Nancy Pelosi: “this week we recognize that 25 years ago in San Francisco doctors saw a disease that did not yet have a name with…”

“this week we recognize that 25 years ago in San Francisco doctors saw a disease that did not yet have a name with symptoms that hearkened back to the Middle Ages. Some manifestations of the disease were lesions, pneumonia, infections. Within 5 years, we were losing so many, many friends to AIDS that we would often go to two funerals in one day. A whole generation of young people went to more funerals than birthdays. We had too many friends who we held in our arms at the end of their lives that felt like a bag of bones more than the muscular young people they had been. There was so much, first of all, a lack of information and then fear of what became known as HIV/ AIDS. Nineteen years ago, it was this week I came to Congress to be sworn in. And my first sentence was, I am here from San Francisco and I have come to fight against AIDS. Actually, what I said is, Sala Burton sent me here to fight against AIDS. She was my predecessor. People asked me, why would you say that? You don't want to be labeled that way. That is the way AIDS was viewed at the time. But that was why I came here, and I said that from day one. Because San Francisco had suffered the most, we now had an opportunity to be a model for America and eventually the world, a model for leadership, for community-based solutions, and for intervention.…”