Timeline, 1981-1988
This timeline contains selected events in the history of AIDS related to the response of the National Institutes of Health and other agencies of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
1981
June On June 5, "Pneumocystis Pneumonia--Los Angeles" by Dr. Michael Gottlieb and colleagues of University of California at Los Angeles, appeared in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (vol. 30, pp. 250-52), a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) publication. This was the first article about AIDS in the medical literature.
June On June 16, the first AIDS patient seen at the NIH was admitted under Dr. Thomas Waldmann’s National Cancer Institute (NCI) Omnibus Metabolism Branch protocol.
July A Task Force on Kaposi’s Sarcoma and Opportunistic Infections was established at the CDC under the direction of Dr. James Curran.
August The CDC reported 108 cases of the new disease in the United States.
September On September 15, NCI sponsored a conference in Bethesda, MD, on Kaposi’s Sarcoma and Opportunistic Infections. Fifty leading clinicians attended.
Fall 1981 Simian acquired immune deficiency syndrome (simian AIDS) was identified in macaques in two of NIH’s Regional Primate Centers.
Summer and Fall Public Health Service (PHS) agency heads discussed the new syndrome at regularly scheduled meetings.
1982
January On January 15—during a snowstorm that shut down the government—the second AIDS patient seen at NIH was admitted to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases service (NIAID) and was seen by Dr. Anthony S. Fauci.
March On March 3, a conference on the new disease was held by the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) at the CDC in Atlanta. Debate centered on whether the disease was caused by a transmissible or immune-suppressing agent(s).
March NIAID intramural scientists conducted a study of adenovirus in patients with the new disease.