World AIDS Day -- December 1st

Today, December 1st, is World AIDS Day.

And although our focus has shifted to ebola to ISIS to Bill Cosby, we must not forget that 35 million people still live with AIDS/HIV worldwide.

And we must not forget the devastation it wrought on a generation.

Here are some stunning photos of an AIDS hospice taken in the early 90s.

A resident's room the day of this death from 

AIDS at the Bailey-Boushay House.

Please also watch HBO's The Normal Heart for a heart-rending dramatization of the early stages of the AIDS crisis in America.

Let us never forget the way that AIDS patients were shunned and treated callously, even by hospital staff. My father, who works in nuclear medicine, told me this chilling story from the early 80s.

He needed to run some tests on a patient who, as was typical of those suffering from AIDS, was secluded in a remote section of the hospital. When my father arrived at the room, a radiologist was already present, doing a portable X-Ray. This procedure required placing the scanner above the patient, with a tray beneath, while the image is taken. A few minutes later, the tech exited and my father went in to draw blood.

He looked at his arm for veins but couldn't find any. His skin was cool.

He looked again at the patient, who was motionless and realized... the man was dead.

The other tech had X-Rayed a corpse, and in spite of the considerable physical contact necessary to do this, he had not even noticed that the patient had probably been dead for some time.