The 10 Greatest Villains of the AIDS Epidemic

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Thirty years ago to the day, the Centers for Disease Control’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report reported five cases of Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia among previously healthy gay men. It was not for another year that these deaths were attributed to gay-related immune deficiency -- a name that exacerbated the homophobic positioning of the disease -- and then, mercifully, Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome.

Twenty-five million have since died of AIDS. Put another way, the population of Texas has been raptured off the map. Still, as we’re told ad nauseum, the disease is no longer a death sentence; millions are taking HIV antiretroviral therapy for the first time; Magic Johnson is alive and well; and according to UNAIDS figures, expanded access to treatment led to a 19 percent decline in deaths among people living with HIV between 2004 and 2009. ................
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If you grew up listening to stories of the skeletal Rock Hudson and the doomed Ryan White, as I did, such developments seem gloriously improbable. Against such darkness, it’s almost possible, amid the current revelry, to ignore the millions already dead and the 1.8 million who continue to die each year. For a non-death sentence, AIDS sure does kill a lot people. You can’t assign blame for this to just one person, but Ronald Reagan really does deserve an outsized heap of opprobrium. Despite what you may hear from his defenders, the Gipper, when you get down to it, really did care more about UFOs than the new plague.

The numbers: 3,700 dead after his first term, 46,344 after the second.

Reagan was hardly alone in his deficiency. The history of the AIDS epidemic is littered with people who, through malice or cowardice, made an unimaginably awful situation even worse. America’s collective memory being what it is, it’s worth identifying them. ...........................
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Jerry Falwell, Religiohuckster
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Last Known Whereabouts: Christopher Hitchens, to his credit, shouldered the burden of eulogizing Falwell while the body was still warm, and he properly bid the corpulent monster adieu: “The empty life of this ugly little charlatan proves only one thing,” he told CNN: “That you can get away with the most extraordinary offenses to morality and to truth in this country if you will just get yourself called ‘reverend’.” To C-SPAN’s audience Hitchens observed that, had Falwell “been given an enema, he could have been buried in a matchbox. ....
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Andrew Sullivan, Pundit

Crime: Before calling the American coasts a “fifth column” for not humping the Iraq war; before endorsing Paul Ryan’s plan to dismantle Medicare as “serious”; before he made his living posting photos of reader windowscapes -- before all this, Andrew Sullivan was arguably the most influential gay writer in America. And in 1996, in the wake of the introduction of protease inhibitors, he -- along with less notable opinion-shapers -- was happy to tell readers of the New York Times Magazine that “this plague” -- the AIDS epidemic -- “is over.” Gabriel Rotello wrote despairingly about what happened next: “As the meds came into use, people began celebrating. … Mainstream journalists took their cue and largely dropped the subject.”

Last Known Whereabouts: Sullivan is blogging for the Daily Beast and contributing to Newsweek. He has since mea culpa’d his Iraq war advocacy, but he’s stood his ground on the notorious Times article: “And yet, 10 years on,” he wrote in 2007, “everything in it was right.” Yes, everything except for the plague being over. .............
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Jesse Helms, senator

Crime: “I think somewhere along the line we are going to have to quarantine,” said Helms, “if we are really going to contain this disease.” (A position, by the way, shared by erstwhile Arkansas governor, Mike Huckabee.) He was venomous toward American AIDS victims and denied funding at every turn. Possibly this was because Helms believed that homosexuals were “perverted human beings.” He allowed insurance companies to deny coverage to victims and voted against AIDS education. In fairness to Helms, he didn’t just hate gays, he also railed against the use of funds to distribute sterile needles to drug addicts. .......
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