You're listening to the BBC World Service. I'm Audrey Brown. This is the story of AIDS.

Since the AIDS epidemic emerged 40 years ago, 80 million people around the world have tested HIV positive and 35 million people have died.

The first cases of AIDS were identified in the US in June 1981, and by the middle of the

decade, as many as half a million Americans were affected with no effective

in sight. It was gay men in America who were

hardest hit in the first wave of the epidemic which led to increased

hostility towards an already marginalized community.

And the lack of urgency from President Reagan's White House to respond to the crisis

ripping through cities across America made the gay community realize it was

up to them to sound the alarm.

As everybody starts knowing someone who is sick or dying, kind of a panic takes hold

where it quickly dawns on the community that no one cares that the the homophobia that had put many of

us in some sort of closet was only getting worse because of AIDS and the country just didn't care.

It was very obvious that our government was going to let us die.

Peter Staley was diagnosed HIV positive in 1985.

It became so bad that eventually that fear turned to anger and then that anger burst and it

burst in March of 1987 when Larry Kramer gave a speech at the lesbian and gay community center in New York.

He told half the room to stand up and he said that's how many of you are going to be dead

in a few years if we don't act if we don't fight back.

Stop killing us! We're not going to take it anymore! We had to guilt trip the entire country and make them realize that they were letting

thousands of their own citizens die.

That meant putting our bodies on the line, hundreds of us getting arrested at once.

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