90th Anniversary Issue: 1980s
Solving the AIDS puzzle and other highlights, 1980–89
Chasing the AIDS virus
In 1981 a short story in Science News noted an uptick in a rare form of cancer and pneumonia in gay men (11/14/81, p. 309). The cause of what the story called a “puzzling outbreak,” the human immunodeficiency virus (below, reproducing inside a cell), wouldn’t be named for another five years (4/26/86, p.