Does anyone recall what AIDS was called before it was called AIDS?

Question

This is a question for either medical professionals or the older amongst us in the GLBT community. I do not believe anyone younger than 40 is going to know.

In the 80's before the disease HIV was known, there was a term for the symptoms that we know all too well.

Carposi Sarcoma was amongst the most common symptom remarked upon in it.

It was considered, at that time, to be a solely Gay disease and this term reflected it. This term would have been from the middle 80's. I know HIV and AIDS was used in the late 80's.

I remember something called ARDS being associated with it but that was not the term.

I forgot to add: this was before the concept of a retrovirus had even been considered.

The reason the medical profession had looked at this illness was, specifically, Carposi Sarcoma. They then came to see the rest of the symptoms and labelled it the "Gay Plague". Slowly they learned that this is innacurate and blood transusions often led to it as well as IV drug use.

Oh, I worked in the medical profession throughout the 80's, as well as being bisexual. I am surprised at myself that I forgot the term.

Thankyou very much! I am enjoying these answers. And, indeed, it was GRID that I was seeking.

I remember ARDS was not used past the late 80's and, even GRID (it was written simply GRD in California) was barely spoken of in the field.

It was hush-hush for some reason. It was almost like they were afriad for us (the lower level health care professionals) to know about it until all Hades broke loose in about '87 or '88. We all knew anyways... at least those of us who sought to educate ourselves.

What most people do not realize is HIV is a different bird than AIDS. AIDS is the onset of symptoms, HIV is the serconversion to HIV positive, pre or during symptoms.

The mid 80's to late 80's was not a good time, either for those of us in the community or those of us in the healthcare field. I was one of the few who volunteered to work with those infected (I took it upon myself to educate myself thoroughly). They were treated horribly. Gods they were treated badly.

Answer 1

As pointed out above, it was called GRID, or Gay Related Immune Deficiency. The acronym ARDS, which isn't used much any more, stands for AIDS Related Disease Syndrome.
No one dies from AIDS, rather from opportunistic infections due to the body's immune deficiency. Kaposi's Sarcoma, and Pneumocystis are examples, because they don't affect people with healthy immune systems.
The first reported cause was infection with HTLV-3, a virus similar to the virus that causes leukemia in animals (primarily cats), which turned out to be incorrect; it was put forward by an American immunologist trying to get credit for "discovering" the cause. It was actually the French who discovered it was a retrovirus, and they named it Human Immune Virus, or HIV.
A little sidebar to that dark time: Ronald Reagan didn't even mention AIDS until 1987, six years after it had been discovered. Even after his friend Rock Hudson died from it, he never mentioned it; my guess is he was under too much pressure from the religious community, which was populated by people like that beauty LuLu up there.

Answer 2

AIDS was originally called 'the truckers disease' in Africa because it first appeared along the highways connecting major cities. Later was commonly called 'Green Monkey Disease' before it crossed into human beings, and then GRID, or Gay-Related Immune Deficiency.

Answer 3

GRID was the term. I believe that term actually started around 1979.

Answer 4

It was known as 'GRID' or "Gay-Related Immune Deficiency" (The things you retain from Health class...I'll never understand...)

Answer 5

They also briefly equated it with the Herpes family of viruses and it was known as HTLV-III (although I can't quite remember what the HTLV stands for)