Talk:Timeline of HIV/AIDS

This article incorrectly claims an AIDS case occurred in the U.S. in 1959. However, the first AIDS cases in the U.S. occurred in 1981.CDC^[1]

The Association of Haitian Physicians Abroad Responds to Worobey's theory, November 7, 2007.^[1]

This article claims aids crossed into humans in the 1930s, but the article on early aids cases claims that it crossed around 1908. Here's their cite: ^[1]

From what I can tell from http://www.immi.gov.au/media/fact-sheets/22health.htm there is no law preventing an individual with HIV from entering Australia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 118.209.95.194 (talk) 08:03, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

There is contradicting information regarding the first death from AIDS in new york. The first entry under 1981 and the last entry under 1980 are both regarding the first death, but offer different points of view. Note: no source is given for the 1980 entry —Preceding unsigned comment added by 140.193.230.26 (talk) 14:36, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Just wanted to second this, has this seriously not been fixed in the past six years? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:9:3500:10F6:380F:E305:7303:D994 (talk) 04:53, 19 July 2014 (UTC)

I have removed the celebrity AIDS deaths. They may be more relvant at List of HIV-positive individuals Sci guy 16:04, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

I added Rock Hudson, as his death had significant political and cultural implications. Uucp 20:39, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

In the list the discovery of the HIV virus by the Americans is mentioned. But didn't the French discovered the virus before, in 1983??

I have added it. Uucp 20:39, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree that AIDS is more widely used and recognised than Aids and is consistent with SARS, PCP, CMV, etc. CDC uses HIV/AIDS as does WHO and UNAIDS. I also note that acquired immune deficiency syndrome and human immunodeficiency virus do not usually have capitals. CD4 cell count appears to be the standard.

Further discusison is welcome. Sci guy 16:00, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• "New guidelines from the World Health Organization and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services defer antiretroviral medications for a person with no symptoms who has a CD4 cell count above 350 and viral load under 100,000". Two problems with this. Firstly, the WHO guidelines were published in 2002, not 2004 (take a look at the report). Secondly, it appears that the DHHS criteria for treatment in the 2004 guidelines were the same as in the previous guidelines, as demonstrated by the quotation given for September 2002.

• ACT-UP Golden Gate is an insignificant organization that doesn't merit any mention in this timeline, let alone the three mentions added by Voyager640.

• "There is no recognized standard for establishing the presence or absence of HIV-1 antibody in human blood." This is not an historical event.

• The "Treatment Guidelines 2005" section (added by Sci guy) is irrelevant.

Trezatium 11:24, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

1. The presentation of the "1958 25-year-old printer from England named David Carr" case is misleading - any reader skimming will assume wrongly that he was the first AIDS death. The MISTAKE warning needs to be at the start of the case.

2. Does the current presentation, of the "1959/New York City, a 49-year-old American shipping clerk" case, sufficiently alert the reader to the unproven nature of this case.

Hooper in 1999 describes the case, "the pathologist, Gordon Hennigar, was mystified as to why he could find no underlying disease that might explain why the Pneumocystis infection had taken hold and proved so remorseless. The case was sufficiently unusual to be written up in two medical journals, and although one of the papers pointed out that the white blood cell count had sometimes been high (which might suggest a leukemoid reaction), its conclusion was that Ardouin represented "the first reported instance of unassociated [Pneumocystis carinii] disease in an adult." Dr. Hennigar, meanwhile, decided to pickle Ardouin's lungs for posterity." http://www.ofspirit.com/tw-theriver.htm

Have the preserved tissues been tested for HIV since? The sources we cite was written some 21 years ago. Hooper wrote 9 years ago. Potentially the first AIDS death in the USA and no medical/science/epidemiological article can be found to cite - seems unlikely. For the English printer we state "The source reference for this item has been removed from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) website." This implies that the, "1959/New York City, a 49-year-old American shipping clerk" case is accepted by CDC. Is this the case? Anyone got online journal access? 124.169.141.63 (talk) 15:29, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Ardouin Antonio's lungs remain pickled and await a test for his lungs. Every year I try to make this happen. I will try to encourage this test again this week. He remains a highly suspected case. Daviddaniel37 (talk 13:20, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Timeline of early AIDS cases seems to be a sub-set of this article (Timeline_of_AIDS)that could be best merged into this article. Comments? 124.169.22.60 (talk) 02:45, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

• Opposed I think they are better in this article. Some notable touchstones could be added to the timeline article if it is added in context of 1. the incident and 2. how it is viewed in the larger context. Like many pandemics the earliest cases ar sometimes discovered years and even decades later. In context this information works better here but some cases may fit thre as well. -- Banjeboi 21:41, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

• Support a merge into this article or into Origin of AIDS#History of known cases and spread. I actually prefer the latter, as most of the information in the Timeline of early AIDS cases is redundant with that section, and the article is pretty flimsy on its own. Fences and windows (talk) 18:08, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

• Opposed I agree with Benjiboi. 38.109.88.196 (talk) 06:18, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

I've removed the above as being rather convoluted. We aren't a medical journal and as such we should try to be clear on what we are presenting. Is this saying something? I'm not sure what but we should clarify so it's clear to all. -- Banjeboi 11:49, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

I removed this entry for 1992:

"In the US, AIDS becomes the leading cause of death for 24 to 44 year old men"

This is a direct quote from this new scientist timeline. The concept of a "leading cause of death" is pretty arbitrary (you can juggle categories to get any value you want) but given sites like and CDC's health data interactive (gopheresque and hard to link, start here ), it's clearly not even close today.

I'm having trouble finding data for 1992 online, if it turns out it was true at some peak in AIDS deaths it's very misleading to include without indicating that it went back down shortly after.

BCoates (talk) 06:33, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

I have always found the sourcing of the case of Arvid Noe to be rather thin. The article about Noe himself includes only cites for Hooper and one cite for a source that I would deem to be reputable, The Lancet medical journal. What makes the Noe case even less credible is that its article mentions an allegedly famous German violinist by name who is apparently not widely known beyond his association with Noe. I bring this up here because I'm looking for thoughts and opinions on the relevance and credibility of references to Noe's case and this article is followed by a bit larger group than the Noe article itself. Should it stay in the timeline? --Sephiroth9611 (talk) 17:08, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Hooper references a 1997 article in Virology about Noe, as well as the Lancet piece about the violinist that you mention. He is discussed at very great length in the Hooper article, and Hooper included him again in his 2005 catalog of important figures in the history of the disease at http://www.aidsorigins.com/content/view/24/31/#N. Noe is mentioned again in a letter to Nature from 1998 (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v391/n6667/full/391594a0.html). Do you think Noe may be fictional? The evidence seems adequate to me that he is what Hooper described him to be. Uucp (talk) 23:30, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

I will take your word for it if you deem Hooper's account of Noe to be credible. I know about Hooper only through reading about him here at Wikipedia, so I'll refrain from making further judgments about his reputation. My only goal was asking for a reevaluation of the subject, which you've provided, so I'm satisfied. Thanks. --Sephiroth9611 (talk) 16:35, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

The Lancet is a top publication, and David Ho was one of the co-authors of the 1998 letter. Noe's story seems legitimate to me. Uucp (talk) 15:32, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Lancet is highly reputable...and the story of Arvid Noe is well-reported in AIDS history. 38.109.88.196 (talk) 06:26, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

In actuality, Robert Rayford was preceded in death by his grandfather who died of similar symptoms in 1966 and they did not test his blood or tissue. Similarly, Arvid Noe is reported as the first confirmed AIDS death outside the U.S., when he was actually preceded in death by his seven-year-old daughter by a year-and-a-half. It should read, seven year-old daughter of Norwegian sailor/truck-driver died January 4, 1975. Born with it, we know that her mother had it before 1967.

http://www.aids.gov/hiv-aids-basics/hiv-aids-101/aids-timeline/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.60.98.146 (talk) 20:55, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

Links are broken. Documents can be found here:

^{[1] [2]} etc. 81.173.147.127 (talk) 10:25, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

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I removed the image of Robert Gallo from the 1990s section. The accompanying text describes how Science referred to Gallo's research on chemokines as an important breakthrough. By 2016, this had not become recognized as a treatment for HIV. I suppose Gallo is qualified to have his picture on the timeline as the co-discoverer of HIV. My evaluation of his research is probably biased by And the Band Played On, but I have certain reservations about his work, and the image is no more relevant or necessary than any other image that could be placed in that section. If there is to be one image per decade, Ryan White is a better choice. Roches (talk) 03:57, 23 August 2016 (UTC)

I added the year 2016 and just wrote about how the HIV virus is becoming resistant to drugs(Yasmejia (talk) 23:07, 26 October 2017 (UTC)) A Timeline of HIV and AIDS. (2017, October 04). Retrieved November 03, 2017, from https://www.hiv.gov/hiv-basics/overview/history/hiv-and-aids-timeline

The article seems to have a neutral tone. It talks about other minor topics but those topics are usually illustrations of how they are connected to HIV/AIDS. For example in 1900, the article talks about Ryan White dying from Pneumonia but this disease was found to be related to AIDS. The article bears more weight on some sub-topics. For instance, there seem to be more information in years like 1959, 1979 and 1980 whiles years like 1920, 1960 and 1964 have little information. The article’s subtopics started from 1900 to 1920 and then to 1959, and so on. There were wide gaps between the years. Does that mean there was no AIDS epidemic within the years that are not discussed? --Wina45 (talk) 17:07, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

Should material about Operation Infektion be added to the page?121.216.112.252 (talk) 11:19, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

^[1] mentions that a case of infection to a hemophiliac can be said to have happened in June 1979 - is this the earliest known? should it be added

Someone should write an article about Dr. James Oleske, the USA pediatrician of Newark, NJ, who discovered that children can get AIDS (see the documentary " Don Quixote Of Newark" for a start @ info) ... c. louis mcguirebutts, jr. 08:31, 24 June 2022 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Drbambam (talk • contribs)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_HIV/AIDS#Homeless_people_and_intravenous_drug_users_in_New_York suggests that the New York outbreak started in the mid 70s with homeless and injecting drug users. This seems to be missing here. INSTEAD it seems to repeat the CDC claims of a 1981 start in New York in gay male populations. 91.154.169.156 (talk) 19:35, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

"An early case of AIDS in the United States was in a female baby born in New Jersey in 1973 or 1974. She was born to a sixteen-year-old girl, an identified drug-injector, who had previously had multiple male sexual partners. The child died in 1979 at the age of five. Subsequent testing on her stored tissues confirmed that she had contracted HIV-1."

The reference given does not support the statement that subsequent testing on stored tissues confirmed HIV-1. She was reported as one of eight possible cases of paediatric AIDS by James Oleske et al in 1983 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/6834633/

She was Case 6 in this series. For obvious reasons she was not tested for HIV by then.

Oleske and other authors subsequently published a series of six cases of paediatric AIDS in 1987, in which the diagnosis was confirmed by HIV testing. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2995933/

Five of these cases had been previously reported in the 1983 paper, but Case 6 in the 1983 series was not among them. In the 1987 series the testing was done on frozen samples collected between May 1982 and October 1983. The three children from the original series of eight who did not have testing had all died before June 1981, before the first cases of AIDS in adults were reported.

I have been unable to find any reliable reports indicating that this girl (case 6 in the 1983 paper) was ever tested for HIV infection, or that there ever existed any stored tissue from her available for testing once such tests became available. It seems improbable that such a sample would have been saved, as AIDS had not been recognised even in adults until 2 years after she died.

Nearly all attempts to verify the statement "Subsequent testing on her stored tissues confirmed that she had contracted HIV-1" circle back to this wikipedia article, which in turn references a 1983 publication that does not - and cannot - possibly support this assertion.

I propose to delete this alleged early HIV/AIDS case from this page, as there appears to be no verifiable evidence she actually had HIV infection. Unfortunately this false statement has metastasised online and is now a central plank of various online conspiracy theories, and internet searches and AI bots universally claim this girl as the first proven perinatal HIV case in the US - based on this wiki article. On A Leash (talk) 02:47, 20 January 2025 (UTC)