Gay related immune deficiency, or the acronym GRID, was the original name for AIDS, a name proposed after public health scientists noticed clusters of Kaposi's sarcoma and Pneumocycstis pneumonia among gay males in California and New York City. CDC. During the early history of AIDS, an ad hoc organization called Gay Men's Health Crisis was founded to combat what was then thought to be a homosexual-only disease perhaps produced by high levels of promiscuity, injection drug use, and usage of poppers. Soon after, clusters of Kaposi's sarcoma and Pneumocycstis pneumonia were also reported in among Haitians recently entering the United States CDC and men with Haemophilia, among female sexual partners of AIDS patients, among children born to possibly infected mothers, and among blood transfusion recipients with no obvious risk factors. The term AIDS (for acquired immune deficiency syndrome) was proposed in 1982 by Bruce Voeller, among other researchers, concerned with the accuracy of the disease's name. In this new name, scientists were supported by political figures motivated by compassion and worried about homophobia.
In April 23, 1984, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Margaret Heckler announced at a press conference that an American scientist, Dr. Robert Gallo, had discovered the probable cause of AIDS: the retrovirus subsequently named human immunodeficiency virus or HIV in 1986.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV-tainted_blood_scandal_(Japan)
After twenty years of research, both Kaposi's sarcoma and Pneumocycstis pneumonia are better understood as opportunistic infections occurring towards the end of the AIDS disease process.
Before the name GRID was fully rejected, ignorance about the basic scientific facts about the nature of the disease--in particular, about the transmissibility of the illness and the fact that it wasn't only a "gay disease--led to many unnecessary deaths. French, Canadian and Japanese political unwillingness to recognize the blood-borne nature of the disease, contrary to overwhelming scientific evidence, led to the unnecessary deaths of thousands of recipients of blood products, hemophiliacs and others, in these countries.
References
- Shilts, Randy. And the Band Played On. 1987.
- The History of AIDS. [1]
- "The 1980s: Outing by AIDS," pp. 137-167. Johansson, Warren & Percy, William A. Outing: Shattering the Conspiracy of Silence. Harrington Park Press, 1994.