During the latter half of 1981 the first reports of AIDS appeared in the U.S. media. Cindy Patton, who was working as the features editor of Boston's Gay Community News in July of 1981, recalls in her later book that she received a copy of the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report from the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta noting the deaths of six gay men in Los Angeles from a rare type of pneumoniaùpneumocistis carinii (Patton 5). She made not of the bizarre occurrence, not realizing that what seemed abstract was a growing reality that would be widely reported in various media in the years to come. It is the purpose of this paper to compare and contrast six sources regarding early information about AIDS, four primary sources and two secondary sources.
Of the primary sources, three are from The New York Times, dating from July 3, 1981, to December 10, 1981. The earliest one entitled "Rare Cancer Seen in 41 Homosexuals" indicated that a rare form of cancer was seen in an outbreak in New York City, San Francisco, and Los Angeles (Altman 1981). The article is rather serious in tone, focusing on the medical aspects of the disease and the fact that the victims tended to die within less then twenty-four months after the diagnosis was made. The article focuses on the type of cancer called Kaposi's Sarcoma, normally a disease that has a slow course of up to ten years, but the new cases start with "one or more violet-colored spots anywhere on the body. . .often mistaken for bruises, sometimes appearing as lumps and can turn brown after a period of time" (Altman 1981). The cancer was reported to attack the lymph glands and then spread throughout the body, causing death. It was mentioned that dermatologists might mistake the spots for bruises and have difficulty diagnosing the cancer because of its rarity.
The second article, "Two Fatal Diseases Focus of Inquiry," appeared in August, mentioning both Kaposi's sarcoma and Pneumocy...