1982

ATC broadcasts a story about a "frightening medical mystery" that had yet to be fully understood by the medical community. The mystery later would become known as AIDS.

Weekend ATC host Noah Adams is named weekday co-host, joining Susan Stamberg.

On the April 20 show, Science Correspondent Ira Flatow interviewed physicians and activists (including Larry Kramer of the Gay Men's Health Crisis) about what Stamberg called "a frightening medical mystery":

Kramer: "I have five, six friends now who have died, and I have four or five other friends who are in chemotherapy, and these are all guys who are in their 20s and 30s... You can't not but be scared by all of that."

Flatow: "Members of New York's gay community have good reason to be concerned and scared. They've watched cancer, pneumonia, and other deadly infections kill homosexual men at an alarming rate. Drs. Alvin Friedman-Kien and Linda Laubenstein of New York University were the first to see evidence of an epidemic of a very fatal form of cancer, what is called gay cancer now."

Laubenstein: "Every month we're seeing more and more patients."

Friedman-Kien: "There's no question that it's an epidemic."

Hear the broadcast.

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