Robert Smith: “I rise today to note the 20th anniversary of the passing of a constituent of mine . . . one of the five original deaths…”

“I rise today to note the 20th anniversary of the passing of a constituent of mine . . . one of the five original deaths sited by a CDC report published 20 years ago today. Though the 553-word article only outlined a rare type of pneumonia--it also noted that the same strain had struck five gay men in Los Angeles, California. One of those five men in Los Angeles was an Oregonian and I stand here today to mark this somber anniversary. The world marks this date, June 5, 1981 as ground zero for the AIDS epidemic. Those early days marked a panic among urban populations of gay men, who at first made up the bulk of early AIDS cases. It wasn't until 1984 that researchers identified the AIDS virus, and throughout the 1980s much of the gay community's efforts were focused on organization and education, which became the hallmark for the early fight against AIDS. As this Nation all too slowly wakened to this epidemic, much of the groundwork had been laid by a community devastated by this disease. Slowly funding on the Federal level grew, and by the mid 1990s new drugs slowed but did not stop the progression of the disease. Today 36 million people are HIV-positive: almost a million in the United States alone, and almost a third of them don't know they have HIV. AIDS is the fourth leading cause of death globally and the leading cause of death in Africa. The statistics in that continent are mind- numbing--in some countries, one of four adults are living with HIV/ AIDS.”