Their AIDS Crisis and Ours

In the early 1980s, as the likely scope of the AIDS epidemic became clear two responses were developed – on the one hand, a punitive lock-them-up campaign driven more by fear and hate than science. On the other a community-based partnership between the gay community and its friends, the newly elected Labor government and the medical profession. Each brought their own particular set of skills and resources to the campaign. The result was a model of health policy that saved tens of thousands of lives and saw off an attempt to roll back the queer communities’ gains of the previous decade. In this lecture, historian Graham Willett will look at what we did and why it worked.

Register here for this upcoming online event.