EDGE New York City

In the mid-80s, the growing pervasiveness of the disease forced America to recognize the existence of gay men and women among them. The seeming catalyst that breached the wall of the world’s deliberate blindness came in the form of one man - Rock Hudson, the dashing Hollywood heartthrob who announced he had contracted the disease - and the woman who took his hand in public to prove not only that AIDS could not be contracted through casual touch, but also that those dying from it could be worthy of that touch: Elizabeth Taylor. "I could no longer take a passive role as I watched several people I knew and loved die a painful, slow and lonely death," Taylor said.

Shortly thereafter, the gay community finally galvanized. ACT UP was formed in New York under the direction of Larry Kramer, and took to the streets to demand treatment.

"ACT UP came about in 1987 because GMHC had not pressured the government to do any research for a cure," Kramer explained to New York Magazine. "I made a speech and got everybody all riled up. And then we had another meeting, and there were three times as many people. I discovered there was a whole new generation of people who were not hung up about being gay, who were also sexually active and terrified of dying and of seeing all of their friends dying."

The only solution on the market - AZT - was extraordinarily expensive, and served quickly to divide the AIDS community into the "haves" and "have-nots." A feeding frenzy erupted for medicine that required those lucky enough to procure it to take 100mg capsules every four hours around the clock. It prolonged life, but largely failed to stop the insidious progress of the disease, and by 1991, the World Heath Organization estimated that over ten million citizens of the world had contracted HIV.

Education became the most potent weapon against AIDS, and an industry was birthed to offset fear with truth.

"There was a certain despair back then," Goldman remembers. "We watched Roy Cohn die, and there was a sense that if somebody that powerful could die, anyone could.

"There were so many funerals. Everyone was dying in their twenties. And nobody knew much about it."

When Goldman’s brother Hilliard was diagnosed in 1991, AIDS hit home.

"There wasn’t a whole lot of point getting tested back then," she says. "What would you do with that information? But he’d gotten sick, and after he knew - well, one day he was fine and then afterwards he couldn’t even eat. He couldn’t go out. He was paralyzed by the fear. There was no way out: you’re going to get an OI [opportunistic infection] and it’s going to be really horrible and you’re going to die."

She nods. "It was a nightmare."

When Hilliard died in 1993, he was 29 years old. Goldman joined entrepreneur James Marks two years later in starting TheBody.com.

"Nobody was doing this back then, people didn’t even know what the internet was," she explains. "But we gathered the information we thought was really important for people to make choices about their lives... and for those who had to take care of them."

For Haag as well, the disease continued to strike at those close to her.

"The most difficult moment for me was when Michael Smith - who did the radio show ’1 in 10’ - died," she says quietly. "And he died just as the new drugs were coming on the market. It’s difficult to remember that people were still dying in the mid 90s, when the drugs weren’t yet keeping people alive."

By 1995, 48,371 people had been confirmed dead as a result of the AIDS epidemic. The CDC announced that AIDS had become the leading cause of death for Americans aged 25 to 44. A man named Cleve Jones began stitching a quilt to commemorate those who had died - it grew to over 40,000 panels, in its entirely large enough to cover the National Mall in Washington. As the celebrity set began feeling the pain, losing Liberace, Freddie Mercury, Robert Reed, Arthur Ashe, Rudolf Nureyev and others in the intervening years, Hollywood began to document the crisis through stories of pathos.

In High School during the 90s, Kris Haight remembers watching HBO’s "And the Band Played On," based on a literary work that chronicled the "early years" of the epidemic.

"That was the pinnacle point for me," he recalls of watching the film. "It was a big deal. I was gay, I’d seen the news in the 1980s, but when I saw that movie, something clicked."

Just as educational efforts in the US and around the world began to decrease the number of new infections due to the expanding practice of safe sex, and in the wake of nearly eight years of feverish fundraising and medical research, Roche announced that Saquinavir (Invirase®) was approved for use in the US. The first anti-HIV drug in the protease inhibitor class, its application when combined with existing therapies such as Necleoside/Non-nucleoside reverse Transcriptase Inhibitors provided dramatic new results. "Cocktails" - one, two or three drugs used together - proved to be much more effective than the use of one drug alone, could slow progression and deaths in people afflicted with AIDS.

The tide turned; the phrase "living with AIDS" was born.

Next: The transformation of the gay community»