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Keywords

HIV, AIDS, women, press, memory, testimonials, Bay Area, San Francisco, health, disease

Abstract

Note: In lieu of an abstract, this is the article's first paragraph.

"By 1992, the AIDS epidemic in the United States had reached seemingly catastrophic proportions. Over ten years after the first published report of AIDS-related lung infection, the number of AIDS cases in the United States far exceeded 100,000. It would be four years until the FDA approval of the first protease inhibitor. Over ten thousand women had been diagnosed with the disease, and experts expected over ninety thousand more were already infected. The disease, lacking effective treatment, increasingly struck women and people of color in the early 1990s; cases rose 151 percent among women and by 105 percent among men in 1993. Without a cure in sight, women with HIV did not have much tangible reason for optimism. Nonetheless, in January 1992 Debra McCarthy cast her HIV diagnosis as the turning point in her journey towards personal fulfillment. “Even though I may be HIV positive,” she wrote, “I am more healed in my life than I ever have been.”"

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