that he was the first in the world to identify the AIDS virus. He named it HTLV-3.
 
In reality he had “identified” the already discovered French LAV that had been shared with him. That was a mistake from the start; it risked cross-contamination. Almost a full year after the French announced in a medical journal their discovery of LAV, Gallo reported his own “discovery” of HTLV-3 in Science in May 1984. He failed to mention the earlier French finding. With high stakes of the Nobel Prize, worldwide fame, millions of dollars in revenue from sales of the eventual antibody test, and national pride, the U.S. government initially attributed sole discover to Gallo and, later at the Atlanta conference, to the “discoverers in France and the U.S.”  
 
At the conference, Gallo advised his colleagues, “Science becomes debased when nationalism and chauvinism come with competition.”    
 
First American to Independently Identify the AIDS Virus
Jay A. Levy, MD, University of California San Francisco Professor of Medicine and Director of the Laboratory for Tumor and AIDS Virus Research, deserves the honor and accolades for being the first American to independently identify the AIDS virus ((meaning he did so without having the French drop it on his laboratory bench). In early May 1984 Levy isolated what he named AIDS Associated Retrovirus, or ARV. Levy’s discovery ranks him as the second worldwide and the first American to discover the virus that caused the worst epidemic of illness and death in the 21st century. Granted that COVID-19 may soon claim that distinction).   
 
Jay Levy’s ARV discovery was recognized at the 1985 Atlanta conference only in presentations and papers by himself or his team. He is among the most under-reported and under-appreciated of medical science pioneers. Jay Levy continues his lab work at UCSF today.
 
Quick Notes from the Atlanta Conference
· The lag time between AIDS infection and development of symptoms may be more like seven to ten years rather than the five years earlier believed.
· AIDS-infected individuals may remain capable of infecting others for several years after their initial exposure.
· One study suggested that closure of gay bathhouses may have little impact on the spread of AIDS.  (San Francisco had ordered 14 such establishments to close in October 1984).
 
Viewing Note: These articles appear on my website, michaelhelquist.com, as part of my “Politics and Passions Blog” on the left side of the Home page. 

The 23rd International AIDS Conference will be like none before. San Francisco and Oakland expected to physically host the tens of thousands of health officials, scientists, activists, and Big Pharma representatives gathering at the pre-eminent scientific gathering of the year.
 
The 2020 conference was poised to welcome more than 20,000 participants for four full days, July 6-10. Travelers from 170 countries around the globe expected to meet top researchers who would discuss in convention halls the newest HIV prevention strategies, the still-elusive HIV vaccine, and the long-term efficacy of medical treatments. They hoped to visit labs and HIV testing sites. They wanted to compare strategies for reaching sex workers and minority communities. In the midst of what would become an overload of information, attendees eagerly anticipated the Bay Area’s renowned restaurants, bars, clubs, and the tourist sites.
 
Then, COVID-19 appeared and everything changed.
 
For the first time since the first international AIDS conference was convened in Atlanta in 1985, the thousands of conference participants will forego face-to-face plenary sessions, lectures and poster talks. They won’t attend an elaborate reception in a city landmark. They won’t be gathering with San Francisco and Oakland mayors under the dome of San Francisco City Hall. Nor will they benefit from face-to-face interactions with peers. They won’t experience the same kind of camaraderie and support that has been one of the most important aspects of these conferences.     
 
Early this year the organizers of “AIDS2020,” as this year’s gathering is known, hoped that the disturbing clouds of COVID19 would not disrupt their plans. Once the threat of the corona virus forced the Tokyo Olympics off the calendar this year, the risk of infection for thousands of people gathered in packed halls was far too great. The only options were to cancel AIDS2020 outright, postpone a year, or to live stream.
 
Live-streaming isn’t new anymore, to the point that the platform Zoom has entered English as a verb. Ever since most countries adopted some form of “sheltering in place,” millions of people have zoomed for business, chats with friends, and celebrations with family. Next up is the largest scientific gathering of the year, all live streamed. Stay tuned as AIDS2020 tests the final logistics to reach a worldwide audience with 12 plenary sessions, 27 workshops, 50 symposia, 62 abstract/poster talks, and 70 satellite session, beginning July 6. Learn more at aids2020.org
 
#AIDS2020  #AIDShistory  #Covid19 

Dear Gentle Ladies (especially, gentle ladies) and Gentlemen of San Francisco,
 
At this time every year I commemorate with you the Great San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906.  I was there, you know, in case my contribution was neglected in your history books.
 
I understand many of you have lots of time on your hands these days. What better than honoring your city’s centennial of its most famous event by reading an account from someone who was there. For those of you unaware of my heroics in your fair city, I’ll share a few stories.  Much of what I will describe was included in my biography that I commissioned. The author likes to say that at some point he realized my story was too remarkable to be wedged in some convoluted novel. He also sensed I was compelling him to change his focus. I did my best, subtle at first but then direct: “Drop what you’re doing; I want a full-book biography!”  Look, women don’t get many biographies, not from my days at least. And women never got much without raising their voices, I sure found that. Let’s begin.
 
The night before the cataclysm, April 17, I attended a lecture in Portland by Oregon’s premiere suffragist and a good friend, Abigail Scott Duniway. It was a rousing declaration of why Oregon’s men should recognize the right of women to have the vote. These men…they were pretty damn slow to come around and it would take THREE more campaigns after 1906 to finally get a majority vote for women.
 
The next day I was up early starting my rounds at patients’ homes before starting office hours at 10 a.m. I heard a ruckus downtown, and a newsboy ran up panting and yelled “San Francisco nearly destroyed …earthquake … terrible fire.” I was shocked like everyone else. So many of us knew San Francisco well; some here were natives, or started their careers and businesses there. We had family and friends in the city. My mind raced to my first girlfriend, Bessie. We had lived in a homestead in Oregon before moving to San Francisco. That’s where I started medicine.
 
There were few phones then. Telegraph lines were swamped. There was no way to find out more till the next paper came out. By the next day, Portlanders got their wits about them and organized a relief train to provide anything San Francisco might need: medicines, bandages, clothing, blankets, and foodstuffs.  Civic-minded women got Southern Pacific to donate a baggage car and the Pullman Company to lend a passenger car. The top doctor in the city organized a medical relief corps to rush with the supplies to your city engulfed in firestorms. In all what became known as the “doctor train” carried 20 tons of supplies along with 42 doctors and nurses.
 
I was the only woman doctor on the mission. Why was that? I volunteered for one thing. I was unmarried unlike most of the female doctors in the city.  Maybe others were frightened. We were offered a two-month stint that would likely include hardship, exposure to disease, and civil unrest.
 
We started noticing the damage north of the city. We disembarked the train in Oakland and took a steamer to the Presidio which would be our base of operations. I was in charge of the Oregon nurses, and we moved into the Presidio Hospital and set up an obstetrics ward. It became the “Oregon ward,” and let me tell you we worked long days, often with only snatches of sleep, and rarely had time to enjoy the view of ships coursing through the Golden Gate. During our stay there were 23 healthy newborns delivered at the Oregon ward. The ward where I worked with nurses is still standing at the Presidio today.
 
The most frightening time at the hospital was when a fire broke out near the ward in the early morning. I raced to the patients with a wheelchair, wrapped each mother and infant with a blanket, eased them into the chair, and wheeled them out of danger. I was deeply moved by the quiet, stoic demeanor of the two dozen mothers. All the agonies and tortures they had suffered before they had been brought to the hospital had so deadened their senses, so numbed their minds, that they faced the fire horror with a spirit of calmest resignation and without fear. They had already suffered too much to suffer more.
 
I got along well on the base with the nurses, other doctors, and the military. I had company with a colleague, Ms. Gail Laughlin.  She was an attorney who was working in New York City before she devoted herself full time to the woman suffrage campaigns, including Oregon’s. She had no medical training to merit a spot on the doctor train, but I think she finagled a ride so she could make sure her girlfriend, Dr. Mary Sperry, was ok. (She was).  
 
I accompanied Dr. Laughlin to the Ferry Building depot when she arranged to leave the city early. We walked from the Presidio grounds and listened to the military band. The sky was dark with no city glow since gaslights were banned. We weren’t able to tread on the sidewalks because they were too hot from the fire. It seemed like we were walking among the ruins of some ancient city that had been dead for hundreds of years.
 
I was impressed with the orderliness in the city with people being so generous and helpful to one another. I think you’re all experiencing some of that goodness in people now during your current crisis. I knew for sure that San Francisco would recover once I witnessed the resilience, determination, and concern for one another.  Thankfully, my former lover Bessie Holcomb and her husband and child survived the quake with their Divisadero Street home intact.
 
As I prepared to leave, I was happy to receive effusive praise from California Governor George C. Pardee, San Francisco Mayor Eugene Schmitz, and the commanding officer at the Presidio General Hospital. I was even awarded a medal for my service.  
 
I’ve got many more stories from that trip. I wish I had kept a journal then so they’d be more available. I imagine many of you are doing so now.  How you endured the anxious and horrific days of your pandemic will be a valuable testament in the future.
 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Author’s note: based on excerpts from “Marie Equi, Radical Politics and Outlaw Passions,” Michael Helquist, 2015, Oregon State University Press. Available at bookstores and online outlets.  Kindle version available through Amazon.

The 23rd International Conference on AIDS will broaden its focus to include the current global pandemic of COVID-19 corona virus. The conference was scheduled to convene in San Francisco and Oakland, July 6-10. More than 25,000 researchers, clinicians, and activists are expected to participate.    

The International AIDS Society, the organizer of the bi-annual AIDS conference, found itself in the unique position of convening AIDS 2020 during the rapidly developing new pandemic of COVID-19. In the midst of travel restrictions and shelter-in-place mandates in many countries as well as a desire to protect HIV participants from exposure to the new virus, the IAS had already switched for the first time to a virtual format for its proceedings this summer. 

Historically, a different city in the world hosts the bi-annual conference, the largest HIV/AIDS gathering in the world. San Francisco previously hosted the AIDS conference in 1990. That occasion made history when AIDS activists, led primarily by ACT UP San Francisco, disrupted a major address by Health and Human Services director Louis Sullivan. Shouting “Shame! Shame! Shame!” the protesters made it impossible for Sullivan to be heard. The incident reflected the enormous anger and desperation of People with AIDS at the federal government’s slow and disorganized pursuit of HIV treatments and cure.  

This summer AIDS 2020 returns to the Bay Area for the first time in 30 years. Organizers stated that the virtual conference will retain its focus on San Francisco and Oakland and their respective responses to HIV/AIDS. San Francisco is known for its “model of care” and for its researchers, including Jay Levy, MD who became the first American to independently identify the AIDS virus.

The protests that marked the 1990 conference have been repeated to varying degrees in the following AIDS international conferences. Activists and many community-based AIDS workers objected that the United States, especially San Francisco/Oakland, were inappropriate sites given the Trump era discrimination of immigrants from third world countries and those from marginalized groups. When the IAS refused a change of venue, the activists organized an alternative conference, HIV 2020: Community Reclaiming the Global Response scheduled to take place in Mexico City July 5-7.  However, COVID-19 overturned these plans as well. The Mexican government has suspended all large events in the country due to COVID-19 concerns through August, and HIV 2020 has been cancelled. Other options are being explored.  

This COVID-19 outbreak reminds me of the two other pandemics in the last 100 years. I lived through the horrors of the long AIDS years, and I researched the global scourge of the 1918-1919 flu for my biography of Marie Equi. This excerpt from the book shows how the first pandemic entwined the threat of illness and death with a struggle for justice and freedom.
 
Set-up: Marie Equi is an early woman physician and publicly known lesbian who lived and worked in Portland, Oregon. She became a political radical after being abused by the police during a labor strike. For speaking out against the U.S. joining World War I, Equi was charged with sedition. Her trial was set during the equivalent of “sheltering-in-place.”
 
Excerpt from: “Marie Equi, Radical Politics and Outlaw Passions”
 
Equi tried to delay the start of her trial as long as possible. Like other
radicals, she anticipated trumped-up charges, biased juries, and fraudulent
court testimony. As a result, she adopted the wisdom of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn,
“a prominent radical known to many as “The Rebel Girl.”  Flynn explained,
“Time was our greatest asset.” For radicals, she believed, “A trial was
tantamount to a lynching.”
 
Equi intended to feign illness to postpone the start of her trial, scheduled
for November 6, 1918. She hoped a jury might be more sympathetic once the
war had ended. At first she considered having her appendix removed and then
requesting two weeks or more for recovery. Then she planned to ingest a noxious
thyroid compound along with a morphine solution to induce fever and
nausea. She settled on something less dire: rubbing an ointment in her nose
that would trigger influenza-like symptoms. Equi figured her deception
might merit empathy or even exploit fears of the influenza pandemic plaguing
the nation.
 
They had neither treatment or vaccine to offer
​
The first wave of the so-called Spanish influenza struck the East Coast
and the Midwest in the spring of 1918. No one paid much attention to the
peculiar flu that came on quickly and initially struck soldiers and sailors, and
after a few weeks the number of cases dropped and the danger seemed to have
passed. In the fall, however, a second, more virulent wave slammed the general
population, especially young adults of all classes. The rapid onset of symptoms
often meant a patient complained of fever, headache, and backache one day
and then struggled to breathe the next before suffocating to death. Not until
the onset of AIDS sixty-five years later would the nation exhibit so much
panic and fear of a mysterious, deadly disease. Physicians struggled with an
enormous demand for diagnosis and care although they had neither treatment
nor vaccine to offer. During the course of the pandemic, nearly 30 percent of
Americans became infected, and 675,000 died. Half of the fatalities among
American soldiers in Europe were due to the epidemic. The psychological
impact of this toll must have staggered the population.

Portland’s first case of the new flu was believed to be a young soldier,
diagnosed in early October 1918. The state’s board of health quickly ordered
all places of public gatherings closed: schools, theaters, churches, libraries,
and assembly halls. No meetings were allowed, and people were advised to
avoid crowded streetcars and wear gauze masks at all times. The number of
cases soared so high that the public auditorium and several schools were
converted into emergency hospitals. Portland registered 157 deaths the first
week of November when Equi’s trial was set to begin, but the federal court
system disregarded the risks of transmission and announced plans to begin the
fall session as scheduled. Equi put her ruse into effect and induced symptoms
the night before her court appearance. That same evening she learned that an
acquaintance of hers, a young Wobbly named Morgan, really was ill with the
flu and had been taken to the emergency hospital.

Equi Feigns Illness 
 
Equi’s trial began on Wednesday, November 6, 1918, in Portland’s
federal courthouse at Sixth and Morrison Streets with Judge Robert S. Bean
presiding. Bean was a dignified and distinguished judge who had previously
served as Chief Justice of the Oregon Supreme Court before assuming a position
as a US District Judge in Portland. As planned, Equi’s attorney Heckbert
informed Bean that she was ill with influenza and needed rest. Madge Paul, an
undercover informant, had already informed US Attorney Haney of Equi’s
deception, and he requested that a court physician examine her and advise
the court of her condition. The doctor determined Equi required, at most,
forty-eight hours of rest. Judge Bean ordered Equi to appear in court on Friday,
November 8 or forfeit her $10,000 bail. During the same court proceedings,
Haney revealed that he had received regular reports of Equi’s activities and he
knew of her ploy to delay her appearance. Equi was furious that her plan had
been exposed. At first she blamed one of her attorneys of double-crossing her;
then she suspected Madge Paul, the informant who had befriended her.

A reflection of the intensity of the times came with a telephone call that
evening from a nurse at the influenza ward who informed Equi that her friend
Morgan was dying and begging to see her. When one of her friends advised her to
delay her visit, Equi exploded and yelled, “That dying boy is alone and wants
me, and I’d go through hell to help one of my boys.” She grabbed a bunch of
red carnations from a vase, rushed to the patient’s bedside, and stayed with him
through the night until he died. She was distraught for days afterwards—angry
with herself for not providing more care and furious with the government for
keeping her from her patients.
 
On November 7, George Vanderveer arrived in Portland, ready to serve
as Equi’s lead counsel the next day, but all plans were tossed aside once the
dailies broke the news the war-weary public longed for: the war had ended.
Portlanders erupted in deliriously happy, raucous celebrations. Longshoreman
left the docks and marched downtown, whistling, shouting, and ignoring
attempts by the police to maintain order. Office workers several stories above
rained paper scraps on a street parade below. Everyone ignored flu precautions
and littered the streets with face masks. Oregon had sent thirty-five thousand men
to the war, a full 14 percent of the state’s adult population, and everyone wanted to
banish the dread scourge from their lives.
 
Equi took comfort in delaying her trial until after the war had ended. Several
hours later, however, all celebrations stopped.  People on the streets were stunned into
silence when they learned there was no peace, not yet. An overeager wire correspondent
on the front lines in France had filed a premature report, and Germany had yet to surrender.
The next morning, Equi’s trial resumed.
 
Marie Equi: Radical Politics and Outlaw Passions, Michael Helquist, Oregon State University Press, 2015. Available in print at bookstores and in Kindle at Amazon.
 
Note: the courage and example of Marie Equi is now memorialized as part of the Rainbow Honor Walk in San Francisco and in Portland’s Walk of the Heroines. 

Get your own Marie Equi t-shirt to honor the fiercely independent lesbian doctor who fought for equal rights and battled for economic and social justice.
 
I’ve created a Marie Equi Tshirt Shop at CafePress, an online product store.  It’s simple:
Go to https://www.cafepress.com/MarieEquiTshirtShop
​​Place your order (there are “female” and “male” sizes) 
Then proceed to check out and select among the payment options. You can also order by phone. You should receive your t-shirt in about two weeks. 
Note: the back side of the t-shirt reads:
Marie Equi
Radical Politics & Outlaw Passions
A Biography
MarieEqui.com


Celebrate Marie!  Take a selfie and show us on Facebook or send your pic to me at this site. 

A new-to-me find today: The American Bookbinders Museum in SoMa (35 Clementina St, San Francisco). Engaging and interesting for its bookbinding machines of all sorts, displays of book art and covers, and its lecture series. Well worth a visit and a look also at the special exhibit about LGBTQ+ publications of the first decades of the 20th century.

Today's event featured long-time gay journalist Randy Alfred who talked about the city's LGBTQ+ Journalism in the early days of AIDS/HIV. During this period he worked in print (as editor of The Sentinel newspaper) as well as the host of a popular radio program where he interviewed pioneers in AIDS research and clinical care.

These were the years (1980s) when the "Bay Area Reporter" newspaper's readership was primarily gay men (as intended), when the bi-weekly "The Sentinel" newspaper slipped from offering breaking news about AIDS policy, and when the monthly publication "Coming UP!" (today's Bay Times) emphasized diversity and inclusiveness of matters of importance to women as well as to men, provided in-depth analysis, and presented extensive coverage of the political, medical, social behavioral aspects of AIDS in San Francisco. (disclosure: I wrote for "Coming Up!" from 1982-1985)..

Alfred offered his reflections on both the commendable AIDS coverage as well as the Initial unconscionable lack of reports about the AIDS/HIV epidemic in different publications. Thanks to Randy Alfred and to the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco for co-sponsoring of the lecture as part of the Queer Voices lecture series presented by the American Bookbinders Museum. 
​
#lgbthistory #museum #HIV/AIDS #bkbindersmuseum