NIH Launches Web Site Recounting Researchers’ Early Experiences with AIDS

To recognize the 20th anniversary of the first published report on AIDS, NIH has launched a Web site, titled "In Their Own Words: NIH Researchers Recall the Early Years of AIDS." The site includes transcripts of interviews NIH Historian Victoria Harden conducted with physicians, scientists, nurses and administrators involved in NIH AIDS research. Those profiled speak of their "first encounters with AIDS patients, the discovery of HIV [and] the search for treatments." The site is intended to be an "ongoing project" that will be updated periodically. Harden said, "As a historian of science and medicine working in an institution leading the world in formulating a response to a new infectious disease, I thought it was imperative to document and preserve what was happening here." The NIH site also includes a timeline of milestones in AIDS history and is located at http://aidshistory.nih.gov. (NIH release, 6/4).