MAURICE HILLEMAN In 1984 researchers at the CDC published a paper titled “Cluster of Cases of the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS): Patients Linked by Sexual Contact.” AIDS, a syndrome that included unusual infections and cancers, was sweeping across the country. Thousands had been infected. Victims of AIDS died of many different diseases. For example, they died of pneumonia. Before AIDS entered the United States, pneumonia caused by pneumococcal bacteria killed tens of thousands of people every year. But AIDS patients were different; they were killed by Pneumocystis, an organism previously found to cause pneumonia only in cancer patients. They also died of meningitis—but again, not from typical bacteria, such as meningococci, but from unusual fungi such as Cryptococcus. Or they died of Kaposi’s sarcoma, a previously rare form of cancer that caused hideous dark purple spots under the skin. The CDC researchers found several groups of people at high risk for AIDS: Haitians living in the United States, intravenous drug users, and people who required frequent blood transfusions.
