--- title: World AIDS Day: How to End AIDS Once and For All description: For pediatricians like me, creating an AIDS-free generation seemed like an unachievable dream. canonical: https://time.com/4585360/world-aids-day/ author: Oxiris Barbot article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-12-01T12:00:49.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T08:06:12.815Z article:section: Ideas og:title: How to End AIDS Once and For All og:description: It's possible in our lifetime og:url: https://time.com/4585360/world-aids-day/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: How to End AIDS Once and For All twitter:description: It's possible in our lifetime twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # How to End AIDS Once and For All > Sponsored content. 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It explains how TIME's journalism is made, from the first pitch through the editorial decisions behind a finished story or cover. #### How can I read about how TIME chooses its covers? Inside TIME is the newsletter where TIME's Editor-in-Chief explains cover selection and the editorial reasoning behind major stories. It is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Who is the editor of TIME? Sam Jacobs is TIME's Editor-in-Chief. He writes Inside TIME, a twice-weekly newsletter about the newsroom's reporting and editorial decisions. #### Is Inside TIME free? Yes. Inside TIME is a free newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and available at time.com/subscribe-agent. ## Video: 100 Photographs: The Face of AIDS [Watch (HLS stream): 100 Photographs: The Face of AIDS](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/FcnnnurT.m3u8) (11:22)  _Published 2016-11-11. Therese Frare’s scene of the deathbed of AIDS patient David Kirby gave the illness a human face. Its use in a Benetton ad blurred the lines between commerce and public provocation._ by [Oxiris Barbot](https://time.com/author/oxiris-barbot/) ## Oxiris Barbot Dec 1, 2016 12:00 PM UTC by [Oxiris Barbot](https://time.com/author/oxiris-barbot/) ## Oxiris Barbot Dec 1, 2016 12:00 PM UTC For pediatricians like me, creating an [AIDS-free generation](http://www.pepfar.gov/) seemed like an unachievable dream. While each needless loss reverberated through families and their communities, losing infants to AIDS was especially heartbreaking. Throughout my residency in Washington, D.C. during the 1990’s crack epidemic, each HIV-positive baby I took care of was a lesson in not losing hope. Pediatricians across the globe celebrated each birthday as we shifted our energy to keeping children with HIV not just alive, but well. Back then, blowing out candles was a revolutionary act for families often suffering the dual loss of parent and child after what is normally a joyous occasion—giving birth. Today, we are celebrating more than ever. New York City, the place where the AIDS epidemic [began](http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/america-hiv-outbreak-origins-nyc-gaetan-dugas/), has reached an awe-inspiring milestone–[no babies](http://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/about/press/pr2016/pr095-16.page) have been born with HIV within the past year. This accomplishment is a hard-fought battle that activists, families and physicians have been waging for decades and throughout my entire clinical career. Twenty-nine years ago as a young medical student in Newark, N.J., there was little medicine could do to stem the tide of the AIDS epidemic’s devastation of some of the most stigmatized groups in society—the LGBTQ community, intravenous drug users and low-income people of color. The cost of not knowing what to do was catastrophic. Thousands of infants in children’s hospitals across the nation were born with little to no options for treatment and survival. We did what we could as clinicians, but most important, we listened. We learned about how the racialized stigma around poverty, addiction, gender identity and sexual orientation conspired to fuel HIV diagnoses, a lack of access to quality care and death. After over 30 years and an estimated [35 million lives lost](https://www.aids.gov/federal-resources/around-the-world/global-aids-overview/), the clinical community is arriving at a key approach that will ultimately reduce health inequities within the AIDS epidemic. We are finally advancing patient-centered medical care, which normalizes the radical notion that patients, irrespective of race, sexual orientation or neighborhood, are people whose humanity should be affirmed in support of reaching their full life potential. At its core, affirming humanity is the cornerstone of New York City’s Plan to End the Epidemic—that means focusing on expanding access to testing and Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) and maximizing viral suppression in communities that need it the most. We’re also supporting New Yorkers’ sexual and reproductive choices and creating the necessary social supports for all children to thrive. With coordinated strategies to keep parents HIV-free or virally suppressed, we can end mother-to-child HIV transmission not only in New York City but across the nation. While there’s more work to be done, achieving zero mother-to-baby HIV transmissions helps honor the sacrifices of the thousands of family members that lost 1,255 of our littlest New Yorkers to an entirely preventable disease, according to an NYC Health Department analysis. It reinvigorates our city’s commitment to fighting for the health of all children, who are the manifestation of their families’ dreams. It renews our determination to bridge public health and health care to end all parts of the epidemic. By working together, we look forward to celebrating the next milestone that manifests our longstanding dream of creating an AIDS-free generation in our lifetime. ## Transcript [ MUSIC ] It is a loving picture, accepting, is not a tragic picture at all even if this Showing a tragic situation. That picture put you in front of your conscience. What am I doing for that problem? So that's why people get angry. [ MUSIC ] On one hand you had this very intimate Situation and you had a logo that was about selling. Benetton was a clothing company. It just seems so evident what he was doing. He was creating sensational, iconographic images that people would remember along with the brand Benetton. Well We're not looking at the commercial side of it. To us it was an opportunity to make people think about AIDS. The Kirby family said Benetton's not using us. We're using Benetton. We want people to know that David was with us once, and this is what the disease did, and it's devastating. [ MUSIC ] I was living in Athens, Ohio I was a grad student. I was interested in Aids as a project. So I ended up going to Pater Noster House. It was a Hospice home for people living with Aids. The woman who started this home felt it was better to rather than to hide to Be open about what she was doing and why. So she said you can take photos here. He's name was David Kirby, he went to the hospital in Stafford, Ohio's first small town. And they found out that he had AIDS. And they burn the ambulance and there was just a lot of fear. [ MUSIC ] I met him and I said hey I'm gonna be doing some project, can I take your picture? He said something that no one has ever said to me before. He said yes you can but not For personal gain. [ MUSIC ] He had been an activist and he wanted this to be known somehow. [ MUSIC ] The Center for Disease Control says nationwide AIDS has struck 1, 641 mostly homosexuals. 644 people have died from the mystery disease. It was shocking. I mean, but it was building so slowly you kind of didn't realize what you were dealing with. And suddenly it was like you were going to a funeral every weekend. Bush, open your eyes and see. It's a state of emergency. We had A government that wouldn't say the word AIDS, communities of people started to speak for themselves. [ NOISE ] One of the things that Act Up did initially is said we've not victims, actually, we're people with AIDS, there are social reasons and political reasons why the disease exists. We die they do nothing. We die they do nothing. We die they do nothing. The caregiver to David is dying. And Kate Kirby, she came and she said to me We would all like you to photograph us saying our final goodbyes to David. [ MUSIC ] He invited me into the room. [ MUSIC ] They were holding him, giving him a sip of water, which I don't think he was taking, and just being with him at that moment. [ MUSIC ] I had no imagined mind and I just stood there and I didn't move and I just shoot a couple frames. [ MUSIC ] He died. And it was over. I think two days later or something, I processed the film. I could tell that it was something there. When it was published, I think I think what I, what I wanted to communicate really was just that here is what happened to this, to this one person and, and their family. Mom and Pop, you know, them. And it happened to them. This is. Is how it feels. [ MUSIC ] I did work for Benetton, from 1982 until 2000. When I started to do Benetton, I said let's do an experiment. Let's try to see if we can use communication that normally is used for selling product. Let's use communication to say something more. And let's take away the brand, and let's take away the product. My task was to create a campaign out of meaning and issues. The normally advertising they don't want to deal with. I was searching picture for my campaign, and I found the [ UNKNOWN ] photo published in Life. When I saw the picture, said, that's the picture. [ UNKNOWN ] look like Jesus Christ, but is dying of AIDS. It's [ MUSIC ] It's really pictorial, very pictorial, in the sense of painting. It is a snapshot but at the same time it's an incredible composition. The only thing it was in black and white, my problem was who's not. I want them real to be a realistic or their color be realistic when painting wall is not. When they contacted me. I didn't know what to do about that. Benetton said that they kinda of trying to bring people's attention to this issue The Kirby's said, let's do it . >> The word provocation got a very strange meaning. It sounds like if it is negative to be provocative. The Pieta Michelangelo is that provocative, a mother with an arm on her dead son? Every great piece of art has to provoke you some. So you have to provoke interest. That's what you have to do. Suddenly a picture that nobody complained about as an advertisement suddenly became This shocking picture. Boycott Benneton, Benneton boycott, boycott- Benneton uses advertising the way bullfighters use capes, to draw attention and provoke a reaction. All communication is manipulative. Yes, we are playing on people's emotions, just the way Hallmark cards and AT & T- Okay. Play on people's emotions. Let me ask- But at least we're doing [ CROSSTALK ] I didn't see a message of empowerment. I didn't see any kind of message coming from that advertising that would give people a way to become active, to take action in their own world. I don't think that AIDS activists were more activist than me. That's the point. They were not more activist than me. I have a big company investing money to make AIDS aware in the world. What did they do? [ MUSIC ] tell your client to do that, my dear friend from advertising. Tell your client to invest on problem that we should be solving. [ APPLAUSE ] I basically think that instead of blaming Benetron, gays, hemophiliacs or whatever, we should blame the United Stated government for not doing Don't you think, that a large wealth, of 15 years. [ APPLAUSE ] At the time, I don't feel like it created dialogue. I think it was a roadblock. I think it shut things down. Because people couldnt get over the idea that there was this kind of, you know, autobiography being used as commodity. Well, however Benetton intends the ads. The company announced today, that profits were up nearly 24 % last year. [ MUSIC ] Controversy mean that we discuss about that, I mean, that interest you, that there are different point of view and there is something [ UNKNOWN ] and it's got an energy. So from an economic point of view, I think it says Yes. Yeah, it did sell. It benefit for sure. The fact is, if a billion people see this image around the world, can you imagine the power, that that has to create a collective consciousness in the world, that hadn't previously existed. Just consider an image viewed by a billion people. That Image viewed by a billion people. I hear that it did change people's impressions of AIDS and I hope it did. At this point I realize it's become an image that has stirred up a lot of emotions and has become very signficant. My feelings about that photograph have significantly changed over time. Now, when I look at that photograph, I can see the humanist empathy of the maker. It was about trying to capture a human moment. [ FOREIGN ] I don't know if you understand that. To look and To see. There are thing that happened that we don't want to see. David Kirby was a great help, to make understanding what AIDS was about. What do you think David would say? About all of this, with people, press conferences and. What do you think he'd say? He said [ UNKNOWN ] the words he would have used is go forth. That's his [ UNKNOWN ]. He's up there going, " Wow ." Go date him. 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