In 1982, one year after the first Aids-related death in the UK, the DJ and Hansard reporter Terry Higgins died. His partner, Rupert Whitaker, and friends established what would become the Terrence Higgins Trust, now the UK’s leading HIV charity, in his memory.
Meanwhile, there was widespread media coverage of the mysterious new condition, acquired immune deficiency syndrome (Aids), initially known as “gay-related immune deficiency”. In 1983, scientists discovered the virus behind it, now known as human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). A few years later, tests for HIV were approved.
By the mid-1980s a huge public information campaign was under way in the UK, called “Don’t aid Aids”. Leaflets were sent to every household warning the public: “Don’t die of ignorance.” With no cure, prevention was the message. The condition was further thrown into the limelight when Princess Diana opened the first hospital ward in England dedicated to treating Aids, and when in 1990 the EastEnders character Mark Fowler tested positive for HIV.
In 1991 Freddie Mercury, the lead singer of the rock band Queen, died of Aids-related pneumonia. “Mercury’s addition to the dismal roll call of Aids casualties ends a chapter in rock music,” said his obituary in the Guardian.
Just two years later, the film Philadelphia was released, one of the first mainstream Hollywood movies to have a storyline based around the condition, in which Tom Hanks plays a lawyer with Aids fighting against discrimination.
Scientists had been working on treatments for years, and in 1995 a new treatment based on a combination of drugs was introduced. Known as highly active antiretroviral therapy, or Haart, it had a rapid and dramatic impact once it was made widely available, reducing the death rate significantly.
Medical developments continued, with scientists attempting to produce vaccines against HIV, and tackling the issue of drug resistance. In 2008 it was revealed the so-called “Berlin patient”, Timothy Brown, had been cured of HIV infection after having a bone-marrow stem cell transplant to treat leukaemia in 2007.
In 2012 the first drug to be taken to prevent the contraction of HIV, pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), was approved in the US. In 2017 it was introduced in Scotland; trials are still ongoing in England, although drugs to stop the virus taking hold after exposure are available. The major advances in tackling HIV/Aids were highlighted with the 2013 release of the film Dallas Buyers Club, which told the story of the Aids patient Ron Woodroof, who had to resort to smuggling unapproved medications into Texas in the 1980s.
In 2019 a major European study of gay men confirmed HIV-positive patients on suppressive antiretroviral therapy could not infect their partners because the amount of the virus in thebody was too low for transmission. Some say the advent of this and other drugs means the end of Aids may now be in sight.
