40 years later

Billy Porter

Johnson & Johnson presents screening of AIDS doc ‘5B,’ fireside chat with Billy Porter

TAMMYE NASH | Managing Editor
nash@dallasvoice.com

It was June 5, 1981 when the U.S. Centers for Disease Control published an article in its “Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report” describing cases of a rare lung infection called Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia in found five young, white, previously healthy gay men in Los Angeles. Los Angeles immunologist Dr. Michael Gottlieb and Dr. Wayne Shandera with the CDC, along with their colleagues, reported that all five also had other unusual infections, an indication that their immune systems were not functioning properly.

That same day, on the other side of the country, a dermatologist in New York City called the CDC to report a cluster of cases of a rare and aggressive form of cancer called Kaposi’s sarcoma. These cases had also been found in gay men, and, like PCP, KS is associated with a weak immune system.

Two of the patients in Los Angeles had already died by the time the report was published, and the other three patients there died soon after.

By the end of July, people were already talking about the “gay men’s pneumonia” and “the gay cancer.”

By the end of the year, 337 cases of this severe immune deficiency syndrome had been reported in the U.S.; of those 130 were already dead.

This month — June 2021 — marks the 40th anniversary of those first reports of what was at first called GRID — Gay-Related Immune Deficiency — and later renamed Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome or AIDS. According to UNAIDS, there were an estimated 37.6 million people worldwide living with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. In the 40 years since those first cases in L.A. and New York were first reported, an estimated 34.7 million people worldwide have died of AIDS.

On Thursday, June 24, from 5-7:30 p.m. Central, actor Billy Porter, who publicly revealed in May that he was diagnosed with HIV 14 years ago, joins Michael Sneed, executive vice president of Global Cultural Affairs for Johnson & Johnson at Festival de Cannes to host a free special screening of the 2018 documentary 5B, an award-winning film about the work of the nurses and caregivers who, in 1983, built and opened Ward 5B, the first AIDS ward in the world, at San Francisco General Hospital, changing the way AIDS patients in the 1980s were cared for.

After the screening, Porter will sit down with for a fireside chat with 5B nurse Alison Moëd Paolercio, RN MS, and nurse, entrepreneur, innovator and author Rebecca Love RN, MSN, FIEL, to discuss the disproportionate toll that epidemics and pandemics take on at-risk communities, the parallels between the HIV/AIDS and COVID-19 crises, and the role of nurses in driving healthcare change.

The screening, and the fireside chat following can be seen via Zoom. Register at https://jnjmeetings.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_zNPrkj1JRV6szhiV7AVzdw.

Those not able to join the event can visit 5Bfilm.com to find out where to stream the movie and, after the event, view the fireside chat at https://nursing.jnj.com/5B-fireside-chat-with-billy-porter.