A Quote by Michael Specter

I have covered wars, before the epidemic began and since. They are all ugly and painful and unjust, but for me, nothing has matched the dread I felt while walking through the Castro, the Village, or Dupont Circle at the height of the AIDS epidemic.

Michael Specter

Quote Topics

AIDS Aids Epidemic Before Began Castro Circle Covered Dread Epidemic Felt Height Matched Me Nothing Painful Since Through Ugly Unjust Village Walking Wars While

Quote Author

Michael Specter
American - Journalist
Born: 1955

The AIDS disease is caused by a virus, but the AIDS epidemic is not. The AIDS epidemic is fueled by stigma, by hate, by misinformation, by ignorance, by indifference. Science has accomplished miracles over the past 20 years, and science can now end this disease - but it cannot end the epidemic. We need more than medicine. We can do something about these things. We need to speak out about the changes we need to make in our society.

Elton John

The AIDS epidemic began before I was born - I've never known a world without it. And yet, despite its omnipresence in our lives, there remains a pervasive silence around AIDS among young people, particularly young women.

Jurnee Smollett-Bell

There is no firm dividing line between what is an epidemic and what is not an epidemic, but I think, when you look at a map that shows widespread influenza activity in 36 states, that we regard it -- from a common-sense perspective -- as an epidemic.

Julie Gerberding

We're all going to go crazy, living this epidemic [AIDS] every minute, while the rest of the world goes on out there, all around us, as if nothing is happening, going on with their own lives and not knowing what it's like, what we're going through. We're living through war, but where they're living it's peacetime, and we're all in the same country.

Larry Kramer

To me, AIDS is an international epidemic and every country can be affected by it. Therefore, it can be discussed on an international level. Unfortunately, AIDS doesn't require a visa.

Abbas Kiarostami

We are spending millions, if not billions of dollars every year on programs to fight the childhood obesity epidemic while giving almost $2 billion of taxpayer money to the junk food and fast food industries to make the epidemic worse.

Dennis Kucinich

Those of us who lived through the worst of the HIV/AIDS epidemic from the early 1980s through the mid-1990s have a very special spot in our heart for home-based health care.

David Mixner

Drug warriors' staunch opposition to needle exchanges to prevent the spread of HIV in addicts delayed the programs' widespread introduction in most states for years. A federal ban on funding for these programs wasn't lifted until 2009. Contrast this with what happened in the U.K. At the peak of the AIDS epidemic in the mid-1990s, the HIV infection rate in IV drug users in the U.K. was about 1%. In New York City, the American epicenter, that figure was 50%. The British had introduced widespread needle exchange in 1986. That country had no heterosexual AIDS epidemic.

Maia Szalavitz

On the The AIDS Epidemic: This is a war. It has killed more people than has been the case in all previous wars and in all previous natural disasters ... We must not continue to be debating, to be arguing, when people are dying.

Nelson Mandela

I am proud of the advances we have made in New York where we have continued a legacy of substantive HIV/AIDS policy, but we must continue the fight to end the epidemic and ensure an AIDS-free generation.

Letitia James

I came to N.Y.C. in 1988 and got very involved with Act Up. I also started making movies, including two very gay shorts, 'Vaudeville' and 'Lady.' It was the height of the AIDS epidemic, and New York City was both dying and very alive at the same time.

Ira Sachs

The AIDS epidemic has rolled back a big rotting log and revealed all the squirming life underneath it, since it involves, all at once, the main themes of our existence: sex, death, power, money, love, hate, disease and panic. No American phenomenon has been so compelling since the Vietnam War.

Edmund White

You can have an epidemic in a state. You can have it in a region. You can have it in a country where the critical level of disease passes a certain threshold, and we call that an 'epidemic threshold.'

Anthony Fauci

You can have an epidemic in a state. You can have it in a region. You can have it in a country where the critical level of disease passes a certain threshold and we call that an epidemic threshold.

Anthony S. Fauci

You wish that you could move more rapidly and you have setbacks. You know, the AIDS epidemic was a huge setback for Africa, and it's only through generosity that we've avoided that just completely crippling an entire generation there.