Skepticism Of Science In A Pandemic Isn't New. It Helped Fuel The AIDS Crisis
Forty years ago, Lawrence Mass, a young, gay doctor living in New York City, made history. It is the kind of history no one wants to make.
Mass began writing news stories about a disease that many did not want to acknowledge.
At the time, gay men were falling ill from a mystery illness that left them with severely compromised immune systems. Mass's first article about it published May 18, 1981 for the New York Native, a gay newspaper. He'd gotten a tip from a friend who worked in a city ER and saw these cases up close.
Mass had been writing various stories for the gay press, first in Boston and then in New York City, for a couple of years. He focused on gay health care and specifically psychiatry.
His friend, the ER doctor, "was very concerned. She said there's gay men in New York City intensive care units," Mass said. "And she knew that I was trying to do outreach to the gay community about medical and health issues, there wasn't really anybody else to call."
The article Mass wrote was a landmark: it was the first story about AIDS in a U.S. publication.
That article carried this headline: Disease Rumors Largely Unfounded. But what was unfounded then would soon become one of the biggest pandemics the modern world had ever seen.
Mass said he was trying
