The Onset of Pediatric Human Immunodeficiency Infection- Connecting the Dots: Reminiscences of a Newark Pediatrían

The screaming started immediately: “It cannot be true! Children cannot get this filthy disease! How dare you claim such a thing?” My response was simple, straightforward and sincere: Why would I make this up? Indeed, there was no upside to determining that infants and children, little kids, were AIDS’ newest casualties, an even more chilling realization since we did not yet know all the ways it could be transmitted. After establishing the parent-child link through several of my original encounters with women with AIDS having very ill and dying infants and children, it took a bit more detective work and time to sift through other cases I suspected would tell the same story. Nevertheless, there it was, in black-and-white clarity: charts from seven additional children I had followed since 1979 also had symptoms and blood work results definitively linked to a parent’s AIDS diagnosis and unfortunately shared a similar fate if not more severe case. Until than AIDS was thought to be acquired by sharing needles or having sex with someone already with AIDS. Now it was becoming clear to me that its littlest victims, infants and children, were infected simply by sharing space in their mother’s womb, if she had been HIV infected.