It was four years, one month, and twenty-five days since Gottlieb’s first report on the five unexplained cases of Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia had appeared in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Since then, he had treated 200 AIDS patients, most of whom were dead by now. Gottlieb felt numbed with grief and weariness. After all his years of warnings and pleas, he was aggravated that it had taken this, the diagnosis of a movie star, to awaken the nation.
