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Acting Up Against Junkie Pneumonia

Acting Up Against Junkie Pneumonia image
Parent Issue
Month
April
Year
1992
Copyright
Creative Commons (Attribution, Non-Commercial, Share-alike)
Rights Held By
Agenda Publications
OCR Text

In the late 1970s while the epidemic known as " disco fever" swept through the U.S., an epidemic known as "junkie pneumonia" raged among injection drug users in New York City.

Unlike disco fever, junkie pneumonia was not the subject of intense media scrutiny or public outcry. No movies were made. Few people were aware that large numbers of injections drug users were inexplicably dying of pneumonia.

Those few who did notice these deaths did not feel compelled to investigate the public health puzzle they posed. Junkies die all the time. Nor did anyone bring this less danceable epidemic to the attention of the fevered populace. Bringing the epidemic to the attention of the public would not have made much difference. Undoubtedly, some people would have voiced the opinion that people who shoot drugs deserve to die, while most would have shrugged and kept dancing.

Investigating the epidemic as the potential health menace it was, however, could have had a profound impact on hundreds of thousands of lives. Had anyone bothered to investigate the deaths of these drug users, they would have found that they had an immune system disorder we now call AIDS. Here's how I imagine things would have been different if such an investigation had occurred back in [see "JUNKIE PNEUMONIA," page 4) Fighting The Wrong Enemy

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Subjects
Old News
Agenda