On the occasion of Sidaction, which takes place from March 24 to 26, France 5 broadcasts a documentary which looks back on the first years of this devastating epidemic. “AIDS, to death, to life” retraces the story of a disease that has become one of the worst scourges of the 20th century.
In the early 1980s, a wind of freedom blew through French youth, galvanized by the rise to power of the left. But the emergence, at the time in the United States, of a mysterious infectious disease, will upset the planet and affect in the first place the homosexual community. Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS), late stage of HIV infection (human immunodeficiency virus), was isolated by French researchers at the Institut Pasteur in 1983. The documentary The AIDS years, to death, to life, directed by Lise Banon, broadcast on Sunday March 26 at 10:50 p.m. on France 5, recounts the first fifteen years of this pandemic and the commitment of activists to try to raise awareness among populations and political leaders.
Lack of responsiveness from public authorities
If the first cases of the disease mainly affect homosexual men in general indifference, cases are also quickly detected in heterosexuals. Drug addicts, hemophiliacs and transfused persons are also hit hard. However, no prevention policy was implemented quickly. No specific place is dedicated to the detection of this virus while the epidemic gallops: barely 200 patients identified in 1984, 1,200 two years later.
Apart from private laboratories, the only place to get tested for free is to go to blood donation centers. places that “didn’t want to see HIV-positive people give blood”, confides in the documentary Didier Lestrade, journalist and co-founder d’Act-Up Paris in 1989. “But it was the only way, and for me, I already considered that screening had to be there. I used this bias for a year and a half to find out what was going on with me, with my partners. To be able to talk about it, to also play down the fear of being tested. At the start, all the same, it was something very distressing”, says Didier Lestrade who learned of his HIV status at the age of 28 in 1986.
The “disease of shame”
It will take four years for the state to finally take hold of the problem. But no treatment has yet been discovered, causing widespread fear within the population, a stigmatization of HIV-positive people and, by extension, of homosexuals.
One of the main challenges is also to tame the fear of public opinion. “HIV affects two taboos: death and sexuality”, observes in the documentary Mary Bassmadjian, who also discovered her HIV status in 1986. So, I was afraid of the way people were going to look at me. Because indeed, we had made contaminated heterosexual women drug addicts, sex workers, ‘Marie-lie-toi-là’, pestiferous (…) For these reasons, I did not want to mention my seropositivity.”
In order to compensate for the failure of the public authorities, associations are created. One of the most important, Aides, was created in 1984 at the instigation of sociologist Daniel Defert (died February 7, 2023). They mobilize doctors and researchers to carry out information and prevention actions. Forty years later, the disease remains taboo, even if an effective treatment, triple therapy, was born from 1995 and if a preventive treatment, PrEP is now available.
Since the start of the epidemic, more than 40 million people have died of AIDS worldwide, including 40,000 in France, according to Sida info service. Still, according UNAIDS, more than 38 million people live with AIDS in the world – including 174,000 in France – and 650,000 people die of it each year.
The documentary The AIDS years, to death, to life directed by Lise Banon is broadcast on Sunday March 26 at 10:50 p.m. on France 5.
