may 18, 1981 - HIV/AIDS

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The first news story about AIDS appeared in the gay newspaper New York Native on May 18, 1981. AIDS was first clinically reported on June 5, 1981, with five cases in the United States. The initial cases were a cluster of injecting drug users and gay men with no known cause of impaired immunity who showed symptoms of Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP), a rare opportunistic infection known to occur in people with very compromised immune systems. Soon after, a large number of homosexual men developed a generally rare skin cancer called Kaposi's sarcoma (KS). Many more cases of PCP and KS emerged, alerting the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and forming a task force to monitor the outbreak.

The CDC did not have an official name for the disease, often referring to it by way of diseases associated with it, such as lymphadenopathy, Kaposi's sarcoma, and opportunistic infections. The term GRID, which stood for gay-related immune deficiency, was also coined. However, after determining that AIDS was not isolated to the gay community, the term AIDS was introduced at a meeting in July 1982. By September 1982, the CDC started referring to the disease as AIDS.

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