Welcome to Stuff you should know from house Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles W Chuck Bryant. Uh, nobody's in here with us, so it's just two of us and you, dear listener. We're just free Leal and Bob Dylan whoever that is Bob Dylan? Who come on? And um this is part two of two of a special two part series that's right on HIV aids. Yeah, if you didn't listen to first one, I would suggest you do that. Yeah, you're you're gonna be lost. There's probably gonna be a lot of in jokes and referential jokes back to the first one. We explained it in the first one. Yeah, that's very important and like the actual nuts and Bolts disease, some skip ahead, don't be lazy. UM So Chuck we left off you were talking. We talked originally about UM, you know, the different varying levels of risk depending on the type of intercourse, depending on the tie of UM uh group you remember of UM. We talked about how it works, where it came from, what what could possibly be left to talk about as far as HIV can is concerned. There's a lot. Oh yeah, yeah, because we did not touch on and I know you're being coy because I see all your notes in front of you. Oh yeah, look at all. But one thing we didn't talk about that we're going to start with is uh treatment. Yeah, that's a big one. That's a big one. Uh you want to go and talk about the AIDS cocktail? Yeah. So. Um. Back in a very very very famous basketball player named Irvin Magic Johnson played for the l A Lakers, announced that he was retiring from the NBA because he had been diagnosed with HIV. I remember the day. That was a huge deal. I was at Georgia Southern for some weird reason that weekend. That is weird. It was a big deal. Um. I mean you talked I think last episode about Easy catching it and you know that was that was a big deal. This was probably even bigger. I think Magic Johnson was a bigger name than Easy. Were more widely recognized him among more people. He was a sports figure, he was straight what the heck is going on? And I remember thinking, like many people at the time, oh my gosh, Magic Johnson is dying. Yes, I think a lot of people, most people who are familiar with this thought, well, he's a goner in a couple of years. But he kept living, and he kept living, and he kept living. He came back and played more basketball. Even I didn't know that, and you gotta be pretty fit for that, sure, And he kept living. And everybody thought, what the heck happened with Magic Johnson? And it turned out that he had access to what's now known as the highly active anti retroviral therapy a k A HEART, which is now the standard of treatment for HIV um and he had access to it a couple of years before it became widespread in the I think, and it has helped keep him alive. He recently he was thirty two when he announced that he was diagnosed with HIV, and he turned fifty six and two. It's a very very long lifespan, especially for somebody who was diagnosed in the early nineties when people were still like, what is going on here? So correct? Uh, Magic Johnson got a head start. Not because he's super famous. Well, that had something to do with it. I think I'm very rich, well, but he was he was willing to It was still in the in the experimental phase at that point. Yeah, but I'm sure there were plenty of HIV patients who are like, do whatever you need to do to cure me, but didn't have the money, so he got a jump on it. But he has not. I think a lot of people think that he is getting some other special treatments that no one else is getting, or he's paying his way into something. It supposedly there's a Kenyan witch doctor rumor. Yeah, he's getting the same treatment that other people are getting. And there are plenty of people that have lived much longer than him. Oh yeah, and uh, he's just the most famous. Uh, and that's a good thing because he's HIV activists and activists. Yeah yea, not to disparage anything about magic Jacks, and he definitely took that that label at a time when it was that was a gay disease, and uh, he became an HIV activist. We should say specifically, he does not, never has had aids. His um T helper cell count never got to the UM two hundred thousand or less mark. So he's HIV positive and he is still UM Like we said in the last episode, it's a chronic disease because reservoirs developed UM and I believe it was a couple of years between diagnosis and treatment for him, So those reservoirs had a chance to get a foothold, but he got it early enough that he his lifespan is it's it's basically that what was it twenty four years that he's been alive since diagnosis. That's pretty normal for people who were treated with the hard cocktail in a reasonable time after being uh diagnosed, which they're finding that window of time is intensely important. Oh yeah, we're gonna get to that man. That was a great article ascent. So we're talking heart. Yeah, heart or cart or just art whichever you want to call it. I call it art with or heart with the double A. I call it the AIDS cocktail. Oh yeah, that's another word for uh. So, each one of these drugs and we talked about in part one is very specific to its task um to basically disrupt as many stages of the process as possible. Uh, should we go through these um in r t I S nucleo side reverse transcript as inhibitors, they basically blocked the ability to replicate. Yeah, remember the reverse transcript as takes the r n A instructions for the viral UM creation and turns it into d NA, which is then inserted into the c D four plus T cell nucleus. Right, so you block that. It's a big problem for the HIV virus. It's a big problem. It is UH in n R T I S non nucleoside reverse transcription inhibitors, they disable a protein another protein requiring it to replicate another disruption p I S prote s inhibitors, So proteas was UM that was the one that actually cut the polypeptides into their individual components. So, yeah, you had a long chain of enzymes that made up these viruses. That's the party didn't get right, and then you cut them up. So the thing that cuts them up isn't there. You just have all these long chains and they build up and it's basically like um lucy's running the chocolate factory assembly line or something there. Uh. Then you have entry fusion inhibitors. They blocked the ability to enter those c D for our cells to begin with UH, and then finally integrays inhibitors UM once they get in that c D four cell. UH. We talked about the insert of that genetic material, and it basically blocks the ability to do that. So the current cocktail recommended cocktail are two in r T I s in the shaker, one in a r T I and the p I and then either a integrays inhibitor or a right tone neighbor, which I don't know what that is, do you know, let's just say it's the key. Let's say it's the the bidders in the cocktail and makes it right. You put it all in there, you shake it up. You've got your AIDS cocktail. Once you put that into place, if you catch it early enough, you can bring your mortality rate just about to normal. Yeah. Like it's just it's a chronic disease. Yeah. Yeah, And and your immune system will probably not become so compromise that you're gonna from something. You need to be on it for life. Uh. And everyone is supposed to be on this cocktail. Uh. Although if you have b um, have a recent CD four count below five, or if you are pregnant, then you are given a priority. And it's all gonna cost you about ten to twelve thousand dollars a year, although that is supposed to increase. And the reason why you have to stay on it indefinitely because we said in the last episode that um HIV produces reservoirs of inactive varyans that just spread throughout the body and accumulate. And even when you're treating what amounts to one outbreak, another one can come very soon afterward. And that's what makes it chronic. Right with heart it will eventually get all these reservoirs, but it takes I think we said sixty to eighty years. It's a very long time, right. So there's been some suggestions as to how to eradicate UM this disease a little faster, yet different ideas, which is great. I mean, they're really smart. People are coming up with different strategies. One of them is kind of nuts. But also which one the one that uses pro Stratton I believe is what it's called. It basically goes in and says, um, oh, you're an inactive HIV, so well, I'm going to activate you. It's basically making an HIV outbreak take place, but you're doing it while you're under heart care, right. Yeah. The way I thought of it was, it's like flushing out those invisible reservoirs, but the only way to flush them out is to activate them to get them going. So the T cells actually know it's there. So that scary sounding it is that the heart treatment also disrupts their function, so it starts them up, and apparently they don't stop and go back to sleep or go dormant again once they start up, so it starts them up. The heart treatment um keeps them from doing what they want to do normally. And then also the cell that they're infecting will die sooner than later and just get it over with. So it's basically a way they're trying to figure out to accelerate an HIV infection while in the presence of highly active anti retroviral therapy. So it keeps you from actually dying from this accelerated HIV infection. It's pretty cool. Yeah, So that's one strategy. Does even that they call it anything, that should call it something cool? Uh the gun Slinger, Yeah, the gun Slinger hid. All right, I think we should get to this next. This is uh. You sent an awesome article from the Pacific Standard called getting to zero very close to a cure for AIDS, and the city of San Francisco is doing something. Uh there, they're pretty radical out there in San Francisco. Sure you know all those hippies out there. So what they're trying to do is they're trying to make their city the first city with no new infections, no deaths, and no stigma. And they called the program getting to zero, and they're doing this in a in a lot of ways. Um, some of the background here is there. Historically over the past few decades hasn't been a ton of money allocated toward finding a cure for AIDS. Yeah, and not because for various reasons. I think a lot of people, especially initially are like, well, because it was gay disease, yeah, I think is its spread out and started infecting more non gay people and more non gay white people. It started to get a lot more funding, but it also didn't get a lot of funny because a lot of people were like, we can't cure this, it's an incurable disease. Yeah, and I think, um, I think cynics might also say, like, it's you make a lot more money to keep people on drugs for life than you do caring something. But from what I could tell, the main reason was because uh, it was such a new scary thing. They put all of their efforts into trying to save people who got HIV. And coming up with these these this drug cocktail. However, things are changing, which is good. Um. In two thousand and eight and two thousand nine, that was a very cool case. Timothy ray Brown. He was, Yeah, the second Berlin patient. There was another one in the mid nineties. Yeah, there was, I know everything. That was an anonymous Berlin patient in the mid nineties who I think, uh got HIV and then no longer had HIV. But what's up with Berlin? I know, seriously, it's cool city. But Timothy ray Brown was a special case. He's an American that was living there as a translator. HIV positive and started taking medications. Uh, and then about a decade later find out he had leukemia. So his doctor, very clever person, Gero Hooter or Hero, call him Hero. I think Hero. He said. He had a very weird unique I D idea. He said, why don't we see if we can take there are these people out there one percent of Caucasians, Yeah, one percent of people who have a protein Caucasian people uh CCR five, which basically makes them immune to HIV. They lack that protein. Yeah, that's a protein on the surface of your t helper sell that the HIV virus docks with can doc can infect and very few people have this one percent. He said, why don't we try and find someone like that who can donate their bone marrow which is where stuff like that is produced, and to this guy and basically basically replace his immune system with with this one percenter and not that kind of one percenter. He's like, I'm gonna be rich. I got rich bow. So he did that. They found someone UH that had that that was a good match, and it worked. It worked like he was funk only cured of HIV I think like fully cured. Is was like, they keep testing him and testing him. This is I think two thousand eight or two thousand nine UM, and they testing no signs UM. I don't know that enough people have been cured of HIV AIDS so that they It's like with UM with cancer. I think if you're five years without UM any kind of growth, it's considered remission. I don't think they have a standard like that yet. UM. But so they keep testing this guy and he's it's not coming back. These reservoirs are not becoming active again. It doesn't appear that he has HIV or AIDS any longer. And The doctor was excited, obviously, but he also knew like, well, we obviously can't go around replacing you know, people's immune systems with these one per cent. But what it did was it kick started new hope and now all of a sudden, all of a sudden, there was new funding for trying to find a cure. And it was what they call a proof of concept. I think we mentioned last episode it showed that AIDS can be cured. Yeah, before this, only about three percent of AIDS and HIV funding went to cure research. Um. Now there are new grants totally fourteen point six million a year in Obama in two thousand and thirteen said you know what, how about another hundred million towards a cure over three years? What is that funny? It's just what a hundred million used to be and what it is today. You know. Yeah, it just sounds like sure, just throwing money around. Um, go get yourself some nice funding. Uh. So we talked to Believe in the first episode about catching it early. Um, there's another story here. Basically, how it works now is you can get diagnosed with HIV and until you're t cell count falls below a certain number, you're just like not on any drugs, like you have to get sick before you get treated in most cases. Is well, yeah, that was the old I mean that's what it says in this thing. Oh that was the old, the old. Yeah, that was the old guard I got you. Yeah, the the new the the bleeding edge right now, leading edge O, the leading edge um is quite the opposite of that. Yeah, Because they found if you get to it super early, like those first few days and weeks after you get HIV in the bloodstream is when it's most dangerous, very critical, most easily spread. And they found that if people who take these drugs right then are less likely less likely to pass it on to a sexual partner. Here's why. Again, one of the insidious, pernicious characteristics of HIV infection is that inactive reservoirs build, which makes it a chronic disease. And again, when you first stre exposed to HIV, your immune system can mount a pretty decent defense on its own. Yeah, you don't have those reservoirs just yet, right, And it's those reservoirs that eventually overwhelm your immune system and can lead to your death if you're treated with heart very early on after or infection, those reservoirs never have a chance to build and that infection that you do have is helped with this extra therapy and your immune system can defend against it. And it's these these people feel like the time is such a critical essence that award eighty six, which is a legendary the um United States at least first UH dedicated AIDS ward AIDS Clinic in San Francisco General the very cutting edge. They've led a lot of treatment programs for UM HIV and AIDS over the years, but they have this program now where they will pay for a cab for you to be brought from your doctor's office where you were just diagnosed to Ward eighty six to be treated right then with heart to begin treatment. Yeah. It's a doctor researcher called Hero You hatano another hero another hero, You're right, And the program is rapid UH, which the first letter also stands for a rapid Yeah, I know, I don't think that's okay, Well we'll give it to him. Rapid is the Rapid Anti Retroviral Program Initiative for new diagnoses And like you said, basically it's a treat and test and treat program where as soon as you know you've got it. They want to knock down any obstacle in your way, including that first cab ride to get there and just go get going on that stuff so you're not spreading the disease. So we've got more on treatment and stuff like that. Uh, and we'll get to it right after this message. All right, Chuck. There's another UM. There's a group out there running around too who are saying that they are working on an AIDS or it's saying HIV vaccine. Yeah, you sent me this one. UM. They are studying what are called controllers. And these these controllers, they'll they get infected with HIV, it's in their body and they never get sick from it. Yeah. They're called long term non progressors or elite controllers, elite of it. They prefer to be called elite controllers. Uh. And they've estimated anywhere from one and two hundred to one in five people. Uh. They don't think Magic Johnson is one of these people, which we talked about. No, he just responded, well the part, but there was the thought that he might be. UM. And there's a project called the Immunity Project. It's a nonprofit that seeks a cure by stutting the blood of these elite controllers UM, which I don't know why it's controversial, but I have seen that other researchers are saying, like, don't do that, it's not gonna work, or yeah, maybe that's it. Maybe they think it's not resourced. Well, but they figured I mean, they feel like they figured out what makes elite controllers, what gives them that trait um. Apparently there's some proteins that UM show these people signal proteins in their body that that show the immune system where the best place to attack in HIV viruses. Yeah, so that's genetic it is. But it's also like it's not like there's something weird with their own cells. It's like they're antibodies are UM specialized to search and destroy HIV viruses, which is weird, But that's definitely who you want to study. Why not throw an extra hundred millionaire? Uh. This other part of this article article from Pacific Standards, So it was interesting. There was a case of the French girl she's now eighteen. She was infected with HIV from her mother during pregnancy or delivery. Immediately started started on the anti viral drugs. Uh stayed on them for six years, and then she stopped taking the medications for almost a year. Usually when that happens is HIV just like really gets going again and it's back on the move because of the reservoirs. Yeah, it didn't happen in her case. Um, and so she stayed off them for and she's been undetectable for twelve years. So now they're thinking maybe one thing we can do is get people on the drugs super soon, and then wean them off of the drugs at a certain point and see if that works. Basically like keeping good close eye on them obviously not just being like, all right, we'll see in a decade, let me know how it goes. I mean, why not? So that's pretty promising too. Uh. There's another uh potential strategy which is called shock and kill, and that is flushing out the particles into the circulatory system. So is that part of the one we talked about earlier? I think so the pro stratton where is that the same thing it activates dormant HIV cells to get them to attack. I would say if it's not the same drug or the same research group, it's the same principle, you know, trying to awaken the sleeping beast and may give us some big problems. Uh, Patient zero. We tease that in the first episode. Yeah, I thought this was super interesting. You referenced the book and movie and the band played on by the book was Randy Schiltz about the early days of AIDS and HIV, and um it is there's now a book out called Plane Queer. Uh and that is plane as an Airplane airplane terrible. Yeah, I know colon labor, sexuality and AIDS. In the history of male flight attendants and um, there was a man named Guton Dougas Gayton m. I was in an a Yeah, g A E T A N Gayton Dougas. He's Canadian flight attendant. He's kebec Qua. It's Canadian people in compactus maybe a national hero. Uh. They in this book. Basically there was a big fear that this book wasn't going to sell and get any attention. So the book publishing because it's like six pages of methodical reporting on the area of HIV eight Yeah, and um, the the the editor now or the publisher has come out and said, you know what, we kind of um resorted to yellow journalism by allowing and leaking this supposed patient zero, this gay flight attendant, good looking guy who was very sexually active. He claimed to have more than partners over a ten year span from the early seventies of the early eighties, flying all over the world. Yeah, obviously it's a flight attendant. Um. And they let the story leak to the New York Times. Was at New York Times and New York Post. But not only did they leak the story, they really they really built up or overstated the guy's role as depicted in the book too. Yeah. Basically, like this guy brought AIDS to the United States. This guy is patients zero. They they I think in the book he does compare him to Quebec quaw typhoid Mary right away, because he did. He did say, like I'm not gonna not have sex or you nuts, like there are some stuff that this guy definitely did do and he was one of the early patients. But to lay the AIDS epidemic in America at this one guy's feet it patently unfair. Yeah, and untrue because he was not the first person. Uh he was. They did trace early on, when they were tracing it around the country. They labeled patients with l A as in Los Angeles or New York like l A four in Y three is what patient number and where they were. And originally they said that his designation was OH for out of California. Eventually that became zero. Uh. And he unfairly pinned with spreading AIDS. He was he was part of a smallish group, a very traveled, promiscuous gay men that did help spread AIDS. But um, he was not the reason he was not patients here. He was a reason. He was right, but unfairly labeled. Um. But in the end it ended up bringing a lot of attention to it at a vital time. So that's why the conundrum, that's why the editors of the editor of the book is admitting and now he's saying, like you know, ultimately it was a good move because it helped brought a lot of bringing a lot of attention to this through promotion of the book. But it was at the expense of this one guy. And he died in um March of kidney failure. Very sad. Uh. I think we need one more break, correct, Yeah, and then we'll come back and we'll talk about um. Some other celebrity who have helped put a face to AIDS and the AIDS quilt. Yeah, right for this, all right, Chuck, We're back. Yes, so you tease celebrities. I love celebrities. Everyone does love celebrities, And someone who is a celebrity who dies of AIDS is no more important than um any other person who dies of AIDS. But they are vital to putting a face on things, into getting media attention and basically slapping people in the face who think I can never get AIDS. You know, easy we mentioned, Yeah, it definitely makes people. What gives people pause? I didn't know, I don't I didn't remember that some of these people died of AIDS. Um Rock Hudson was a big one. Absolutely, Arthur ashe had forgotten about that. Oh yeah, uh, Freddie Mercury. Honestly, I was watching, Uh have you ever seen Queen live in Montreal? I don't know. Maybe was he wearing um, like white jumpsuit, white jeans and the Superman tank top. It's just like it's like Queen's famous sponsort movie that was on Palladium the other night. And I've seen that thing probably a dozen times. Every time I'm knocked out. Oh yeah, the Queen was great, and Freddie Murcury was just such a rock star. Dude. It was like and at the time when I was a little kid, I didn't know what gay was, you know, just knew you like Freddie Mercury. Absolutely. Yeah. I was the same kid who drew the village people in crayon and my mom was like, what's going on there? Um? But Freddiemurkey just he still blows me away. What what a fantastic, awesome rock star. I wonder how that he's gonna be Sasha Baron Cohen's working on. He dropped out of that, he came back back on baby. Well, I think he he looks enough like him and he can do great impressions. But he's just tall and lanky. So that's the only thing that bothers me. It wasn't Freddie Mercury pretty tall. He was a little guy. Oh really, Yeah, I didn't know that. Yeah, spit fire, so you know whatever. It's not like Christoph Waltz playing a guy from Nebraska into Big Guys. Did you see that pile of do? That movie bugged me so much every moment of it. I'm just a nice man from the Brascot it was so like he didn't even tried to copy. He didn't try to hide his exit at all. He didn't because Tim Burton probably wasn't even on set most of the time. Why because he's phoning it in. Yeah he stinks now. I did look up though, like, why in the world did he cast him and Tim Burton? Because he got some flak for it, and he was like, I just it was more about the spirit of the guy, not that he had heavy Austrian accent. Missed it a little bit, Maybe re redo the character a tad then there's all sorts of stuff you can do or um was it Cameron Crow who cast? Um? What is her name? The White Girl? Is an Asian character? What in it? Like the most recent like his most recent movie? I didn't see, Yes, who? I can't remember her names? A very famous actors the Redhead. Yes from Birdman. Yes she plays an Asian character. Yes, yes, really, all right, I'm gonna to look that up. Yeah, let's go read about it after this. Alright, there was the one tangent for the two parter. Yeah, we got a lot in there. So back to celebrities who have passed from aids Um Liberacci of course. Uh, Gia. That was another thing too. Have you seen behind the candelabra? Are you gonna say g of the model? Yeah, that was a big one because that was a woman from hers was from Needles, I think, so it's a pretty big heroin addict. Uh Perry Ellis fashion designer, Mr Brady himself. Oh yeah, Robert Reid, yep, I remember Pedro Zamora from the Real World. That was a big deal because I think each one of these cases kind of opened the eyes of a different segment. UM and Pedro he was, you know MTV's Real World before he got really bad. He was one of the UM. I guess it was the San Francisco and uh he helped up in the lines for a lot of teenagers and kids because it unfolded in real time on television. Oh. I didn't know about that at all. Yeah, it was a really big big thing. UM. Anthony Perkins yea psycho. UM, Brad Davis from Midnight Express. He was straight, but he was a drug user. So that kind of shone a light on that. Uh. And then Keith Herring, the artist Tom Fogerty of Credence, John Fogerty's brother got it through a blood transfusion. Man, So between he and Ryan White, You're right, like, those are all really different segments. Yeah, and I think, I mean that's why I'm mentioning them because I think each segment, like, uh, it just shines a light to a different group of people who might be fans of theirs. Um, So you're saying, we're going to talk about the aids quilte, Right, Yeah, are you there? You got any more celebrities? No, I mean there are more celebrities than that, but we just went through a handful the aids quilt So have you ever seen the movie Milk? Yeah, the UM One of the main characters, Clive Jones, UM, is a real life person, as was Harvey Milk, who played Cleive Jones in the movie. I don't remember. I want to say it was like the dude from UM Big Bang Theory, but it's not. I've never seen that show, but it looks a little bit like him. I don't really watch it either, but you know, I'm aware of pop culture, you know what I'm saying. So anyway, UM, Clive Jones was a guy who was a friend of Harvey Milks, and UM, Harvey Milk was very famously assassinated by Dan White the Twinkie Defense. I recognize the guy, but I don't know what else he's been in. He was from the Dogtown in z Boys movie and among many other things. Um So, uh, Harvey Milk was killed and in his honor, starting in nineteen seventy eight, I think Clive Jones organized the candlelight vigil for him and George Muscone, the mayor who was also killed by Dan White. Um but Harvey Milk was He was I think the first openly gay politician in San Francisco. So here's a gay rights hero for sure. Um So, to honors memory, they would hold Clive Jones would organize these candlelight vigils and um at one in five he found out that um about like more than a thousand in San Franciscans had died of AIDS and uh. He during organizing the candlelight vigil, he asked people to write the names of those people down on little cards, right, and then he took the cards he and some other volunteers at the end of the vigil and posted them on the Federal Building wall. And apparently it looked a lot like a patchwork quilt boom, and he thought the little light bulb went off his head. And Clive Jones said, I think we should make a quilt because they've been trying to figure out a memorial for um uh, people who had died of AIDS. Yeah. I didn't know how organic it was and how it started. And I just think it's such a neat story that is so it's very cleeve. Uh. In June seven, he um Well the first panel he created in memory of his friend Marvin Feldman. And in June of eighty seven he teamed up with a guy named Mike Smith and some other folks to organize the Official Names Project Foundation, and uh they started pouring in these these pieces of quilt, these patches started coming in from all over the country, then all over the world. And in October of nine they displayed it for the first of what would be uh one, two, three, four, five times in its full glory in Washington, d C. Yeah, the first big deal. The first time, it was the size of a football field. The last time they displayed at Chuck Woods wind uh with the last time, and it was much bigger, it wasn't it. Yes, it covered the entire National Mall. That really drives at home. Well, which is the whole point, Like, look how massive this thing is. Uh. It has been on tour um more than a half a million people visited the first weekend and since then it's gone on many tours all over the country, all over the world, and uh has raised a lot of money I think so far over three million dollars. Is that right? Oh yeah, easily. It seems like it would be more than that, sure, but it's just through this one project. It says the Names Project found Asian has raised over three million dollars. I'm surprised. That's all. Um. In nineteen eighty nine it was nominated. The quilt itself was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize and it's still the largest community art project in the world. And if you have not seen the documentary Common Threads Colon Stories from the Quilt, you should. One Academy Award for Best Documentary. And it has become a symbol and it all grew out of that one neat little idea from that candlelight vigil. Pretty cool, pretty cool indeed. And the reason they're not showing it in full anymore, I think it's because it's too big, which is sad, you know, like there's no space large enough to hold it. Well, that's not true. You could probably go out to the desert somewhere. Oh yeah, you know, yeah, but then it get all sandy. Yeah, you don't want to do that, go to the beach. It's been weeks shaking that thing out. Yeah, it would be tough. God, they can't imagine like transporting that. Yeah, I don't know how they do it. I'm sure it's in pieces. Yeah, I guess they may rease the whole thing back together every time. I don't think they saw it. They probably just put it together. Oh, I see, that's that's my guess. I'm not sure. Okay, I doubt if they folded up as one piece though, throw it in the truck, you know. Yeah, well it would very quickly reach to the moon. Have you ever heard that? You know, like you can fold the paper, normal sized paper, several times and very quickly it reaches right into outer space. Wait, I thought something couldn't be folded more than a certain amount of times. That's a lie, is it was? That? It don't be dune? What was the number of times? It was supposedly seven? And this girl in high school, Uh, somewhere in like the early two thousands proved it is possible. She did over like eleven or something. But the paper that she used like went from you know, paper thin to that after you know, ten folds, and so she did the math to see um after like twenty or fifty folds or something like that, it would hit the moon after like a hundred and twenty folds, it would expand further than the visible universe? Is that cool? And now she volunteers with the AIDS quilt holding it. That's right? Ah, you got anything else? Nope? No, I think you're right. Though. We could have made a whole entire podcast series out of this, right, Yeah, I hope you did a good job. We tried. We definitely did. H If you want to know more about HIV AIDS, UM, you should go research that, especially for this Aid's Day week. UM. You can start by typing the word AIDS into the search bar at how stuff works dot com. And since I said search bar, it's time for listener men. Yes, and if you are sexually active, go get tested. Yeah, that's a great way to celebrate um AS day. No reason not to um celebrate, observe. How about observe, observe. Ye. Yeah, it's a little more solemn than celebrating AID to day, I think celebrating awareness is okay, that's all right. Thanks, I know what, man, thanks for letting me off the hook. All right, this is gonna be called listener mail. At the end of the HIV AIDS series. Hey, guys, just recently came across your podcast thanks to recommendation from Holly and Tracy. Stuff you miss in history class. It's nice. Just finished listening to ten most disturbing medical procedures, and I have a story. My husband recently was diagnosed with uh minyars disease. While he was being diagnosed, he was sent to an audiologist. An audiologist took him to a room no bigger than a closet and strapped him into a chair. The lights were then turned off in the chair of spun while the audiologist audio logist audio. Yeah that's right, Yeah, you had it right. Uh. The chair was then whilst um She asked him questions. The chair was then reversed in direction. He was asked you the more questions. These were basic questions like what's your wife's name, children's names, et cetera. He was even asked at one point to say a boy's name for each letter of alphabet starting with A and ending in Z. It would be a fun little test, Zeke and on. I found it amusing because you had mentioned in the podcast how the worldly chair is no longer in use and you couldn't find anything about it. Well, today it's called a rotary chair and is used to study the workings of the inner ear. While you would find it even more amusing after airing that show, while some people are treating the rotary chair as a new invention, me so, I think Heather here is saying that the rotary chair is the same thing as the Worldly chair. It's alive and well, yeah, thanks Heather. Yeah, thanks a lot, Heather, and the best of luck to your husband. Yeah, it's still stuck in the worly chair going uh David Elias Frank, She's like, Frank doesn't count the short for France's start over. If you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us at s Y s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff you should know. You can send us an email to Stuff podcast at how stuff worst dot com and has always joined us at our home on the Web. Stuff you Should Know dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how Stuff Works dot com. M

Welcome to Stuff you should know from house Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles W Chuck Bryant. Uh, nobody's in here with us, so it's just two of us and you, dear listener. We're just free Leal and Bob Dylan whoever that is Bob Dylan? Who come on? And um this is part two of two of a special two part series that's right on HIV aids. Yeah, if you didn't listen to first one, I would suggest you do that. Yeah, you're you're gonna be lost. There's probably gonna be a lot of in jokes and referential jokes back to the first one. We explained it in the first one. Yeah, that's very important and like the actual nuts and Bolts disease, some skip ahead, don't be lazy. UM So Chuck we left off you were talking. We talked originally about UM, you know, the different varying levels of risk depending on the type of intercourse, depending on the tie of UM uh group you remember of UM. We talked about how it works, where it came from, what what could possibly be left to talk about as far as HIV can is concerned. There's a lot. Oh yeah, yeah, because we did not touch on and I know you're being coy because I see all your notes in front of you. Oh yeah, look at all. But one thing we didn't talk about that we're going to start with is uh treatment. Yeah, that's a big one. That's a big one. Uh you want to go and talk about the AIDS cocktail? Yeah. So. Um. Back in a very very very famous basketball player named Irvin Magic Johnson played for the l A Lakers, announced that he was retiring from the NBA because he had been diagnosed with HIV. I remember the day. That was a huge deal. I was at Georgia Southern for some weird reason that weekend. That is weird. It was a big deal. Um. I mean you talked I think last episode about Easy catching it and you know that was that was a big deal. This was probably even bigger. I think Magic Johnson was a bigger name than Easy. Were more widely recognized him among more people. He was a sports figure, he was straight what the heck is going on? And I remember thinking, like many people at the time, oh my gosh, Magic Johnson is dying. Yes, I think a lot of people, most people who are familiar with this thought, well, he's a goner in a couple of years. But he kept living, and he kept living, and he kept living. He came back and played more basketball. Even I didn't know that, and you gotta be pretty fit for that, sure, And he kept living. And everybody thought, what the heck happened with Magic Johnson? And it turned out that he had access to what's now known as the highly active anti retroviral therapy a k A HEART, which is now the standard of treatment for HIV um and he had access to it a couple of years before it became widespread in the I think, and it has helped keep him alive. He recently he was thirty two when he announced that he was diagnosed with HIV, and he turned fifty six and two. It's a very very long lifespan, especially for somebody who was diagnosed in the early nineties when people were still like, what is going on here? So correct? Uh, Magic Johnson got a head start. Not because he's super famous. Well, that had something to do with it. I think I'm very rich, well, but he was he was willing to It was still in the in the experimental phase at that point. Yeah, but I'm sure there were plenty of HIV patients who are like, do whatever you need to do to cure me, but didn't have the money, so he got a jump on it. But he has not. I think a lot of people think that he is getting some other special treatments that no one else is getting, or he's paying his way into something. It supposedly there's a Kenyan witch doctor rumor. Yeah, he's getting the same treatment that other people are getting. And there are plenty of people that have lived much longer than him. Oh yeah, and uh, he's just the most famous. Uh, and that's a good thing because he's HIV activists and activists. Yeah yea, not to disparage anything about magic Jacks, and he definitely took that that label at a time when it was that was a gay disease, and uh, he became an HIV activist. We should say specifically, he does not, never has had aids. His um T helper cell count never got to the UM two hundred thousand or less mark. So he's HIV positive and he is still UM Like we said in the last episode, it's a chronic disease because reservoirs developed UM and I believe it was a couple of years between diagnosis and treatment for him, So those reservoirs had a chance to get a foothold, but he got it early enough that he his lifespan is it's it's basically that what was it twenty four years that he's been alive since diagnosis. That's pretty normal for people who were treated with the hard cocktail in a reasonable time after being uh diagnosed, which they're finding that window of time is intensely important. Oh yeah, we're gonna get to that man. That was a great article ascent. So we're talking heart. Yeah, heart or cart or just art whichever you want to call it. I call it art with or heart with the double A. I call it the AIDS cocktail. Oh yeah, that's another word for uh. So, each one of these drugs and we talked about in part one is very specific to its task um to basically disrupt as many stages of the process as possible. Uh, should we go through these um in r t I S nucleo side reverse transcript as inhibitors, they basically blocked the ability to replicate. Yeah, remember the reverse transcript as takes the r n A instructions for the viral UM creation and turns it into d NA, which is then inserted into the c D four plus T cell nucleus. Right, so you block that. It's a big problem for the HIV virus. It's a big problem. It is UH in n R T I S non nucleoside reverse transcription inhibitors, they disable a protein another protein requiring it to replicate another disruption p I S prote s inhibitors, So proteas was UM that was the one that actually cut the polypeptides into their individual components. So, yeah, you had a long chain of enzymes that made up these viruses. That's the party didn't get right, and then you cut them up. So the thing that cuts them up isn't there. You just have all these long chains and they build up and it's basically like um lucy's running the chocolate factory assembly line or something there. Uh. Then you have entry fusion inhibitors. They blocked the ability to enter those c D for our cells to begin with UH, and then finally integrays inhibitors UM once they get in that c D four cell. UH. We talked about the insert of that genetic material, and it basically blocks the ability to do that. So the current cocktail recommended cocktail are two in r T I s in the shaker, one in a r T I and the p I and then either a integrays inhibitor or a right tone neighbor, which I don't know what that is, do you know, let's just say it's the key. Let's say it's the the bidders in the cocktail and makes it right. You put it all in there, you shake it up. You've got your AIDS cocktail. Once you put that into place, if you catch it early enough, you can bring your mortality rate just about to normal. Yeah. Like it's just it's a chronic disease. Yeah. Yeah, And and your immune system will probably not become so compromise that you're gonna from something. You need to be on it for life. Uh. And everyone is supposed to be on this cocktail. Uh. Although if you have b um, have a recent CD four count below five, or if you are pregnant, then you are given a priority. And it's all gonna cost you about ten to twelve thousand dollars a year, although that is supposed to increase. And the reason why you have to stay on it indefinitely because we said in the last episode that um HIV produces reservoirs of inactive varyans that just spread throughout the body and accumulate. And even when you're treating what amounts to one outbreak, another one can come very soon afterward. And that's what makes it chronic. Right with heart it will eventually get all these reservoirs, but it takes I think we said sixty to eighty years. It's a very long time, right. So there's been some suggestions as to how to eradicate UM this disease a little faster, yet different ideas, which is great. I mean, they're really smart. People are coming up with different strategies. One of them is kind of nuts. But also which one the one that uses pro Stratton I believe is what it's called. It basically goes in and says, um, oh, you're an inactive HIV, so well, I'm going to activate you. It's basically making an HIV outbreak take place, but you're doing it while you're under heart care, right. Yeah. The way I thought of it was, it's like flushing out those invisible reservoirs, but the only way to flush them out is to activate them to get them going. So the T cells actually know it's there. So that scary sounding it is that the heart treatment also disrupts their function, so it starts them up, and apparently they don't stop and go back to sleep or go dormant again once they start up, so it starts them up. The heart treatment um keeps them from doing what they want to do normally. And then also the cell that they're infecting will die sooner than later and just get it over with. So it's basically a way they're trying to figure out to accelerate an HIV infection while in the presence of highly active anti retroviral therapy. So it keeps you from actually dying from this accelerated HIV infection. It's pretty cool. Yeah, So that's one strategy. Does even that they call it anything, that should call it something cool? Uh the gun Slinger, Yeah, the gun Slinger hid. All right, I think we should get to this next. This is uh. You sent an awesome article from the Pacific Standard called getting to zero very close to a cure for AIDS, and the city of San Francisco is doing something. Uh there, they're pretty radical out there in San Francisco. Sure you know all those hippies out there. So what they're trying to do is they're trying to make their city the first city with no new infections, no deaths, and no stigma. And they called the program getting to zero, and they're doing this in a in a lot of ways. Um, some of the background here is there. Historically over the past few decades hasn't been a ton of money allocated toward finding a cure for AIDS. Yeah, and not because for various reasons. I think a lot of people, especially initially are like, well, because it was gay disease, yeah, I think is its spread out and started infecting more non gay people and more non gay white people. It started to get a lot more funding, but it also didn't get a lot of funny because a lot of people were like, we can't cure this, it's an incurable disease. Yeah, and I think, um, I think cynics might also say, like, it's you make a lot more money to keep people on drugs for life than you do caring something. But from what I could tell, the main reason was because uh, it was such a new scary thing. They put all of their efforts into trying to save people who got HIV. And coming up with these these this drug cocktail. However, things are changing, which is good. Um. In two thousand and eight and two thousand nine, that was a very cool case. Timothy ray Brown. He was, Yeah, the second Berlin patient. There was another one in the mid nineties. Yeah, there was, I know everything. That was an anonymous Berlin patient in the mid nineties who I think, uh got HIV and then no longer had HIV. But what's up with Berlin? I know, seriously, it's cool city. But Timothy ray Brown was a special case. He's an American that was living there as a translator. HIV positive and started taking medications. Uh, and then about a decade later find out he had leukemia. So his doctor, very clever person, Gero Hooter or Hero, call him Hero. I think Hero. He said. He had a very weird unique I D idea. He said, why don't we see if we can take there are these people out there one percent of Caucasians, Yeah, one percent of people who have a protein Caucasian people uh CCR five, which basically makes them immune to HIV. They lack that protein. Yeah, that's a protein on the surface of your t helper sell that the HIV virus docks with can doc can infect and very few people have this one percent. He said, why don't we try and find someone like that who can donate their bone marrow which is where stuff like that is produced, and to this guy and basically basically replace his immune system with with this one percenter and not that kind of one percenter. He's like, I'm gonna be rich. I got rich bow. So he did that. They found someone UH that had that that was a good match, and it worked. It worked like he was funk only cured of HIV I think like fully cured. Is was like, they keep testing him and testing him. This is I think two thousand eight or two thousand nine UM, and they testing no signs UM. I don't know that enough people have been cured of HIV AIDS so that they It's like with UM with cancer. I think if you're five years without UM any kind of growth, it's considered remission. I don't think they have a standard like that yet. UM. But so they keep testing this guy and he's it's not coming back. These reservoirs are not becoming active again. It doesn't appear that he has HIV or AIDS any longer. And The doctor was excited, obviously, but he also knew like, well, we obviously can't go around replacing you know, people's immune systems with these one per cent. But what it did was it kick started new hope and now all of a sudden, all of a sudden, there was new funding for trying to find a cure. And it was what they call a proof of concept. I think we mentioned last episode it showed that AIDS can be cured. Yeah, before this, only about three percent of AIDS and HIV funding went to cure research. Um. Now there are new grants totally fourteen point six million a year in Obama in two thousand and thirteen said you know what, how about another hundred million towards a cure over three years? What is that funny? It's just what a hundred million used to be and what it is today. You know. Yeah, it just sounds like sure, just throwing money around. Um, go get yourself some nice funding. Uh. So we talked to Believe in the first episode about catching it early. Um, there's another story here. Basically, how it works now is you can get diagnosed with HIV and until you're t cell count falls below a certain number, you're just like not on any drugs, like you have to get sick before you get treated in most cases. Is well, yeah, that was the old I mean that's what it says in this thing. Oh that was the old, the old. Yeah, that was the old guard I got you. Yeah, the the new the the bleeding edge right now, leading edge O, the leading edge um is quite the opposite of that. Yeah, Because they found if you get to it super early, like those first few days and weeks after you get HIV in the bloodstream is when it's most dangerous, very critical, most easily spread. And they found that if people who take these drugs right then are less likely less likely to pass it on to a sexual partner. Here's why. Again, one of the insidious, pernicious characteristics of HIV infection is that inactive reservoirs build, which makes it a chronic disease. And again, when you first stre exposed to HIV, your immune system can mount a pretty decent defense on its own. Yeah, you don't have those reservoirs just yet, right, And it's those reservoirs that eventually overwhelm your immune system and can lead to your death if you're treated with heart very early on after or infection, those reservoirs never have a chance to build and that infection that you do have is helped with this extra therapy and your immune system can defend against it. And it's these these people feel like the time is such a critical essence that award eighty six, which is a legendary the um United States at least first UH dedicated AIDS ward AIDS Clinic in San Francisco General the very cutting edge. They've led a lot of treatment programs for UM HIV and AIDS over the years, but they have this program now where they will pay for a cab for you to be brought from your doctor's office where you were just diagnosed to Ward eighty six to be treated right then with heart to begin treatment. Yeah. It's a doctor researcher called Hero You hatano another hero another hero, You're right, And the program is rapid UH, which the first letter also stands for a rapid Yeah, I know, I don't think that's okay, Well we'll give it to him. Rapid is the Rapid Anti Retroviral Program Initiative for new diagnoses And like you said, basically it's a treat and test and treat program where as soon as you know you've got it. They want to knock down any obstacle in your way, including that first cab ride to get there and just go get going on that stuff so you're not spreading the disease. So we've got more on treatment and stuff like that. Uh, and we'll get to it right after this message. All right, Chuck. There's another UM. There's a group out there running around too who are saying that they are working on an AIDS or it's saying HIV vaccine. Yeah, you sent me this one. UM. They are studying what are called controllers. And these these controllers, they'll they get infected with HIV, it's in their body and they never get sick from it. Yeah. They're called long term non progressors or elite controllers, elite of it. They prefer to be called elite controllers. Uh. And they've estimated anywhere from one and two hundred to one in five people. Uh. They don't think Magic Johnson is one of these people, which we talked about. No, he just responded, well the part, but there was the thought that he might be. UM. And there's a project called the Immunity Project. It's a nonprofit that seeks a cure by stutting the blood of these elite controllers UM, which I don't know why it's controversial, but I have seen that other researchers are saying, like, don't do that, it's not gonna work, or yeah, maybe that's it. Maybe they think it's not resourced. Well, but they figured I mean, they feel like they figured out what makes elite controllers, what gives them that trait um. Apparently there's some proteins that UM show these people signal proteins in their body that that show the immune system where the best place to attack in HIV viruses. Yeah, so that's genetic it is. But it's also like it's not like there's something weird with their own cells. It's like they're antibodies are UM specialized to search and destroy HIV viruses, which is weird, But that's definitely who you want to study. Why not throw an extra hundred millionaire? Uh. This other part of this article article from Pacific Standards, So it was interesting. There was a case of the French girl she's now eighteen. She was infected with HIV from her mother during pregnancy or delivery. Immediately started started on the anti viral drugs. Uh stayed on them for six years, and then she stopped taking the medications for almost a year. Usually when that happens is HIV just like really gets going again and it's back on the move because of the reservoirs. Yeah, it didn't happen in her case. Um, and so she stayed off them for and she's been undetectable for twelve years. So now they're thinking maybe one thing we can do is get people on the drugs super soon, and then wean them off of the drugs at a certain point and see if that works. Basically like keeping good close eye on them obviously not just being like, all right, we'll see in a decade, let me know how it goes. I mean, why not? So that's pretty promising too. Uh. There's another uh potential strategy which is called shock and kill, and that is flushing out the particles into the circulatory system. So is that part of the one we talked about earlier? I think so the pro stratton where is that the same thing it activates dormant HIV cells to get them to attack. I would say if it's not the same drug or the same research group, it's the same principle, you know, trying to awaken the sleeping beast and may give us some big problems. Uh, Patient zero. We tease that in the first episode. Yeah, I thought this was super interesting. You referenced the book and movie and the band played on by the book was Randy Schiltz about the early days of AIDS and HIV, and um it is there's now a book out called Plane Queer. Uh and that is plane as an Airplane airplane terrible. Yeah, I know colon labor, sexuality and AIDS. In the history of male flight attendants and um, there was a man named Guton Dougas Gayton m. I was in an a Yeah, g A E T A N Gayton Dougas. He's Canadian flight attendant. He's kebec Qua. It's Canadian people in compactus maybe a national hero. Uh. They in this book. Basically there was a big fear that this book wasn't going to sell and get any attention. So the book publishing because it's like six pages of methodical reporting on the area of HIV eight Yeah, and um, the the the editor now or the publisher has come out and said, you know what, we kind of um resorted to yellow journalism by allowing and leaking this supposed patient zero, this gay flight attendant, good looking guy who was very sexually active. He claimed to have more than partners over a ten year span from the early seventies of the early eighties, flying all over the world. Yeah, obviously it's a flight attendant. Um. And they let the story leak to the New York Times. Was at New York Times and New York Post. But not only did they leak the story, they really they really built up or overstated the guy's role as depicted in the book too. Yeah. Basically, like this guy brought AIDS to the United States. This guy is patients zero. They they I think in the book he does compare him to Quebec quaw typhoid Mary right away, because he did. He did say, like I'm not gonna not have sex or you nuts, like there are some stuff that this guy definitely did do and he was one of the early patients. But to lay the AIDS epidemic in America at this one guy's feet it patently unfair. Yeah, and untrue because he was not the first person. Uh he was. They did trace early on, when they were tracing it around the country. They labeled patients with l A as in Los Angeles or New York like l A four in Y three is what patient number and where they were. And originally they said that his designation was OH for out of California. Eventually that became zero. Uh. And he unfairly pinned with spreading AIDS. He was he was part of a smallish group, a very traveled, promiscuous gay men that did help spread AIDS. But um, he was not the reason he was not patients here. He was a reason. He was right, but unfairly labeled. Um. But in the end it ended up bringing a lot of attention to it at a vital time. So that's why the conundrum, that's why the editors of the editor of the book is admitting and now he's saying, like you know, ultimately it was a good move because it helped brought a lot of bringing a lot of attention to this through promotion of the book. But it was at the expense of this one guy. And he died in um March of kidney failure. Very sad. Uh. I think we need one more break, correct, Yeah, and then we'll come back and we'll talk about um. Some other celebrity who have helped put a face to AIDS and the AIDS quilt. Yeah, right for this, all right, Chuck, We're back. Yes, so you tease celebrities. I love celebrities. Everyone does love celebrities, And someone who is a celebrity who dies of AIDS is no more important than um any other person who dies of AIDS. But they are vital to putting a face on things, into getting media attention and basically slapping people in the face who think I can never get AIDS. You know, easy we mentioned, Yeah, it definitely makes people. What gives people pause? I didn't know, I don't I didn't remember that some of these people died of AIDS. Um Rock Hudson was a big one. Absolutely, Arthur ashe had forgotten about that. Oh yeah, uh, Freddie Mercury. Honestly, I was watching, Uh have you ever seen Queen live in Montreal? I don't know. Maybe was he wearing um, like white jumpsuit, white jeans and the Superman tank top. It's just like it's like Queen's famous sponsort movie that was on Palladium the other night. And I've seen that thing probably a dozen times. Every time I'm knocked out. Oh yeah, the Queen was great, and Freddie Murcury was just such a rock star. Dude. It was like and at the time when I was a little kid, I didn't know what gay was, you know, just knew you like Freddie Mercury. Absolutely. Yeah. I was the same kid who drew the village people in crayon and my mom was like, what's going on there? Um? But Freddiemurkey just he still blows me away. What what a fantastic, awesome rock star. I wonder how that he's gonna be Sasha Baron Cohen's working on. He dropped out of that, he came back back on baby. Well, I think he he looks enough like him and he can do great impressions. But he's just tall and lanky. So that's the only thing that bothers me. It wasn't Freddie Mercury pretty tall. He was a little guy. Oh really, Yeah, I didn't know that. Yeah, spit fire, so you know whatever. It's not like Christoph Waltz playing a guy from Nebraska into Big Guys. Did you see that pile of do? That movie bugged me so much every moment of it. I'm just a nice man from the Brascot it was so like he didn't even tried to copy. He didn't try to hide his exit at all. He didn't because Tim Burton probably wasn't even on set most of the time. Why because he's phoning it in. Yeah he stinks now. I did look up though, like, why in the world did he cast him and Tim Burton? Because he got some flak for it, and he was like, I just it was more about the spirit of the guy, not that he had heavy Austrian accent. Missed it a little bit, Maybe re redo the character a tad then there's all sorts of stuff you can do or um was it Cameron Crow who cast? Um? What is her name? The White Girl? Is an Asian character? What in it? Like the most recent like his most recent movie? I didn't see, Yes, who? I can't remember her names? A very famous actors the Redhead. Yes from Birdman. Yes she plays an Asian character. Yes, yes, really, all right, I'm gonna to look that up. Yeah, let's go read about it after this. Alright, there was the one tangent for the two parter. Yeah, we got a lot in there. So back to celebrities who have passed from aids Um Liberacci of course. Uh, Gia. That was another thing too. Have you seen behind the candelabra? Are you gonna say g of the model? Yeah, that was a big one because that was a woman from hers was from Needles, I think, so it's a pretty big heroin addict. Uh Perry Ellis fashion designer, Mr Brady himself. Oh yeah, Robert Reid, yep, I remember Pedro Zamora from the Real World. That was a big deal because I think each one of these cases kind of opened the eyes of a different segment. UM and Pedro he was, you know MTV's Real World before he got really bad. He was one of the UM. I guess it was the San Francisco and uh he helped up in the lines for a lot of teenagers and kids because it unfolded in real time on television. Oh. I didn't know about that at all. Yeah, it was a really big big thing. UM. Anthony Perkins yea psycho. UM, Brad Davis from Midnight Express. He was straight, but he was a drug user. So that kind of shone a light on that. Uh. And then Keith Herring, the artist Tom Fogerty of Credence, John Fogerty's brother got it through a blood transfusion. Man, So between he and Ryan White, You're right, like, those are all really different segments. Yeah, and I think, I mean that's why I'm mentioning them because I think each segment, like, uh, it just shines a light to a different group of people who might be fans of theirs. Um, So you're saying, we're going to talk about the aids quilte, Right, Yeah, are you there? You got any more celebrities? No, I mean there are more celebrities than that, but we just went through a handful the aids quilt So have you ever seen the movie Milk? Yeah, the UM One of the main characters, Clive Jones, UM, is a real life person, as was Harvey Milk, who played Cleive Jones in the movie. I don't remember. I want to say it was like the dude from UM Big Bang Theory, but it's not. I've never seen that show, but it looks a little bit like him. I don't really watch it either, but you know, I'm aware of pop culture, you know what I'm saying. So anyway, UM, Clive Jones was a guy who was a friend of Harvey Milks, and UM, Harvey Milk was very famously assassinated by Dan White the Twinkie Defense. I recognize the guy, but I don't know what else he's been in. He was from the Dogtown in z Boys movie and among many other things. Um So, uh, Harvey Milk was killed and in his honor, starting in nineteen seventy eight, I think Clive Jones organized the candlelight vigil for him and George Muscone, the mayor who was also killed by Dan White. Um but Harvey Milk was He was I think the first openly gay politician in San Francisco. So here's a gay rights hero for sure. Um So, to honors memory, they would hold Clive Jones would organize these candlelight vigils and um at one in five he found out that um about like more than a thousand in San Franciscans had died of AIDS and uh. He during organizing the candlelight vigil, he asked people to write the names of those people down on little cards, right, and then he took the cards he and some other volunteers at the end of the vigil and posted them on the Federal Building wall. And apparently it looked a lot like a patchwork quilt boom, and he thought the little light bulb went off his head. And Clive Jones said, I think we should make a quilt because they've been trying to figure out a memorial for um uh, people who had died of AIDS. Yeah. I didn't know how organic it was and how it started. And I just think it's such a neat story that is so it's very cleeve. Uh. In June seven, he um Well the first panel he created in memory of his friend Marvin Feldman. And in June of eighty seven he teamed up with a guy named Mike Smith and some other folks to organize the Official Names Project Foundation, and uh they started pouring in these these pieces of quilt, these patches started coming in from all over the country, then all over the world. And in October of nine they displayed it for the first of what would be uh one, two, three, four, five times in its full glory in Washington, d C. Yeah, the first big deal. The first time, it was the size of a football field. The last time they displayed at Chuck Woods wind uh with the last time, and it was much bigger, it wasn't it. Yes, it covered the entire National Mall. That really drives at home. Well, which is the whole point, Like, look how massive this thing is. Uh. It has been on tour um more than a half a million people visited the first weekend and since then it's gone on many tours all over the country, all over the world, and uh has raised a lot of money I think so far over three million dollars. Is that right? Oh yeah, easily. It seems like it would be more than that, sure, but it's just through this one project. It says the Names Project found Asian has raised over three million dollars. I'm surprised. That's all. Um. In nineteen eighty nine it was nominated. The quilt itself was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize and it's still the largest community art project in the world. And if you have not seen the documentary Common Threads Colon Stories from the Quilt, you should. One Academy Award for Best Documentary. And it has become a symbol and it all grew out of that one neat little idea from that candlelight vigil. Pretty cool, pretty cool indeed. And the reason they're not showing it in full anymore, I think it's because it's too big, which is sad, you know, like there's no space large enough to hold it. Well, that's not true. You could probably go out to the desert somewhere. Oh yeah, you know, yeah, but then it get all sandy. Yeah, you don't want to do that, go to the beach. It's been weeks shaking that thing out. Yeah, it would be tough. God, they can't imagine like transporting that. Yeah, I don't know how they do it. I'm sure it's in pieces. Yeah, I guess they may rease the whole thing back together every time. I don't think they saw it. They probably just put it together. Oh, I see, that's that's my guess. I'm not sure. Okay, I doubt if they folded up as one piece though, throw it in the truck, you know. Yeah, well it would very quickly reach to the moon. Have you ever heard that? You know, like you can fold the paper, normal sized paper, several times and very quickly it reaches right into outer space. Wait, I thought something couldn't be folded more than a certain amount of times. That's a lie, is it was? That? It don't be dune? What was the number of times? It was supposedly seven? And this girl in high school, Uh, somewhere in like the early two thousands proved it is possible. She did over like eleven or something. But the paper that she used like went from you know, paper thin to that after you know, ten folds, and so she did the math to see um after like twenty or fifty folds or something like that, it would hit the moon after like a hundred and twenty folds, it would expand further than the visible universe? Is that cool? And now she volunteers with the AIDS quilt holding it. That's right? Ah, you got anything else? Nope? No, I think you're right. Though. We could have made a whole entire podcast series out of this, right, Yeah, I hope you did a good job. We tried. We definitely did. H If you want to know more about HIV AIDS, UM, you should go research that, especially for this Aid's Day week. UM. You can start by typing the word AIDS into the search bar at how stuff works dot com. And since I said search bar, it's time for listener men. Yes, and if you are sexually active, go get tested. Yeah, that's a great way to celebrate um AS day. No reason not to um celebrate, observe. How about observe, observe. Ye. Yeah, it's a little more solemn than celebrating AID to day, I think celebrating awareness is okay, that's all right. Thanks, I know what, man, thanks for letting me off the hook. All right, this is gonna be called listener mail. At the end of the HIV AIDS series. Hey, guys, just recently came across your podcast thanks to recommendation from Holly and Tracy. Stuff you miss in history class. It's nice. Just finished listening to ten most disturbing medical procedures, and I have a story. My husband recently was diagnosed with uh minyars disease. While he was being diagnosed, he was sent to an audiologist. An audiologist took him to a room no bigger than a closet and strapped him into a chair. The lights were then turned off in the chair of spun while the audiologist audio logist audio. Yeah that's right, Yeah, you had it right. Uh. The chair was then whilst um She asked him questions. The chair was then reversed in direction. He was asked you the more questions. These were basic questions like what's your wife's name, children's names, et cetera. He was even asked at one point to say a boy's name for each letter of alphabet starting with A and ending in Z. It would be a fun little test, Zeke and on. I found it amusing because you had mentioned in the podcast how the worldly chair is no longer in use and you couldn't find anything about it. Well, today it's called a rotary chair and is used to study the workings of the inner ear. While you would find it even more amusing after airing that show, while some people are treating the rotary chair as a new invention, me so, I think Heather here is saying that the rotary chair is the same thing as the Worldly chair. It's alive and well, yeah, thanks Heather. Yeah, thanks a lot, Heather, and the best of luck to your husband. Yeah, it's still stuck in the worly chair going uh David Elias Frank, She's like, Frank doesn't count the short for France's start over. If you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us at s Y s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff you should know. You can send us an email to Stuff podcast at how stuff worst dot com and has always joined us at our home on the Web. Stuff you Should Know dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how Stuff Works dot com. M