AIDS virus discovered

When researchers reported in the 1930s a simian virus jumped to humans, nobody had any idea the implications. Not for nearly another half century did scientists discover patients suffering from an immuno-deficiency virus that apparently spread via bodily fluids. Four people were recognized to have died from the virus in 1980, and a “patient zero”, Gaëtan Dugas, a French-Canadian flight attendant, was identified (incorrectly, as it turns out). Within four years, 4,000 people would be recognized as infected, almost all of them dying. Then a shattering announcement went out.

On this day, April 23, 1984 Margaret Heckler, President Reagan’s secretary of health and human services, announced the discovery of the virus responsible for causing acquired immune deficiency syndrome, or AIDS. The virus was isolated in a lab, Heckler said, suggesting that blood tests and anti-viral medication for it would soon be developed.

The blood tests for the HIV virus that caused AIDS did indeed soon reach the market, but no real vaccines or cures for the disease have been found to date. It was a critical mistake, Heckler later acknowledged in an interview with PBS. She followed the estimate of the head researcher on the AIDS project, who estimated two years for the production of a workable vaccine, but “at that time, we did not know that the replication of the virus would be so difficult — and it still is a problem. It was a scientific fact that had not ever entered the picture before.”