In Their Own Words... NIH Researchers Recall the Early Years of AIDS

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I made the decision that we would have to switch over to research on this disease [AIDS] because, as every month went by, I became more convinced that we were dealing with something that was going to be a disaster for society.

• — Dr. Anthony S. Fauci

The early days were really very nice because everyone was excited and everyone wanted to figure out what was going on.

• — Dr. H. Clifford Lane

We needed to find out what was causing it, whether it was an infectious disease, and what the predisposing factors were.

• — Dr. Jack Whitescarver

Ken [Dr. Kenneth Sell, NIAID's Scientific Director] made a great contribution that I don't know will ever get recognized, because it wasn't a publication or anything like that. But he saw the importance of AIDS. He put the resources into it.

• — Dr. H. Clifford Lane

I went to [Dr.] Jim Wyngaarden [the NIH Director] with a budget that would seem outlandish. I wanted to quadruple the amount that we were doing in AIDS research in one year [fiscal year 1986]. I explained to him that this increase was necessary because the AIDS epidemic was going to explode in our faces. We had to be out front, ahead of it.

• — Dr. Anthony S. Fauci

The other thing that was going on in parallel was Projet SIDA in Zaire. That was a unique interaction among a number of agencies in the government: the CDC, the NIAID, and later Walter Reed [Army Medical Center].

• — Dr. John I. Gallin