CDC Recognizes AIDS Epidemic: The Dawn of a Health Crisis

Two research teams on opposite sides of the Atlantic independently isolated the virus responsible for AIDS on May 20, 1983, triggering a scientific priority dispute that took years and diplomatic intervention to resolve. Luc Montagnier's group at the Pasteur Institute in Paris had identified a retrovirus they called LAV from the lymph node of a patient with early symptoms. Robert Gallo's team at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda was pursuing a similar line of research and would announce their own discovery the following year. The AIDS epidemic had emerged with terrifying speed. The CDC first reported unusual clusters of Pneumocystis pneumonia and Kaposi's sarcoma among gay men in Los Angeles and New York in June 1981. Within two years, cases had been identified among hemophiliacs, intravenous drug users, Haitian immigrants, and recipients of blood transfusions. The disease had no treatment, no vaccine, and a fatality rate approaching 100 percent. By the time the virus was identified, thousands of Americans were already infected. The dispute between Montagnier and Gallo over credit for the discovery became one of science's most bitter controversies. Gallo's lab had received a sample of Montagnier's LAV virus for research purposes, and questions arose about whether Gallo's virus, which he called HTLV-III, was actually derived from the French sample. The controversy was resolved in 1987 when Presidents Reagan and Mitterrand brokered an agreement crediting both teams as co-discoverers. The virus was renamed HIV. The identification of HIV made diagnostic testing possible, which in turn revealed the true scale of the pandemic. By the late 1980s, millions worldwide were infected. The development of antiretroviral therapy in the mid-1990s transformed HIV from a death sentence into a manageable chronic condition for those with access to treatment. But the virus has killed over 40 million people since the epidemic began, and roughly 39 million people are living with HIV today. The scientific breakthrough of 1983 saved countless lives but came too late for the generation that bore the epidemic's first and heaviest toll.