Forty years ago, a devastating new virus, HIV, burst in, killing gay men in major American cities first and foremost at a terrifying pace. In 2021, the red ribbon has disappeared from the landscape. But now is not the time for celebration: AIDS continues to kill hundreds of thousands of people around the world each year.
In 40 years of science journalism, HIV and AIDS have blackened countless of Yanick Villedieu’s notebooks. It was therefore natural that at the time of retirement, this journalist devotes a whole book – Mourning and light – to this disease so singular in its way of affecting the areas “of the sex and the blood”.
Why write and continue to talk about AIDS even today, when another pandemic is monopolizing attention? In the eyes of Yanick Villedieu, the answer is unequivocal. “AIDS still kills 700,000 to 1 million people every year. There are still plenty of people who do not have access to the drug. The issue of inequalities in the face of pandemics then becomes inevitable, since it affects human rights. ”
At present, 73% of the inhabitants of the planet have access to triple therapy. This is an improvement, but there is still a lack of screening and a lot of stigma today.
Yanick Villedieu, science journalist and author of the book Mourning and light
Like a real detective story, Mourning and light looks back at the key moments of a very long crusade to defeat this virus which condemned all its victims to death, before the arrival of triple therapy in the mid-1990s. Villedieu recounts the first scientific article that looked into this strange disease – called “gay cancer” -, the famous flight attendant Gaétan Dugas, falsely identified as “patient zero”, the tainted blood scandal, the cohort of “4 hours” killed by the disease – homosexuals, hemophiliacs, heroin addicts, Haitians -, the proliferation of the virus in the African continent …
“Scientific history is always intertwined with human history”, underlines Yanick Villedieu, who Press met at his publisher, Boréal.
Americans’ disease
Forty years and a second global pandemic later, it is important to remember how yesterday’s stigma around HIV damaged patient care, and how struggles that were thought to be settled in the West still remain. news.
The Dr Réjean Thomas will forever remember this patient who, in 1982, came to his office at the L’Actuel clinic, confiding in him that he believed he was suffering from “American disease”.
Forty years later, the man who has become a world leader in the fight against this disease is saddened by the fact that young doctors are not trained on HIV and AIDS and on the history of pandemics. It reports staggering increases in rates of sexually transmitted and blood-borne infections since the start of the pandemic. The L’Actuel clinic noted increases of 138% in cases of syphilis, 50% for gonorrhea and 20% for chlamydia, from March 2020 to March 2021.
PHOTO ALAIN ROBERGE, THE PRESS
The Dr Réjean Thomas, from the L’Actuel clinic
In all, 40% of our clientele does not have a family doctor. Every morning there are lines in front of the clinic that form at 6:30 a.m.
The Dr Réjean Thomas, from the L’Actuel clinic
Indirectly, the COVID-19 pandemic has had an impact on the destinies of HIV and AIDS, acknowledges Dr.r Réjean Thomas. Because people mistakenly believed they would have less sex during lockdowns and curfews, many patients on “prep” (pre-exposure prophylaxis) stopped their treatment. Meanwhile, infection rates have increased, and thousands of people living with HIV ignore each other, according to the Canadian AIDS Society. “In many young gay men, AIDS is perceived as a ‘mononcle’ disease,” reports Yanick Villedieu. And the consequences of this denial are very real, testifies the Dr Réjean Thomas.
“The disappearance of AIDS from public discourse has had a significant impact on prevention,” he continues. I am thinking, for example, of an 18-year-old gay boy who came to be tested here and who had never heard of HIV. He was positive. And during COVID-19, many testing clinics were closed, people did not come out and stopped being tested, but the stigma and isolation remain. “
Terror of the Village
Yanick Villedieu’s book reminds us to what extent AIDS, in its early days, killed people who were often very young at lightning speed. Keith Haring, Rudolf Nureyev, Robert Mapplethorpe, Liberace, Rock Hudson, Freddie Mercury were among the approximately 37 million people who have succumbed to illnesses linked to the virus.
PHOTO PHILIPPE BOIVIN, SPECIAL COLLABORATION
Jacques Charland, community worker
Community worker Jacques Charland, who now works for the Écoute Entraide organization, has accompanied many dying of AIDS in their last days. He recounts the climate of panic in the Gay Village in the early 1980s: “We didn’t know what it was. Many men who had come to Montreal to experience their homosexuality openly returned to their hometowns. “
Yanick Villedieu agrees with him.
The disease was spreading rapidly, and people were suffering from terrible ailments like Kaposi’s sarcoma. And there was fear of others, rejection, people who were going through job losses.
Yanick Villedieu, science journalist and author of the book Mourning and light
“To fully understand the impact of the HIV and AIDS crisis, one must look at the prism of the past. When I talk about what we went through at that time with young gay men, their response is often: “Oh, you are part of the generation that went through this.” A bit like the parents of my friends who had lived through the war, ”explains documentary filmmaker and narrative practitioner Murray Nossel, whose career has been heavily influenced by his work with people convicted of AIDS in Brooklyn in the 1990s.
“In those around me at that time, most of us knew someone who either had or died from the disease. I know people who have lost their entire circle of friends. And at the same time there was the political struggle, the denial of AIDS and the president [Ronald] Reagan, who refused to acknowledge the crisis. ”
Generation AIDS
When she found herself on the show Free studio, in 1993, to be suitable for a public HIV test, Mitsou did not fully appreciate the repercussions of his gesture. “The will to help was there. But when I went back a week later to get my test result, I realized that my life could be completely turned upside down. “
For Mitsou’s generation, “desire equaled danger”, as Martine St-Clair sang so well.
People who contracted AIDS were stigmatized because they had contracted the disease through their sexuality or because they used intravenous drugs.
Mitsou
In 2021, for AIDS survivors, those who, despite their prognosis, are reaching old age, the challenges are different. “Some gay men with HIV do not want to go and live in a CHSLD because they are afraid of reliving their coming out and homophobia ”, underlines Yanick Villedieu.
The good news is that, with prevention and treatment, cities like San Francisco and Montreal could be declared “AIDS-free” within a decade. As for the vaccine, we live by waiting. And hope.
Mourning and light
Yanick Villedieu
Boreal
352 pages