[CAMPBELL, Bobbi (1952–1984)]

“I WILL SURVIVE”

[in:] The San Francisco Sentinel, Vol. 9, No. 2 (San Francisco, 10 December 1981)

Large-format newspaper, 580 x 390mm; pp. 16 (Campbell on pp. 1 & 5)

Very good condition: folded as issued; age-toned, but in a very good state of preservation; ownership name (Jack West) to the top edge of the front page; minor wear to the edges, and some folds and chipping to the corners, none of this affecting the Campbell article

“I’m Bobbi Campbell and I have ‘gay cancer’.” So begins this powerful statement – the first of its kind – by the public health nurse and AIDS activist Campbell, who would go on to write a regular column for The Sentinel, found ‘People With AIDS San Francisco’, and co-author the pioneering safe-sex leaflet Play Fair!

When this article appeared, public understanding about the nascent AIDS crisis was perilously low. The disease was at this point unnamed, and had only recently been reported as a single phenomenon. The first newspaper report had appeared on May 18, 1981, in the gay newspaper New York Native, and the first confirmed clinical case was recorded on June 5.

In October, 1981, Campbell became the 16th person in San Francisco to be diagnosed with Kaposi Sarcoma – a rare cancer that was to become closely associated with AIDS. Struck by the lack of awareness of the growing epidemic in San Francisco, Campbell decided to announce his illness in dramatic fashion, becoming the person to do so.

With admirable clarity Campbell explains the situation he and many others faced:

Basically, there has been a recent increase in reported cases of rare diseases in young, otherwise healthy gay men in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York City. One of these diseases is Kaposi’s Sarcoma (KS), which is essentially a tumor of blood vessel walls, another is cancer of the tongue, and another is Pneumocyctis Carinii Pneumonia (PCP), which is an infestation of lung tissue by a one-celled organism called a protozoa. The doctors do not yet know why gay men, and not other people, are getting KS, PCP, and other illnesses. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, the same folks who solved the clinical problems of Legionnaire’s Disease and Toxic Shock Syndrome, are researching this one, too.

This is serious business: in August, 1981, the CDC reported that out of 108 reported cases of KS, PCP, or both, 43, or 40%, had died. Ninety-six of these 108 reported cases, or 89%, were homosexual men.

Over the next few years Campbell wrote and organised at a prodigious rate – becoming one of the most prominent early AIDS activists. He died on 15 August 1984, aged just 32.