[Ads-l] Slight Antedating of "AIDS"

Ben Zimmer bgzimmer at GMAIL.COM
Sun Jan 16 20:52:25 UTC 2022


Nice find. The Bay Area Reporter can also be found on Internet Archive --
here's a direct link to the page image (the cite appears in a letter to the
editor from Robert K. Bolan, M.D., San Francisco):

https://archive.org/details/BAR_19820408/page/n5/mode/1up

It's great to have the Bay Area Reporter fully digitized -- it's also where
I found early examples of "hella" going back to 1982.

http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/2020-September/158201.html

--bgz

On Sun, Jan 16, 2022 at 3:26 PM James Eric Lawson <jel at nventure.com> wrote:

> Bay Area Reporter, Volume 12, Number 14, Page 6, 8 April 1982
> (California Digital Newspapers Collection)   I would like to clarify a
> couple of points in George Mendenhall’s March 25 B.A.R. report of the
> poppers hearings in the San Francisco Board of Supervisors' Health and
> Environment Committee on March 23. 1982. Mistakenly attributed to me is
> a statement that the “Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) (which
> includes Kaposi's sarcoma. pneumocystis carinii pneumonia. and other
> rare diseases occurring in some gay men over the past year) results
> ”from the combined Lise of the more popular drugs such as alco» hol.
> hashish. caffeine. nicotinei etc. —~ as well as the nitrites." Actually.
> the cause or, more likely, causes of the AIDS are not known. I stressed
> that amyl and butyl nitrite are being investigated as possible co—
> factors in both the AIDS and another condition where the body's lymph
> glands become enlarged. I am not aware of any relationship between
> alcohol, hashish. etc, and any disease other than alcoholism, chemical
> dependency.
>
> -----
>
> Incidentally, I checked the mentioned 25 Mar report by Mendenhall, and
> found it did not reference 'acquired immune deficiency syndrome' (or
> AIDS), but rather "acquired immune deficiencies" (p 5)
>
> On 1/15/22 5:40 PM, Shapiro, Fred wrote:
> > AIDS (OED 1982 Aug.)
> >
> > 1982 Boston Globe 27 July 4/1 (Newspapers.com)  The disorder has been
> named Acquired Immunodeficiency Disease Syndrome, or AIDS.
> >
> >
>

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