Silence = Defunding, New Infections, Social Injustice, and Death.

Thirty-six years ago, on June 5, 1981, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention described a rare lung infection in five previously healthy gay men in Los Angeles (AIDS.gov, 2016). The report in the Mortality and Morbidity Weekly Report was America’s introduction to what would become known as HIV infection and AIDS. Since those early years, significant scientific advances–isolation of HIV in 1984; introduction of the first screening test, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), in 1985; approval of the first antiretroviral agent, zidovudine, in 1987; and the introduction of protease inhibitors and highly active antiretroviral therapy in 1995 – have transformed HIV into a chronic, manageable disease. To achieve these milestones, investment in biomedical research was essential. However, throughout the epidemic, HIV has been politically charged. Persons living with HIV (PLWH) have been fired from jobs, denied housing, and barred from attending schools. Federal legislation mandated that HIV prevention programs focus on abstinence, prohibited HIV education materials that ‘‘promote’’ homosexuality or drug use in the Helms Amendment in 1987, and limited or banned funding for needle and syringe exchange programs (AIDS.gov, 2016). Constructively, federal legislation and subsequent funding established the Ryan White Care Act, the AIDS Drug Assistance Program, the Office of AIDS Research at the National Institutes of Health, and the Housing Opportunities for People with AIDS program (AIDS.gov, 2016). Despite all of the progress that has been made, nearly 40,000 new people became infected with