Next week is World AIDS Day – December 1.
For a long time, I haven't taken notice of it very much. I think that, having spent my early career (1982-1997) working in the HIV environment professionally, and quite affected by the epidemic personally, I have had trouble embracing the notion of a day that institutionalizes the epidemic when it was always my daily hope that the epidemic would go away.
But here it is again. Many years ago in California, I was asked to speak at a World AIDS Day event unveiling the Red Ribbon stamp. This year, I was asked to speak at the Alan Spears Forum in Minneapolis. The Alan Spear Forum is named for a late state senator who was a champion of HIV causes and it is with a combination of honor and humility that I'll be giving a talk. My task is to look back at the early years of the epidemic, as I did in my book A Fragile Circle, and to assess where we are in the epidemic and where we have yet to go. If you are in Minneapolis, I hope you can attend.