AIDS Crisis

Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) emerged just a decade after the 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York City initiated a nationwide queer liberation movement, bringing gay and lesbian culture and life closer to the American mainstream. The disease mostly affected gay men, intravenous drug users, and other marginalized groups, and government responses were often limited by prejudice and misinformation. Locally, organizations like the Seattle Gay Clinic, the Dorian Group, the Northwest AIDS Foundation, and the Greater Seattle Business Association provided resources, support, and STI testing to gays and lesbians in Seattle at the onset of the epidemic, years before local government action.

Resolution 26935

On May 23, 1983, the Seattle City Council Public Health and Safety Committee introduced Resolution 26935 to address growing social, political, and public health concerns over the rapid spread of AIDS. Since early 1981, when the virus began claiming lives in New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, 600 Americans had died, and 1,600 patients were infected with no hope of recovery. At a meeting on June 21st, committee members affirmed support for the measure and denounced the silence and inaction on the federal level. On June 27th, a week after the meeting, the resolution passed unanimously, declaring AIDS a public health emergency, seeking federal legislation to fund large scale research and treatment, and pledging local support and funding for tracking and treatment programs.

At the time of the meeting, the Seattle-King County Department of Public Health had tracked 13 AIDS cases across the state of Washington, nine of which were in King County and four of which had already resulted in death. Health professionals estimated that true infection rates were 2-4 times higher. The resolution requested $40,000 in emergency funding for AIDS research, tracking, treatment, and education for the remainder of the 1983 fiscal year, and an additional $80,000 per year beginning in 1984. It also established collaborations between the Seattle-King County Department of Public Health and Seattle Gay Clinic to implement a county-wide medical diagnostic treatment program, social support services for AIDS patients and their families, training for medical staff, and public education programs to reduce both risk and stigma. In passing this resolution, Seattle followed San Francisco as the second major city to commit government dollars and resources to addressing the social and physical health consequences of AIDS in the early years of the crisis.

Testimony

Department of Human Rights Representative Dave Haining (listen to audio)
Chairman Richards, members of the council, citizens of Greater Seattle. The Seattle Human Rights Department strongly supports the resolution proposed by Councilmember Jack Richards relating to AIDS. Aids may be our greatest health peril since polio. It is imperative that we respond to this health emergency on a local, state and national level. The AIDS crisis requires thorough and coordinated action in order to determine the causes, treatments, and prevention.

The public must be educated with accurate medical and scientific information. Dr. Edward Brandt, head of the Public Health Service, pointed out to The Detroit News earlier this week that groups most susceptible to the deadly disease are unjustifiably subjected to public rejection because people are afraid of being afflicted. He noted that such fear is unreasonable. According to available information, the disease can be spread in only three ways: sexual contact, use of contaminated needles, and very rarely through the use of blood and blood products.

There is no question as to the severity of the disease. You've heard facts and figures already this evening. I'm sure you'll hear more. The disease is debilitating, costly, and there is a lack of any concrete information about its cause or cure. The most important point I believe that I can make this evening concerning the following, there is a general prejudice toward the high target patient groups.

It is intolerable that prejudice should affect our response to a health problem. I was just reading an article today in the latest issue of New York Magazine. The article on AIDS was a horror story of one sequence of events after another, talking about people who have come in contact with those who have, who have AIDS, as well as those giving their accounts as patients, as having the disease.

In one example that I recall, uh, a young man was in the hospital and there was a knock at his hospital room door. He opened the door and found his food tray sitting in the hallway. That's the kind of response that we have to face.

The underlying discrimination and prejudice have contributed significantly to the nation's inadequate response to the health problems, which includes lack of funding for research, lack of care for affected individuals, and lack of information both within the medical profession and the community at large. Our response to the health emergency presented by AIDS has certainly not been comparable to our responses to the outbreaks of Legionnaire's disease and toxic shock syndrome.

Neither the medical community nor government has responded as quickly or as extensively as the crisis warrants. We can no longer ignore, which is tantamount to saying we do not care. There must be a cooperative effort involving victims, health professionals, government and concerned citizens and organizations. Additional resources must be allocated to expand public health surveillance and research on AIDS.

There must be improved medical accountability and treatment. AIDS patients must not only suffer through the debilitating disease but also face extreme financial burdens. The cost of the disease averages $60,000 per case. Most patients cannot afford the astronomical costs for medical care. Therefore, we must not only provide means for them to be able to afford this, but we must also provide psychological and social support.

We urge the Public Safety and Health Committee of the City Council and the Council as a whole to adopt the resolution which declares AIDS to be a medical emergency, seeks passage of federal legislation for research funding, and declares the city's intent to find funds and resources for local AIDS programs. Thank you.

Freedom Socialist Party and Radical Women’s Representative Doreen McGrath (listen to audio)
My name is Doreen McGrath, and I'm speaking on behalf of the Freedom Socialist Party and Radical Women. We are here to join with other community organizations and individuals to urge full resources be made available for AIDS research and treatment by every level of government. The AIDS emergency is not only a health emergency, it is a political emergency as well. AIDS has given the right wing a new lease on life. What they couldn't accomplish with abstract moralizing against gays and lesbians, they are trying to accomplish with medical panic and sensationalism. They have seized on the issue to make social outcast of AIDS' primary victims, gays and Haitian immigrants, and we are infecting the body politic with the diseases of homophobia and racism that these diseases reach into all levels of government has already become dangerously apparent.

At present, the U.S. government is responsible for the involuntary sterilization of uncountable women of color in this country. In 1945, a proposal before the U.S. Congress to sterilize all the Japanese women in internment camps lost by a single vote. Add to this, public documentation of government experiments and biological weapons against U.S. citizens, such as viruses sprayed in New York subway cars, bacteria dispersed into the prevailing winds off the San Francisco Bay in the 1950s, and U.S. Army experiments on unsuspecting World War II GIs with dangerous drugs and radiation fallout. And it is not inconceivable to many that government experiments played a part in the AIDS epidemic. From what we - [applause]

From what we know of the government experiments and what we know of government homophobia and racism, the possibility cannot be dismissed as paranoia. [background murmurs] Many of the world's people, from the Vietnamese to the Salvadorians, to the Nicaraguans to the Native Americans, are quite rationally and sanely paranoid about death at the hands of the U.S. government. The fact that funding for AIDS research, particularly from the Reagan administration, has been stingy and slow because it strikes people who are - who already faced deep and widespread discrimination and hostility, adds to these fears, and reinforces second class citizenships for some in our society, and feeds the fires of reaction. There is an antidote to the medical and political emergency of AIDS. It is swift and well-funded treatment in research of the disease, accompanied by denunciation of all forms of bigotry and an uncompromising advocacy of the right to survival of gays, people of color, no matter what language they speak, who they sleep with, or what their citizenship is.

Until a public official stands for the right of the least powerful among us, none of us are safe from the medical - from medical emergencies like AIDS or the deadly social diseases of racism, sexism and homophobia. We commend you for holding this hearing and urge you to pass the resolution under consideration tonight. [applause]

Seattle Gay Clinic Director Doctor Tom Marsella (listen to audio)
Good evening, uh, my name is Thomas Marsella, medical director of the Seattle Gay Clinic. Uh, I am honored today to join the, uh, my colleagues addressing Councilman Richards and his committee regarding the health threat of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome in Seattle and King County. We have heard from Doctor Hansfield and others regarding the nature of this devastating illness, nationally and locally.

I would like to address my comments and reiterate specific points to emphasize the fact that AIDS is locally a critical public health emergency. Number one, AIDS is a lethal illness with a high morbidity. Morbidity refers to human suffering. With 1600 cases nationally, the overall death rate has been 40%. The two-year death rate approximates 80%. The three-year death rate approximates 100%.

Most of the deaths occur in young people under the age of 40. The fact of dying of AIDS is overshadowed, if that's possible, by the process of dying of AIDS. Unimaginable suffering - physical, psychological, emotional, and social - occurs as the disease is characteristic of AIDS unrelentlessly [sic] progress. My colleague, Dr. Bob Wood will discuss later the practical impact of AIDS on human individuals.

Number two, AIDS is rapidly spreading. AIDS is no longer isolated to a few cities. Cases are appearing in many other cities nationally, all with a similar pattern. In Seattle, the first case was reported in June of 1982. Twelve months later, today, nine definite and three probable cases are known. Of the nine cases, three have been fatal, representing a 33% death rate. 

We have witnessed an exponential increase in the number of new cases of AIDS in other cities. We can expect a similar exponential pattern in Seattle. I'd like to direct your attention to the visual aid here to my left, which graphically shows the rate of rise of new cases in blue and the, the death rate rise in red.

Number three, the current reporting of AIDS cases underestimates the extent of the problem. For scientific research purposes, the Centers for Disease Control must limit the definition of AIDS to a narrow spectrum of, spectrum of disease. Persons with symptoms suggestive of immune deficiency, but not meeting CDC criteria for AIDS, are not counted as cases of AIDS. The lymph glands swelling syndrome may be a pre-AIDS condition.

Currently in Seattle there are over 100 individuals with this lymphadenopathy syndrome. It is, uh, well known that other viral illnesses, of which AIDS may be one, occur in a spectrum, in large proportions of affected individuals who may have few or no symptoms and hence be totally unaware that they are infected and carry disease. Hence, the implication exists that we may be underestimating the extent of AIDS by a factor of 2 to 4, possibly even greater.

Number four, the current epidemic may be preset for the coming months. The incubation period of AIDS is anywhere from 6 to 24 months, and it may even be as high as 36 months. The future pattern of AIDS, both nationally and in Seattle, is preprogramed for the next 12 to 24 months. We will be able to do little or anything to prevent further outbreak of this disease over the short term.

Number five, the community ability of AIDS suggests a risk of spread to the general population. This is not a gay disease. The cause of AIDS is a transmissible agent, probably a virus passed through the blood essentially only by therapeutic or non-therapeutic blood product transfusion, closely intimate sexual activity, and perhaps during intrauterine fetal development. Current information suggests that over the short term, AIDS will most likely remain largely in the current high-risk groups.

Certain other data, however, suggest a risk difficult to quantify at present, that AIDS may appear in the general population in the future. Because of the poor outcome of AIDS, de-emphasis of the risk of spread to the general population is unwise at this time. However, overemphasis of this risk due to public and professional ignorance of AIDS is manifesting itself by the current hysteria regarding the communicability of the syndrome.

The points that my colleagues and I raise mandate the recognition of the AIDS crisis locally for what it is now, and for what it will become in the near and distant future. Recognition of the seriousness of the crisis now will allow timely development of public health and education aimed to control the spread of AIDS while awaiting preventive measures and ultimately a cure.

I strongly urge unanimous passage of the pending resolution and that it be implemented immediately. Thank you.

Richard Greenburg (listen to audio)
My name is Richard Greenberg. I reside at 942 19th Avenue East, number 103. I'm not going to speak to you about the political or the social or the medical reasons for passage of this resolution. I want to speak to in a quiet voice of one who is a friend, a very close friend, someone who is an AIDS victim.

I have known this friend for a long time. He's a close gardening buddy, um, and I have watched him in the past two years, two months, lose 35 pounds, have all of his hair fall out from chemotherapy treatment and witnessed the pain and suffering of his own family as his mother dons the hospital gown and puts on the gloves and goes into the isolated home to hug her son. I've seen the pain and confusion in her eyes.

She doesn't know what it is. She doesn't know what her fear is. She just knows that she fears. I myself have had to deal with my own fear and my own pain in watching somebody who I am very close to die. [Breath shudders emotionally]

I have held Michael as he cried, and I've cried with him. I want to just speak, to let you know there is pain and suffering. And it's particularly around that isolation, the isolation that's caused by the misinformation and the fear that surrounds this disease. As I've held Michael, I've had to hear my own fear screaming in the back of my head.

It's real. There is a lot of suffering, not only of those who are afflicted with this disease, but of all those people around them, even those that are too afraid to come close and reach out to somebody that they truly love. I urge your passage of this resolution on an individual basis. We've heard all of the other reasons. I urge you, on the basis of the real human suffering that goes on for each one of us who really care and love. Thank you.

The entire meeting can be heard in Digital Collections. (Event 10393, Seattle City Council Audio Recordings, Record Series 4601-03)

See our LGBT Issues in the 1980s Digital Document Library for additional resources and links to related documents.