Dan Snow's History Hit - The AIDS pandemic

Episode Date: February 3, 2021

In this episode of the podcast, I’m joined by Tash Walker and Adam Zmith, hosts of The Log Books podcast, to discuss the Aids pandemic of the 1980s and 1990s and the lessons that might be drawn for dealing with COVID-19.We talk about the role of the media in creating negative press around HIV/AIDS and the direct impact that had on Thatcher's Government decision to bring in Section 28. We also discuss the role of many lesbians in supporting those with HIV and dying of AIDS - an area that is often overlooked.If you would like more information on The Log Books podcast then please check out their website at https://www.thelogbooks.org/

Douglas Adams, the genius behind The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, was a master satirist who cloaked a sharp political edge beneath his absurdist wit. Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth explores the ideas of the man who foresaw the dangers of the digital age and our failing politics with astounding clarity. Hear the recordings that inspired a generation of futurists, entrepreneurs and politicians. Get Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth now at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold. Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. Here in the UK we've all been obsessed by Russell T Davies's new drama,

It's a Sin. This brilliant drama follows a group of gay men who arrive in London in 1981, just as first reports of a new disease are making their way across the Atlantic. It's a wonderful series about London's gay community in the 1980s and the onset of the AIDS pandemic. We've talked so much on this podcast in the era of COVID about previous influenza pandemics, but we haven't talked at all about the pandemic that struck the UK and the rest of the world very much in our lifetime, a pandemic that continues to take the lives of millions of people, particularly in Africa, and is, for example, the leading cause of death of women between the age of 15 and 50 in Africa every year. So this was our opportunity to talk about AIDS.

Remember that pandemic, the effect it had and continues to have. I was very pleased to be able to invite two great podcasting friends back on to this podcast. You heard them recently. It's Tash Walker and Adam Smith. podcast. You heard them recently. It's Tash Walker and Adam Smith. They are hosts of the brilliant The Logbooks podcast, which has stories from Britain's queer history and conversations about being queer today. They have recently made several podcasts about the AIDS pandemic. They've interviewed many people that were affected at the time and since, and they've looked at a huge amount of archival material from the early 1980s as well. So it was great to have them on this podcast to talk about AIDS, the other pandemic. For everybody who has been riveted by It's a Sin,

I hope this provides a bit of historical context. Much more historical context available at historyhit.tv. If you want to subscribe to the world's best history channel, you go to historyhit.tv. We've just relaunched the platform. The whole thing is working seamlessly. It's beautiful. To subscribe now is like an enjoyable journey. You just go to the screen, History Hit TV.

You just kind of vaguely breathe in the direction of the screen before you know it, you're a subscriber. A lifelong passion for history is ignited. There you go. So head over to history.tv. In the meantime, everybody, please enjoy this episode with Tash Walker and Adam Smith on AIDS. Tash and Adam, thank you very much for coming back on the podcast so soon. Woohoo, thanks for having us. Such a pleasure. Well, we just realised last time we had a fun and light-hearted chat about the remarkable

work you're doing in your podcast, but we kind of realised that we need to talk about HIV AIDS, perhaps because it's not a pulmonary infection, perhaps it's a slightly different disease in people's minds, but perhaps because of the groups of people in society it tended to affect. When we talk about all these pandemics in the 20th century, it seems to be getting left out. But you guys tell me, what was the impact of that pandemic on the groups on which it fell? It was huge. It was absolutely significant. Adam and I have spoken to many, many people who it's impacted, including those who lost so many loved ones. The impact that it had was ginormous globally, and of course is still very present today. Western society having a very

different situation to lots of other parts of the world. But if we look at specifically the LGBTQ plus communities, it hit them like a tsunami, and certainly no one was expecting it. And it was at a point where we had the partial decriminalization of homosexuality in tsunami. And certainly no one was expecting it. And it was at a point where we had the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality in 67. And then this started to happen in the 80s, when things were starting to look a little bit better. And it threw everything off kilter. Yeah, I think that the shock of it in rich developed countries like America and the UK was so much greater simply because it had come after successive waves of sexual freedom and sexual liberation. And certainly like by the point of the 70s,

the lives and the chances for gay men to live their lives, to live their bodies, the likes of which hadn't really been seen that much before. There was so much sexual freedom. And that's why such huge communities of people were living in places like San Francisco and New York and London and living not with full freedom or full acceptance or anything like that politically, socially, but certainly among themselves in their own communities, living as sexually free. And then this came along. And so I think that it was such that stark contrast, you know? And now, 50 years later, 33 million people have died around the world. A bit more than that. Nearly 40 million people, I think, are living with HIV today. So this is an ongoing situation. I should say I did some research before talking to you guys. Something like 70% of HIV positive people live in sub-Saharan Africa, and there's a million people a year die of HIV

AIDS in Africa alone. So I don't want anyone to think that we're ignoring that. But I am just fascinated by your experience of talking to survivors and witnesses of that pandemic. And I'm fascinated by, and we see it in the wonderful TV show out at the moment, but the secret nature of it, that must have done people's heads in. They were telling people that there was this thing and other people kind of didn't believe them. So what was the timeline of HIV AIDS? In Britain, it really starts just a little bit after it started in the USA, very early 80s, 81, 82, 83, when we saw the first early cases here. And then because it had already happened a little bit in the US, when basically men, young men, otherwise healthy men, were turning up to hospital with various

infections, which were not the kinds of infections or diseases that those kind of men would get. One of the big ones was a cancer called Kaposi's sarcoma, which puts these purple lesions on your skin, often in visible places. Another one was pneumonia, a certain kind of pneumonia. These are things that young men just don't get. And these were infections that were turning up in American hospitals and then started turning up here in the 80s. And that was one of the reasons why I think a lot of people in the UK used to talk about it as an American disease. They said, oh, you know, just you'll be fine. Just don't sleep with any Americans. And that's something, Tash, that we've heard in interviews, isn't it, with people? Yeah, definitely. It's so interesting. We spoke to someone who thinks that they were one of the first people to bring it over

to the UK as well. And he contracted it in 1980, 1981 sort of time. But as Adam said, in the early, very early 80s, you have this emergence, no one really knew what was going on. And there was a UK's first seminar on AIDS was at Conway Hall. And this was in May 1983. And that was organised in conjunction with Switchboard and the Gay Medical Association. And this was in May 1983. And that was organised in conjunction with Switchboard and the Gay Medical Association. And they were just a group of people getting together to talk about it. No one had any idea what was going on. And one of the people that we spoke to, Julian Howes, who's very, very well known within the HIV activist area, he recalled a memory of Mark Ashton, who many people might remember from the Pride film,

gay activist who died of HIV when he was 27. He led Lesbian and Gay Support the Minors. 1983, Conway Hall, he stands up and he asks Mel Rosen, who was over from the gay men's health crisis, he said, Mel, do you think this might be some plot that's been thought up by the CIA to kill gay men? This is how little people knew about it. And Mel Rosen replied, yeah, it may very well be. So it's just a real insight at that point into how little was known and how terrified everyone, everyone was. Can I ask a stupid question? Because it was odd that it fell so unevenly on that community.

Like, why was that? It's to do with the kind of sex they have. I mean, HIV is a blood-borne virus, and so it can pass during anal sex. It's not easily transmitted, but that's a group of people that are having a lot more anal sex than perhaps other groups in society, proportionally. of people that are having a lot more anal sex than perhaps other groups in society proportionally. And basically, sometimes what happens during anal sex is tiny, tiny fissures, breaks in the skin. And so when one person's fluid touches that, crosses that boundary, then it can go into the other person's bloodstream. And because that particular transfer is much more likely in anal sex than in other kinds of sex. That was why. But it's also because it's bloodborne, it was also affecting intravenous drug users. And so

that was one of the other groups that was hugely affected by it. And again, similarly with gay men, that's a group in society that was at that time very well and still is ostracized a bit. So that was one of the other sorts of problems in society facing this and dealing with this politically was that it was affecting groups that were maligned, really, overlooked. It just reminded me,

as we started talking about, one, the question you just asked then, Dan, and Adam's answer is that Adam's quite right. Those are the reasons why it became so much more prevalent within those marginalised communities. But of course, the media's take on that

was that it was because of their promiscuous nature. And that's why they contracted HIV. And what was the practical effect of them being from marginal groups, both intravenous drugs users and gay men? Do we know, did politicians take it less seriously? Like what ways did that disapproval manifest itself? Yeah, 100%. Politicians took it a lot less seriously. All sorts of different people took it a lot less seriously. The reason why Switchboard and other organisations got together and individuals got together in that meeting that Tash talked about in 1983 in Britain was because they felt like no one else was really paying

attention to it. And so it was literally a bunch of people whose loved ones were suffering, getting together and saying, is there something happening here? We need to do something. And so that was obviously very, very, very early days. And you see it also in It's a Sin, the TV drama on Channel 4 at the minute, you see bunches of people getting together for activism as well on the street, lobbying the pharmaceutical companies that were trying to develop drugs, tests and things for it, and as well as lobbying politicians. And then I think the way that it manifests in some of the work that Tash and I have done in the Switchboard archive is just people calling because you can tell that they don't know anything about this, and they're not getting any information about this. There's nothing on the TV, hardly. The stuff that's in the newspaper is that this is a gay plague and that it's basically

killing gay men because they're responsible for doing unnatural things with their bodies and that's why it's killing them. So people were ringing switchboard to ask questions about what this is and that's because all the other authority figures were letting them down. Yeah, I think it's really interesting if we bring in the media response and the impact that had on the communities, which of course is humongous and very, very negative, very hostile with what happened in 1987. So, you know, the government was getting a big, big call to do something because the numbers are rising and people were dying. They couldn't ignore it any longer. So they put this massive campaign out called the AIDS Don't Die of Ignorance campaign. Many people might remember it. It was like tombstones, very intense

music. It was so provocative. It's, you know, almost looks like propaganda, just cultivating these ideas through people's TV sets. So this went out in between TV shows. And they also sent this leaflet out to every single household in the country, AIDS don't die of ignorance on the front. And they put many organisations numbers in, including Switchboard. So that went to 12 or 13 million doormats across the UK. And Switchboard only found out the night before. And then the next day, the phone lines broke, they were completely inundated with people contacting them. But many people contacting them were straight. They call them, I think Lisa calls them the worried well, just absolutely freaking out from this campaign because the campaign wasn't targeted at intravenous drug users, at sex workers, at gay men. It was targeted at straight people. And many

of the adverts had straight people in nightclubs dancing. And so it just created this massive scaremongering throughout the whole of the UK. And Switchboard was there to answer those calls and to support those people. I think it's interesting to think about that campaign as sort of being necessary by that point, because there had been such a lack of engagement to the right communities earlier on. Because those communities hadn't been engaged with, it became this huge national and international situation where lots of people, like the worried well, like you said, the people who were not at all at risk from contracting it, people who were in monogamous relationships, not injecting drugs and not having sex with anyone else who was positive or anything, those people were worried because of what they were seeing in the newspapers.

And that then meant that arguably there needed to be a national campaign to assuage those fears, even though, as Tash said, that still had an influx on Switchboard. Thank you. uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. Douglas Adams, the genius behind The Hitchhiker's

Guide to the Galaxy, was a master satirist who cloaked a sharp political edge beneath his absurdist wit. Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth explores the ideas of the man who foresaw the dangers of the digital age and our failing politics with astounding clarity. Hear the recordings that inspired a generation of futurists, entrepreneurs and politicians. Get Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth now at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold. Has it been odd for you guys, and is it odd for the communities that you are so in touch with, to see the response to the coronavirus COVID outbreak and see the difference in terms of mobilisation? How has that made the survivors of that generation feel?

Yeah, good question. It's one that we certainly thought about making season two of the logbooks during the COVID pandemic, 2020, whilst going through the 80s and 90s and talking about HIV and AIDS. But the most interesting answers came from the people that we interviewed and spoke to. And they are very, very different pandemics, but there are definitely parallels in the way that they've been dealt with by the government. And I don't think now's the time to talk about that in too much detail, you know, how the government's handled COVID. Now's the time to talk about that in too much detail, you know, how the government's handled COVID. But the direct parallel is a complete engagement versus a disengagement and ignoring. Let's not deal with those people and let's just turn away from that. And I'm sure that was

because of not only it being a conservative government, but it being a Thatcher government. And of course, we've just talked about the mid 80s. We talked about the AIDS Don't Die of Ignorance campaign in in 87 and then of course you've got section 28 which comes in immediately afterwards because it was just a hotbed for this sort of environment they wanted to bring in these extra levels restriction against LGBTQ plus people this was not a way to live this is a bad way to live and look at them they're contracting all of these diseases they're dying that's a sign surely let's bring in Section 28, let's actually stop this from being ever considered an okay type of relationship or way to live. Yeah, there's a couple of extra things on that as well. I was on

the phone last week with a friend and a contributor to the logbooks, who's 72, has been living with HIV for decades and decades now. So he's medically vulnerable for that and for other reasons and because of his age. And he was worried because he hasn't had his call for the vaccine for coronavirus yet. So he's sort of just sitting at home and waiting for that. And he cannot live through that particular experience without re-experiencing, re-imagining the feeling of being left behind or being left aside as he did all those many years ago in a different health crisis. And so I think that for those people who have been living with HIV, either for that long or otherwise, that sense of feeling left aside and feeling like, well, when will it be my turn? You know, when will the right people come to me and care for me?

And obviously, society has to assess all of these different priorities and everything. And there's no right answer. It's very scary. But I just think it's very difficult to be in that position, you know? It must be really traumatising for them, I'm sure. And I don't want to be too kind of optimistic and naive about things. You mentioned that your friend has been alive for decades with AIDS, and now it needn't have any impact on healthy lifespan, right? And so in a way, after a very, very shocking beginning, at what stage in the world can I get this act together?

Because has AIDS been something of a success story in terms of our ability to understand, react and develop pharmaceuticals to combat this disease? Yeah, it's really complicated. Yes and no, I think would be the headline answer for that. Yes, in the sense of, for me, the number one reason why I would say that there has been successes around HIV and AIDS and responses to it as a public health crisis is because of the community spirit, the community activism around the response, which forced the pharmaceutical companies to respond properly in the late 80s and through the 90s and think about pricing and force health authorities and governments to respond properly and to do their research and think about different

communities and how to access them. And then also very much in the early days, and we see this in the Logbooks podcast, patients and their friends and loved ones working with the medical profession. And that had been something that hadn't really been done before the relationship between the patient and the medics, because often the patients knew just as much about the medics as this, because they were following the research as well. So I think in terms of like, how we as a people, whatever our role in a health crisis, deal with these things, I think that that's something that has been sort of a success, if you like, of the HIV AIDS situation has been that it's meant people know how to work together. I'm not saying that that works all the time, every time. And then the science has obviously moved on like a hell of a lot. Maybe Tash, I don't know, do you want to

jump in on the science and the treatment? Yeah, sure. That's my main thing. So we don't really say AIDS anymore. That's an archaic use of the language because people died from AIDS related illnesses. So HIV is the way that we would talk about it now. And it's certainly a completely different world to the world that it was not that long ago, if you think about it, 30 plus years ago. But you have so many ways to not only treat it. So someone who maybe can get diagnosed with HIV now, within a couple of months, they will be undetectable if they're put on the right medication. So it's absolutely amazing the advancement that we have made. And when we say undetectable, that means that they are not detectable as having HIV, they cannot pass it on.

There's also a preventative medicine that's come out called PrEP, which allows people to take it in advance of having sex, unprotected sex and not contract HIV, as well as PEP, which is something that you take after you think that you've been exposed. But it is absolutely fantastic. And we've spoken to lots of the doctors involved in that research today. And they certainly are hoping in their lifetime that they'll see the eradication of transmission of HIV, which is brilliant. Yeah, they've got these targets. It was 90. I think it's now 95, right? So 95% of people with HIV knowing their status, 95% of those being on treatment, and 95% of those being undetectable, like Tash said. And so that's a very, very feasible goal now, even at an international level, even though there is still huge problems with infection,

people living with HIV in poorer countries, but even in a rich country like America, because of how health inequalities work there. I mean, if you're a black man having sex with men, there's a one in two chance that you will contract HIV in your life. So there's huge health inequalities, especially in rich countries between different demographics of people. Especially where you pay for healthcare. I think that, not going into that too much, but in America, there's a lot of complication around accessibility to those two medication treatments I just mentioned there, PrEP and PEP, and it's all about the cost of those drugs, which is a lot different than it is here in the UK. But it is very, very possible that we can get rid of this virus and its effect on people.

There's not going to be a magic cure. That's something that's interesting in the logbooks, Tash. We've noticed logbook entries talking about where volunteers at Switchboard are writing in the mid 80s about, oh, well, you know, maybe there'll be a vaccine in a couple of years, you know, things like that. Or maybe there'll be a cure in a couple of years, things like that. And it's not looking like that is going to be the case. Certainly not a sterilising cure anytime soon. There have been vaccine trials, but it looks like this disease is going to be fought tooth and nail through testing and prevention and treatment. Well, possibly like COVID, if the new mutant strains appear to be on their way to defeating the vaccine already, and it may be there,

it comes down to therapeutic treatment and testing and it's my station or those things. So it feels like AIDS, HIV, AIDS, the pandemic has got huge lessons for us today. Oh, yes, certainly. I think one of them is how to support your communities. I think one thing that many people will probably echo over 2020, 2021, as early into it as we are, is understanding that we have to deal with this as a collective, as a community

and support each other. And if you look back to the 80s, the 90s, if you look back throughout any of the years since HIV and AIDS hit the LGBTQ plus communities, that's one thing that stands strong is community. And that is the reason that so many people survived with love and died with care and love. And, you know, a big part of that was the lesbian community, who were a lot lower risk of contracting HIV, but who really held the hands of so many gay men who died when they were being rejected from their own community as well. So yeah, if we can learn anything through any of these sorts of terrible events, it's that if we look after each other,

and we think about ourselves as a collective, with love, care and kindness, then we will get through it. Well, that's a great place to end. I think think, guys. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast, guys. Tell everyone about your podcast again. What's it called? Yeah, sure. It's called The Logbooks. It is available wherever you get your podcasts. Three words, The Logbooks.

And you can also find out more on our website, which is thelogbooks.org. And it's all about LGBTQ plus queer history. And it's very brilliant, guys. It's a breakout success this year in the uk and elsewhere so congratulations thank you for coming to mark this anniversary that now feels well even more important than it ever was so thank you very much indeed thanks dan thanks very much hi everyone thanks for reaching the end of this podcast.

Most of you are probably asleep, so I'm talking to your snoring forms, but anyone who's awake, it would be great if you could do me a quick favour, head over to wherever you get your podcasts and rate it five stars, and then leave a nice glowing review. It makes a huge difference for some reason to how these podcasts do. Madness, I know, but them's the rules. Then we go further up the charts, more people listen to us, and everything will be awesome. So thank you so much. Now sleep well. Douglas Adams, the genius behind The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, was a master satirist who cloaked a sharp political edge beneath his

absurdist wit. Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth explores the ideas of the man who foresaw the dangers of the digital age and our failing politics with astounding clarity. Hear the recordings that inspired a generation of futurists, entrepreneurs and politicians. Get Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth now at pushkin.fm slashfm or wherever audiobooks are sold.