Editing AIDS Crisis in Philadelphia (section)

== The Epidemic Arrives ==

The first AIDS cases in Philadelphia were identified in the early 1980s, initially among gay men who developed rare cancers and opportunistic infections associated with immune system collapse. The disease, initially called GRID (Gay-Related Immune Deficiency) before being renamed AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome), spread rapidly through sexual contact. Philadelphia's gay community, concentrated in neighborhoods like Center City and the Gayborhood area around 13th Street, saw mounting illness and death. Young men who had been healthy were suddenly dying from diseases that healthy immune systems would normally defeat. The cause was unknown; the fear was pervasive.<ref name="grmek">{{cite book |last=Grmek |first=Mirko D. |title=History of AIDS: Emergence and Origin of a Modern Pandemic |year=1990 |publisher=Princeton University Press |location=Princeton}}</ref>

The epidemic expanded beyond the gay community to affect injection drug users, who shared needles that transmitted the virus, and eventually to heterosexual partners of infected individuals and children born to infected mothers. Philadelphia's significant injection drug population—concentrated in neighborhoods affected by [[Deindustrialization|deindustrialization]] and poverty—became a second major vector of transmission. By the late 1980s, AIDS was disproportionately affecting African American and Latino communities, adding racial dimensions to an epidemic already marked by stigma against gay people and drug users. The virus did not discriminate, but society's response often did.<ref name="shilts"/>