Famous men in the 80s whose deaths from AIDS-related complications were covered up

Neil Bogart head of Casablanca records

Luther Vandross

Prince

Roy Cohn

Jim Henson

Wasn’t Anthony Perkins another one?

Raul Julia

George Michael

I remember Anthony Perkins talking publicly about his conflicts about being gay and his HIV diagnosis.

R1 Luther Vandross died in 2005 due to complications from a stroke and other health issues, including diabetes and high blood pressure. Madonna had mistakenly included him in an AIDS tribute during her "Celebration" tour which is why some people mistakenly believed he died of it. By 2005, people that could afford medical care were living with AIDS rather than dying of it.

Gregg Burge?

Isaac Asimov

R8 - yes I was about to post that. Apparently a blood transfusion like Arthur Ashe.

Not sure if I believe either story. It's possible - but it's also possible they were closeted.

Burt

R9 It did happen to some people that way. The mother of an older friend of mine died of complications of HIV in the early 1990s at the age of 85. She wasn't promiscuous or an IV drug abuser.

NIH: In the early 1980s, blood became a vector for HIV infection and transmitted a fatal illness to approximately half of the 16,000 hemophiliacs in the United States and to over 12,000 blood transfusion recipients.

R11, Linda Bloodworth-Thomason’s mother mother got it from a blood transfusion.

But I know, she’s not a man.

Many people (including his late widow Marge) think Broadway director Gower Champion was one of the earliest AIDS victims (August of 1980). It was written off at the time as a rare blood cancer, but he was notoriously bisexual.

R11 - that you know of - you never know what people get up to behind closed doors.

I'm joking of course. But there's also something about protecting a person's 'legacy' with Arthur Ashe and Asimov.

We just don't know for sure.

Lenny Baker?

I'm glad Roy Cohn is dead, and I hope his death was a long, slow, excruciatingly painful one.

Lenny Baker's health issues started around 1978 while he was starring in I Love My Wife. He had to leave the show and I don't think he ever returned. I remember seeing him in an episode of Taxi and his voice sounded off so I assumed he might have had throat cancer. I don't think it was AIDS related but it was very sad because he was a very talented, unique guy.

[quote]Lenny Baker?

According to Wikipedia:

Decades after Baker's death, commentator (DL favorite) David Ehrenstein incorrectly speculated in LA Weekly that Baker had suffered from AIDS, then known as "gay-related immune deficiency" (GRID), for approximately two years before his death. Ehrenstein's 2003 LA Weekly essay includes a quote from actor Anthony Holland that indicates that Baker lived in Los Angeles in 1980.

...poor Lenny Baker. Nobody sees him anymore. He’s up there [in his apartment] alone now. He’s dying of cancer, and the doctors can’t seem to figure out why.

— Anthony Holland, Actor, 1980

Countless soap actors.

Jim Henson

Brad Davis.

Exactly, R11.

Case in point: hardcore Colombo Family hitman Greg Scarpa, whose racism killed him.

For decades Scarpa gobbled aspirin by the handful, and it eventually destroyed his stomach. He had to have surgery to address severe bleeding ulcers; because he feared having to have blood transfusions that *could* contain Black blood, instead he had his capos donate blood for him. Well, one of those donors was also a bodybuilder who'd unknowingly contracted HIV from a dirty steroid needle.

Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. Fucker weighed 56 lbs when he died.

Jim Henson’s been mentioned here twice. Is there any proof besides speculation?

R23 no proof... but lots of speculation that it was covered up

Liberace and Rock Hudson come to mind...

Chris Bernau - Guiding Light

Fine-ass Irving Allen Lee and Dennis Parker, Joel Crothers' fellow Edge of Night castmates.

My sister-in-law‘s dad died of AIDS. It’s very awkward because we all sort of pretend it was from a blood transfusion, but my husband tells me that he was very flamboyant and obviously closeted (he died two years before I met my husband). It was very common to cover up these deaths, even in the civilian world.

R1 Prince died thirty years after the eighties.

I'm reading a book that claims Richard Simmons was positive. He was taking the "cocktail" of drugs and was one of the few it worked on until the mid 2000s drugs came along. Person claims he heard it from the pharmacist who filled Richards meds. Also claims RS was into dancers/hustlers.

R30 Are you new to DL? Tell us something we haven't heard. haha

Yeah R29. Prince died in 2016. I'm not saying it's impossible, but wealthy people that could afford excellent heathcare were not commonly dying of AIDS related complications by that point in time. It's very unlikely.

At one time there was talk of Lyle Alzado who died of cancer in the early 1990s. He blamed it on longeterm steroid use but there was a lot of eye-rolling. I havo no opinion one way or another.

Then there are others whose cause of death was publicly disclosed but blamed on IV drug use. Again there was some eye-rolling as with Asimov and Ashe.

[quote] Are you new to DL? Tell us something we haven't heard. haha

[bold]Well excuse me for contributing. I WAS going to name the book where I got the info (and more dirt) but you can promptly run this whole fucking thread by yourself. FYI the book also mentions one of the clubs Richard Simmons met guys (Numbers)---and one of the guys stage names. [/bold]. If you know so much why doesn't this thread have 300 posts? Take your "haha" and swallow THAT.

My apologies R34. Didn't mean to offend. It's just what we do here. If you are new, Welcome !!

R1 R32... Prince died of a Fentanyl overdose using off-brand opiates that were laced. He may have been + but that's not why he died. It could have contributed to his overall health decline but I thought the rx drug abuse was due to a chronic pain/hip problem?

R36 - correct - and the chronic pain/hip problems is because of him jumping around the stage in stillettos and walking around in high heels all the time.

Feels fun and great then - but you pay for it - all dancers do - in your later years.

I think Madonna fucked up her joints with all of her dancing too - and that's why she's strung out on pain pills too and acting all weird.

R25 Rock Hudson said he had Aids before he died, there was no cover up. I think he was one of the very first celebrities to admit to having it. Not an easy thing to do back in the early days.

Not a man: Amanda Blake from "Gunsmoke" got it through a blood transfusion. After she had retired from Gunsmoke a few years before it ended, her manager stole most of her money. Blake did a couple Gunsmoke reunion tv films. Did not look well in the second one.

I thought Miss Kitty got AIDS because she was a whore. Apparently, she contracted it from her husband who also died from complications due to HIV. It's far more likely for a woman to contract HIV from a man than the other way around.

Funny, I always suspected that Paul Lynde was an early AIDS death. I know he smoked like a chimney, was a hate-filled, raging alcoholic, and likely lived on amyl nitrates, but he also ran around with hustlers in the gay porn industry. It could have been a heart attack, but I think that would have been his first and usually it's the third one that kills you -- plus I don't recall his having a history of heart issues. Died July 1982.

R38 - I wonder if Rock had to approve the public announcement of his diagnosis.

There was RAMPANT whispers that got louder and louder til they were full-born rumors — Rock just confirmed what people already had assumed.

In 1988, when I was Director of Malama Pono Kaua’i AIDS Project, once a month I’d meet with other directors of Island AIDS organizations in the office of a professor at U. of Hawai’i in Honolulu. He’d collect all kinds of newspaper and magazine articles on the subject, so that we could read and discuss current trends, and trade strategies.

A propos of this thread, one article I still recall concerned the assertion that perhaps many more women had died of AIDS than had previously been imagined. Reasons for this included a medical establishment traditionally more concerned with men‘s health than women’s, resulting in less testing for HIV. Consequently, thousands of women who died of such diagnosed cancers as cervical, ovarian, uterine, and others, may have also been infected.

I haven’t heard anything about this since then. It still amazes me how deluded our medical establishment can be, and how prone to overlook and cover up its mistakes.

R42 As he lay on his death bed, his publicist read to him the planned press release that would confirm he had AIDS. After she read it to him, he said, "Feed it to the wolves."

Larry Riley from Knots Landing. I remember watching him on the show and seeing him look horribly, shockingly thin. When he died, they first said it was from "kidney failure." It was later confirmed as AIDS.

After that was revealed, his wife said:

[quote] Larry was not gay. He was not bisexual. He did not use needles at all. He speculated it was from a woman. Because he was quite the womanizer.

Sure, Jan.

Amanda Blake's last husband was as gay as a Christmas goose. I will always believe she got AIDS from him. He probably sucked it up and slept with her just enough to keep her from dumping him.

[quote] He speculated it was from a woman. Because he was quite the womanizer.

While technically it is possible for a man to contract the AIDS virus from sex with a woman, it's highly unlikely. It's simply not that easy for a female to secrete bodily fluids that contain the virus into a man's blood steam.

But I got AIDS from a woman, I swear!

R48 Yes. Just like Magic Johnson got AIDS from all that pussy diving he was doing.

I read somewhere that Charles Laughton was an early, EARLY AIDS case.

Tony Baldwin who played the lead on [italic]Surf Cops[/italic]

Uncle Mike

So every dead gay guy died of it? ‘k

R54 No. Just the ones who died from AIDS.

George Michael was too fat for that to be his cause of death.

R56 May I present to you, Robin Crosby!

Jean-Claude Van Damme

R56 George Michael died at the end of 2016. It's highly unlikely that someone with his access to heathcare died of AIDS that recently. It's possible, just not likely.

Ofra Haza

George Michael may have been Poz but perhaps that’s not what killed him.

[quote] I read somewhere that Charles Laughton was an early, EARLY AIDS case.

1962? My, that IS early. That would be six years before the first US case of what was later known to be AIDS (an underage male prostitute in St. Louis, Robert Rayner) was recorded.

Have any of you seen a 2004 documentary called "The Origin of AIDS"? It posits that the virus has been among us decades longer than 1981, and it's actually origin is both ironic and appalling (tied to Jonas Salk and Polio vaccine). It's airing on Tubi, but here's a link for convenience.

Ryan White. He wasn't a man and his death wasn't covered up. He was a boy who died because of a transfusion.

[quote] I read somewhere that Charles Laughton was an early, EARLY AIDS case.

He was reputedly a connoisseur of human fecal mater. A shit eater, according to Scotty Bowers. Maybe he got it from some guy's hockey hors d'oeuvres. I certainly can't fathom any gay man ever willingly breeding him bareback.

There were rumors that Yasser Arafat died from AIDS

Gregory Hines

I always thought when George had that bad respiratory virus or whatever he had that almost killed him it was AIDS related.

In retrospect there were some people who died from rare cancers and other immune deficient diseases from 1978 - 1983 that were not considered AIDS related at the time. The brother of my next door neighbor died in 1980 in his late twenties from an extremely rare type of brain cancer. He was gay and lived in Greenwich Village and was very into the gay club scene. It wasn't until about three years later when his brother (a GP doctor) realized that his cancer was the result of AIDS.

R69 I experienced something similar. In 1980, a young gay Asian/Indian friend was having all sorts of medical problems that the doctors couldn't identify. He was 22, and quite active sexually. But the doctors were puzzled as to what was wrong.

After a few months, he called from the hospital to say that he had been isolated because they had identified his ailment as possible tuberculosis. They wanted all of his close friends and coworkers to be tested. I didn't mind and was actually grateful for his diagnosis, because TB was curable. In less than a month, he was dead.

Later in the 80s, as HIV/AIDS was finally identified, we strongly suspected that what he had was an AIDS-related illness, because no one in the US dies of just TB.

That probably happened all throughout the 60s and 70s, r69. The first confirmed AIDS death in the US happened in 1969. They suspect HIV jumped to humans around the turn of the century. I bet many people have died of AIDS and it completely flew under the radar.

My friend's mom who died of complications of HIV at the age of 85 did have TB as an opportunistic infection. I believe that was ultimately considered her cause of death.

R62 - It’s Robert Rayford, and I find his case fascinating, especially as he was so young and in the Midwest, not exactly a hub of travel:

This is bringing back a lot of painful memories.

What a horrific time those of us survive lived through

I came to LA in the late 80s worked in television at a network -- set decorators, makeup artist, hairstylist, and even a guy in accounting all had that scared look in their eyes

I'd see them get thinner and thinner and then take a leave and then the announcement would come that they had died

R6, you need to catch up with what often happens with longterm HIV despite the wonderful medications available.

Patrick Crowley was an early AIDS case. He died in 1982. Doctors misdiagnosed him multiple times when he tried to get medical care. (the flu, food poisoning). He was only 32.

Jeremy Brett.

R75 I'm a retired pharmacist so your teaching moment on the adverse effects of HIV meds isn't needed. In the case of Luther Vandross, he seems to have followed in his father's footsteps. He was morbidly obese and diabetic. He father died at 40 years of complications of diabetes when Luther was only 8 years old. Not every gay man that dies an early death had HIV.

Producer Allan Carr died from liver cancer on June 29, 1999, His Ex died of AIDS in, fact he was featured in yesterday's AIDS Memorial Facebook post. .

Dan Hartman was famous in the 80s and when he died in 94, I don’t believe AIDS was listed as the cause.

They'd abstain from listing it as a cause of death because it immediately paints a picture of the decedent getting rammed up the ass.

You shouldn't have to die from that.

R48 if he had unprotected anal sex with a woman there is always a risk of blood.

Egon von Furstenberg died of liver cancer caused by a hepatitis C infection. He passed away in Rome, Italy, at the age of 57 on June 11, 2004.

"Liver cancer" - just Like Roy Cohn!

r80 They listed it as a brain tumor in his NY Times obit. The truth is the tumor was discovered after he was diagnosed with HIV+.

r84 So weird, that's how some of Barbara Mandrell's back up dancers died too, according to her.

Robert Reed

First I am hearing about Prince having HIV/AIDS. I wonder if was from sexual exploits or shooting up for heroin. And I’ve never heard about Prince hooking up with men as flamboyant as he was. But I do know from a reliable source he used heroin, the traditional way, on and off for a few years. He had come a to Jehovah moment and stopped and then got hooked on pills later in life after an injury.

r88 I recall at the time some story about him getting hiv med refills and someone spilling the beans. Could be BS.

All the soap opera "hunks" who "tragically died from cancer" in the 80s

I lost too much weight on the watermelon diet!

R13, I was diagnosed with the same blood cancer as Gower Champion (and Georges Pompidou, president of France). The thinking is that one dies with this cancer, rather than from it. Odd that Champion died so quickly after being diagnosed.

Did Steve McQueen die of AIDS? He died out of the country, seeking a cure for whatever he had.

McQueen had mesothelioma, which is known to be caused almost exclusively from asbestos exposure. The cancerous cells grow primarily over years in the lungs and compromises the top layer of tissue, but eventually spreads from the lymph nodes through the body to other organs. Not an HIV related disease.

R94 Thanks!

R94, I wonder if he got it from working on The Towering Inferno?

I recall reading that when McQueen served in the navy he was assigned to work on stripping asbestos from pipes.

"While he was initially assigned to an armored unit, a period of unauthorized leave and subsequent time in the brig led to him being assigned the task of stripping asbestos insulation from pipes in the hold of a ship, potentially at the Washington D.C. Naval Yard. McQueen himself attributed his mesothelioma to this exposure, recalling the air being thick with asbestos during this period. "

R97 That makes sense. Today the Navy provides disability compensation for veterans exposed to certain hazmat for certain periods. You don’t have to have any diagnosis or cancer or anything. Just the exposure for a minimum amount of time, allows you to receive it.

In New York City in the mid-70’s, my gay older brother volunteered, along with a lot of other gay men, to be guinea pigs for a newly concocted Hepatitis B vaccine, which had been considered at that time to be quite prevalent among gay men. The vaccine was proven effective, and is still in use today.

Ten years later, in the mid-80’s, as concern about AIDS was reaching a fever pitch, the organization that had handled l this contacted all these gay men, asking if they’d consent to having their blood samples, frozen and stored since the 70’s, to be tested for the AIDS virus. Of those who consented, it was discovered that, even back in the mid-70’s, about 50% of them had already been HIV positive.

So it was present all that time, and no one even suspected.

"On January 11, 2018, Netherton's younger brother, Brad Netherton, announced on his Facebook page that the singer had died from pneumonia and the flu on January 7, 2018, at age 70, just 4 days before his 71st birthday. An obituary appeared on the Nashville Funeral and Cremation web site."

Thanks, R74, for voicing my experience as well. I know today's young gays tend to be glib about HIV (some to the point of being offensive) because in their world infection isn't a death sentence, and the social stigma is virtually gone. But it's almost impossible to overstate just how horrific that time was for gay people. The fear of being labeled HIV+ was almost as great as the fear of the virus itself. You could (and often did) lose your family, your job, your health insurance, and most of your friends. It's wonderful -miraculous, even - that we have such amazing treatment and prevention today, but I hope people won't forget what happened in the 80s and 90s. It could happen again in a heartbeat. Conditions are ripe: anti-vaxxers are on the rise and we have Trump and his science-denying ilk running (ruining) the government. Promising lines of treatment are being abandoned and research in general is being halted unless it conforms to the the MAGA worldview. COVID wasn't a candle to the HIV pandemic. The world rallied to put out updated information and to find treatments. Unlike AIDS, which the President at the time wouldn't even mention, let alone fund research.

Don't let all those beautiful, young people have died in vain. Start fighting now!

This thread is very sad-making, but it's also a warning -- all the secrecy and pretense could come back if MAGA has its way. No more funding for AIDS research, shame for having the disease, a push to return to the closet.

Hate to sound preachy but the young gaylings don't understand what we elderlings went through, and they take it for granted they're living in a vaguely gay-friendly country.

That can also disappear in a flash. And if Trump and MAGA has their way, it will.

I like Next Stop, Greenwich Village (especially Shelley Winters in it) but I had no idea Lenny Baker was 32 when it was released. He was playing a much younger (10 years?) character.

Not saying it was AIDS related, but nobody seems to know what Robert Osborne died from, and it was covered up. Why would the cause of death never be released?

[quote] and the social stigma is virtually gone.

The social stigma is certainly not gone at all, even from Gen Z, dumb as they are. An announcement of an HIV diagnosis is very shocking to every generation.

Clint Kimbrough...."pneumonia"...

nobody seems to know what Robert Osborne died from

He bored himself to death.

I know he was married with family but I wonder about Nicholas Clay.

Because he was 84, R104. When one dies at that age no reason needs to be given for cause of death. It’s OLD AGE.

R99 - thanks for that info. It’s truly shocking but logical that 50% of sexually active gay men were positive by the mid-1970s.

First coming out as a teenager in the mid to late 1980s in non-major/gay city, I am very grateful to Rock Hudson for being honest about AIDS. The press coverage that got alerted even smaller town people to the disease - which I honestly didn’t know about that Spring when I first had gay sex. The equation of gay sex=death probably saved my life - even if, combined with the eras homophobia, it’s left me with deep scars, neurosis and sexual guilt.

It’s also interesting that the true tsunami of AIDS deaths didn’t really hit until late 1980s, early 1990s - when I first truly “came out” and got into the gay bar/club scene, the dying were more visible. The exponential spread seemed to have happened 1980-ish resulting in deaths 10 years later.

Though Gen X got warning thankfully, our youth was spent under the visible dark cloud of AIDS. We benefited from the gay rights advancements made by our forebears - if not the sexual liberation/freedom - but were spared the worst of the virus. And I give Rock Hudson a lot of the credit for opening the floodgates to allow awareness of AIDS to reach middle America.

R109 Osborne was ill for a long time, there were a lot of guest hosts, eventually he came back, then it happened again, iirc, so it wasn't just "old age." This thread isn't about this topic but I just wanted to give that a reply, sorry.

Interesting thread

R111, people get ill with old age, organ function breaks down in old age. Could have been a stroke, could have been cancer. Robert Osbourne died of illness associated with his OLD AGE.

My MIL..I know she’s not a man or famous but in 1983 the 72 yr old was hit by a car and while she was in the hospital she received a ton of blood transfusions.

Fast forward about 6-7 yrs later and she’s getting sick...weird stomach shit, general illness they couldn’t put their finger or to diagnose...

She finally ends up in the hospital....she is skin and bones but her belly was hugely bloated , she has a gastro tube down her nose (horrible) and she had been in a lot of pain. Anyone could tell se was dying yet they continued to test her for everything BUT AIDS

I asked her Dr why they didnt test her for AIDS, well, according to him old ladies (even with blood which wasn’t tested in 83) didnt fit the criteria....I know my story doesnt really fit in but I was thinking about her lately and wanted to tell her story.

The only saving grace for her terrible suffering was she was extremely religious and knew she was going to heaven....le sigh........

It fits fine r114. It addresses the prejudice.

Thank you 115...the Dr was appalled that one would even think an older woman could possibly “catch” the “gay plague” ....

This women was really a saint. Never a bad word about anyone. To see her in such agony was awful............A simple test and then meds to elevate her pain would have put and end to her torture

Crazy story R114 - even in the late 1980s, massive ignorance and homophobia. I remember Magic Johnson being the catalyst for straight people to truly believe it could affect them.

R116 it was that but also the arrogance of some doctors being insulted that you questioned them. Or even suggested anything.

I had a similar but unrelated experience with my mother regarding a reaction to a broad spectrum antibiotic just over a dozen years ago. At one point I was told I wasn't being fair to the medication. She died. The antibiotic was eventually pulled from use.

Just for the record, Magic Johnson was diagnosed in 1991.

R117 R118 I had called the Gay Mens Crisis Center in NYC and told them what was going on with her. They told me to insist she get tested...too late, the Dr was done with me, my questions and suggestions.

Drs really put themselves on a pedestal back then and the family didn't want to shake things up and make waves with him...yet, it was perfectly OK to have someone suffer like that least we insult the good Dr

Kevin Aucoin.

There was also a young woman, I can’t remember her name, who probably died of AIDS early in the 80s. She was a good friend of Debbie Harry and a fixture of the punk scene in New York City, and mentioned in a lot of books about that era, and I’m betting she was an IV drug user. Can’t remember her name, dammit, but an earlier post mentioning that women were dying as well, just unreported.

R118 Im so sorry for your loss.

Was she on Trovafloxacin? It was pulled off the market in what seemed like days for causing instant organ damage...I was on it for a leg infection from bitched surgery. Potent, toxic crap

Avelox r122

Kevyn Aucoin died from kidney and liver failure caused by his prescription painkiller abuse.

R121 - very possibly referencing Gia - a DL icon? - the lesbian supermodel who was diagnosed and died early in the epidemic,

R121 - Cyrinda Foxe?

No, and no, but I looked today and couldn’t find her name. She wasn’t famous, because her time was cut short. I remember Harry was a good friend, and she died really early on in the epidemic. OP wanted men, anyway—but I’ll keep looking for her name.

It was a difficult period for gay men who actually DID die young/ish of cancer. Everyone assumed they had AIDS and were lying, yet of course some young men have always died of cancer unrelated to HIV.

Isaac Asimov

In 1977, Asimov had a heart attack. In December 1983, he had triple bypass surgery at NYU Medical Center, during which he contracted HIV from a blood transfusion. His HIV status was kept secret out of concern that the anti-AIDS prejudice might extend to his family members.

He died in Manhattan on April 6, 1992, and was cremated. The cause of death was reported as heart and kidney failure. Ten years following Asimov's death, Janet and Robyn Asimov agreed that the HIV story should be made public; Janet revealed it in her edition of his autobiography, It's Been a Good Life.

Yes straight woman r128. We heard those stories. But the medical profession treated them well at least. Unlike their treatment of gays.

Arthur Ashe died form AIDS and everyone knows that.

It’s not a secret. He got aids from a blood transfusion.

[quote]There were rumors that Yasser Arafat died from AIDS

True. And his preferred "type" was young blonde surfers. He finally got married to cover up his homosexuality/medical issue.

Paul Lynde's parents died from heart attacks.

Per his close friend, Jan Forbes, the doctor told her Paul had the heart of an 80 year old man.

Robert Urich

Gary Olsen UK sitcom actor "outside the country"

R185 Robert Urich didn't die from AIDS.

There is no R185.

If the virus was in this country for years why did it take so long to be an epidemic? It’s not like gay and bi men were not having sex in the 1950s and 1960s.

The baths. There were no baths to speak of in earlier decades. The Club baths, the founder of which was quite concerned about STDs in his baths impacting customers, I know that because I did knew him, it was the baths that was ground central for the spread.

You can get a blow job easily in Pickle Park it’s a lot harder to have unprotected anal sex and practicing the soon to be popular—-fisting in a public park or at some glory hole at Sears.

Without the baths and then other sex clubs fisting would have never become as popular as it was especially if there were no poppers. Poppers were not at all a 1960s thing.

Poppers, Crisco, a willing ass and no gloves and gang bangs in the baths and then sex clubs. This was where AIDS exploded.

Trust me most woman are not into anal fisting. And for most anal sex is not their main sex, And most are not married to Bi or gay men.

AIDS in the US was always a disease of the high risk. And once gay and bi men could no longer donate to the blood supply for years the blood supply became once again very safe,

Straight woman who are not IV drug addicts or selling their actual ass on the streets or married to a gay man or early on needed a transfusion they were never high risk. Look at the actual numbers not the pretend what might have been.

I dont know how many famous men died but I know that virtually every gay friend and gay pt I had was likely dead by the end of the 1990s.

And on a question on another thread about how important the had of cdc is. At the first sight of GRID Bill Foege the director at the time took people and money and resources he did not have, he stole from other important CDC programs and sent Don France and the others out to do the early response.

When the next gay related epidemic hits, and in time it certainly will , Bill Foege will not be the Director of CDC.

In Baltimore it’s almost impossible for a man to get a BBBJ from a female street walker. You can purchase a BJ from them but it will be covered almost certainly.

I remember calling a good friend I had previously worked with . It took him several weeks to return the call.

He had been or still was on a CDC task force in San Francisco and he said you won’t believe it but all these gay men are dying and no one knows why. He said it was really spooky and scary.

It was sometime after that that the CDC MMWR came out and alerted the world.

Shit like this always makes me wonder what new epidemic is in its nascent stages...

R140 watch for STDs that were once very easily cured that can now no longer be cured.

What I have been watching for is news of clusters of gay men that are quickly dropping dead from a very quick acting form of meningitis. Men who seem to get sick then dead before they see a doctor.

They all seem to have had a combination of previous infections such as syphilis + HIV + + kind of thing. Lots of hook up sex. Lots of STDs and HIV. And of course drugs in their history. Some had all risk factors some had a smaller few risk factors . .

But the outbreaks come and go quickly and seem to have showed up a few times in different parts of US and Canada then it stops.

I dont know if those are in any way related to the meningitis issue and gay men and Florida.

An isolated problem or a tip of the iceberg problem?

"Dylan Mulvaney says it should be ‘illegal’ to use wrong pronouns"..............Is [bold] DICK IN A DRESS[/bold] acceptable? If not, when will the TransGadstapo pound on my door to make their citizens arrest?

I think people who disrespect AIDS victims should be arrested. See how that works?

I wondered about singer and actor Carl Anderson.

Died of leukemia 2003.

Remember Joe Penny from the '80s series "Riptide" and "Jake and the Fatman?" He was a sexy hairdy daddy, then he got super thin and sickly looking and the rumor was that he had AIDS. He kind of disappeared after that and only showed up sporadically in small roles. He's still alive, though, and surprisingly, got married to a woman in 2004.

[quote] Penny ended up doing a pretty depressing “I’m not gay and I don’t have AIDS!” tour on the various chat shows (plus doing a number of television interviews).

As it turned out, Penny had a gastrointestinal virus that turned any food he ate essentially liquid. Effectively, he had dysentery.

Sure, Jan.

Andrew Sullivan became positive just by means of a blow job! Imagine that!