logo
episode-header-image
Feb 2024
44m 5s

'Women Don’t Get AIDS, They Just Die Fro...

The HISTORY® Channel and WNYC Studios
About this episode
The story of how a group of women changed the very definition of AIDS. 
Up next
Feb 2024
Respectability Politics and the AIDS Crisis
By 1986, almost 40 percent of people diagnosed with AIDS in the United States were either Black or Latino. As the full contours of the crisis became apparent, a group of Black gay men began to organize in cities across the country, demanding attention and support for the people d ... Show More
47m 44s
Feb 2024
What If I Could Have Grown Old With My Brother?
In 1985, doctors at a methadone clinic in the South Bronx made the harrowing discovery: 50 percent of its patients had HIV. Three years later, in the same neighborhood, a pair of epidemiologists estimated that as many as one in five young men were positive for the disease. Those ... Show More
39m 55s
Feb 2024
There Was Love Here
In this final episode, we turn to people living with HIV today — longtime survivors of a plague who, despite their pain, frustrations and desires to just be done with it, realize they can’t be done with it. These are people like Kia LaBeija, an artist born HIV-positive, who turne ... Show More
38 m
Recommended Episodes
May 2023
AIDS
In the 1980s, the world was gripped by a virus that was killing people in their thousands; savaging communities and creating a climate of fear, blame and ignorance. That virus was HIV, and here to sift the facts from the fiction and explain how the AIDS crisis transformed everyth ... Show More
40m 4s
Jun 2022
HIV/AIDS Advocacy | 72
In 1992 HIV/AIDS hit a grim milestone in the United States when it became the number one cause of death among men ages 25 to 44.Since there was still so much stigma attached to the illness, people were often dying without even telling their closest friends and family that they we ... Show More
35m 11s
Apr 2021
HIV/AIDS and Stigma (with Peter Staley, Jonathan Van Ness & Dr. Oni Blackstock)
<p>When HIV was first identified in the early 1980s, it was a public health crisis mired in urgent scientific questions: How was it transmitted? What were the symptoms? Could it be treated? But alongside that, and equally challenging to public health, was the stigma attached to t ... Show More
54m 23s
Dec 2022
Sex As a Deadly Weapon: Five Victims Speak Out
<p>Original Air Date: 10/20/2009</p><p>Oprah speaks to five women who dated Philippe Padieu, a man who knowingly infected them with the HIV virus. Oprah also talks to Dr. Kimberly Smith, an infectious disease specialist at Rush Medical Center, who says that she treats many single ... Show More
41m 44s
Dec 2023
AIDS Epidemic: Life & Death On The Frontline
How do we understand something as huge as a global epidemic?Similarly to Covid, the AIDS epidemic, which was most destructive in the 1980s and 90s, had such universal reach. Yet within that, there were millions of personal experiences.What was it like to work on the frontline wit ... Show More
59m 33s
Jun 2020
Learning from the AIDS Epidemic
As Pride Month comes to a close, we reflect on 40 years ago when the world lived through another epidemic that suffered from misinformation and government inaction - the AIDS crisis. In this episode, CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta speaks with culture and politic ... Show More
11m 35s
Oct 2020
The Fight Against AIDS | The Epidemic Begins | S32-E1
In the early 1980s, a mysterious new disease spread like wildfire through the gay communities of major U.S. cities. Before it even had a name, AIDS had already killed over half its victims. Public response was hampered by ignorance, fear, and homophobia. This is the story of the ... Show More
42m 23s