Rarely has a disease engendered such fear and loathing as HIV. The term AIDS was first used in 1982, and by 1985 hundreds of parents would pull their children out of school based on rumors that an infected student might attend. Politicians proclaimed that children could “catch” the infection from a sneeze or a water fountain. Families abandoned the corpses of their dead sons in hospitals. The illness posited a future where human contact would be rare, bodily fluids poisonous.
