Hallmark diagnosis of AIDS is remembered

By Hemesh Patel
Daily Bruin Senior Staff

When UCLA’s Dr. Michael Gottlieb sent one of his
researchers to find someone with an interesting disease to discuss
20 years ago, he ended up diagnosing the first case of AIDS.

At the Medical Center, the researcher found a young gay man who
had a low white blood cell count, fungal infections and a type of
pneumonia.

“It was clearly something new and something unique and the
mystery was what was causing it,” Gottlieb said in a recent
interview.

“In 1981, it’s a colossal understatement to say no
one would have predicted 20 years later 34 million people around
the world would be infected,” he added.

The UCLA AIDS Institute commemorated the 20th anniversary of the
world’s first identification of the disease this week with a
ribbon cutting ceremony of a new and expanded clinic on Wednesday,
as well as a photo exhibit of people living with HIV on
Tuesday.

On June 5, 1981, UCLA physicians diagnosed four gay men with the
world’s first reported cases of the disease that has to date
taken the lives of nearly 900,000 Americans.

The Centers for Disease Control documented the cases in their
morbidity and mortality weekly report.

Michael Sausser, who was diagnosed with AIDS in 1988 at the UCLA
Emergency Room, recalled the 1980s as a time of fear and
sadness.

“Twenty years ago, people thought AIDS was a gay disease
brought from the devil to punish us,” Sausser said.
“People thought they could get it if we touched them or
breathed on them ““ the dance scene and the bar scene was
dead.”

Sausser said things have changed since the time he and other
AIDS patients felt they needed to carefully watch every sneeze or
sniffle.

He said people are living longer today because of new medical
advances. Sausser currently takes more than 30 different types of
medication ““ a total of 90 to 100 pills, to keep his disease
undetectable.

Shortly after the initial diagnoses at UCLA, Gottlieb asked Dr.
Roger Detels, who is now a professor of epidemiology in the school
of public health, to study the disease.

“Two months after the article, Mike called me up and asked
if I’d be interested in helping him ““ I’ve been
here ever since,” Detels said.

In 1984, Detels began directing the Multicenter AIDS Cohort
Study, the first and largest center to study the natural history of
AIDS. Detels has been at the university ever since.

He is also conducting international work in India, China and
Southeast Asia.

Followed by South Africa, Southeast Asia has the second largest
concentration of AIDS patients in the world.

Scientists believe the virus spread because of needle sharing
among commercial sex workers, and then spread to the rest of the
population, in the area where much of the world’s opium and
heroin is produced.

Because it is traditional for men in the region to have more
than one sexual partner, the disease began to spread rapidly when
it infected the commercial sex worker population.

AIDS experts at UCLA say university researchers have made
strides in their quest to better understand and treat the
disease.

“The public health aspect of HIV prevention has changed
because the epidemic has spread so widely,” said Gail Wyatt,
associate director of the UCLA AIDS Institute.

Wyatt studies the behavioral aspect of the disease. Raising
awareness is still something researchers in the field must work
on.

She said public health messages are beginning to make efforts in
reaching out to population groups such as heterosexual men, women
and ethnic minorities in addition to gay, white educated men.

“Highly religious groups, for example still do not feel
the AIDS message applies to them,” Wyatt said.
“Marriage does not protect a person from HIV ““ it can
even be a risk factor if a couple does not talk about their
past.”

Wyatt said, for now, the best way to prevent the spread of the
deadly virus is education.

“Behavioral intervention is one of the most effective ways
of minimizing the spread of the disease until a vaccine is
discovered or tested to be effective,” she said.

Scientists forecast a bright future in the advances involving
the medical aspect of the virus.

“We know now quite a bit about how the body responds to
the virus and we have gained a lot, increasing in understanding the
virus itself,” Detels said. “We’ve developed
reasonably effective treatment for the control and progression of
HIV.”

With reports from Daily Bruin wire services.