I've always wondered if this "unknown disease" wasn't really known much earlier.
In 1968 a nurse friend of mine told me about a young male patient she had who was dying of a rare form of pneumonia. She (the nurse) told me that homosexuals seemed to get diseases that "normal" people hardly ever get.
Wasn't AIDS known before 1981 and wasn't it known as GRID (gay-related immune deficiency) before it was called "AIDS?"
Interesting. What we know about HIV/AIDS is this: The disease was first recognized in June of 1981 (that was when the CDC Weekly Morbidity and Mortality Report described a rare form of pneumonia that had appeared in several gay men in Los Angeles). Then it was suggested that the disease be called Gay Related Immune Deficiency, but soon cases appeared in other populations such as needle drug users, so the modern term AIDS was adopted.
Later that decade, when the virus was identified, it was possible to see exactly when it appeared. As it happened, a study had been done in the late 1970s and early 1980s to track the spread of hepatitis in the gay community, so a large number of gay men volunteered to give blood samples at regular intervals. Researchers still had these blood samples. It turns out the virus appeared about 1977 and gradually spread through the community so that by 1981, a majority of the samples showed the virus. By the time "GRID" was discovered, it was already too late for tens of thousands of homosexuals. I gather there were isolated cases before the late 1970s; a few men had died of really strange diseases, and whenever something like that happens, tissues samples are saved. Thus a case from 1959 was retrospectively identified as AIDS (but I think that case was controversial, and I don't know if that was ever proved).