And the Band Played On 634 people were reported having AIDS, and of those, 260 had died. The "New York Times" wrote three stories in 1981 and three more stories in 1982 about AIDS, none on the front page. The Tylenol Crisis was a criminal act of product-tampering; Legionnaire's Disease was a public health emergency. Twenty-nine members of the American Legion died in 1976 at a convention in Philadelphia. The National Institute of Health spent $34,841 per death of Legionnaire's Disease. In contrast, the NIH spent $3,225 in 1981 and about $8,991 in 1982 for each person who died of AIDS. Shilts accused Ronald Reagan
1976 Philadelphia Legionnaires' disease outbreak They ranged in age from 39 to 82, and, like Ray Brennan, Frank Aveni, and the three other Legionnaires, all had complained of tiredness, chest pains, lung congestion, and fever. Three of the Legionnaires had been patients of Ernest Campbell, a physician in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, who noticed that all three men had been at the Legionnaires convention in Philadelphia. He contacted the Pennsylvania Department of Health. Officials at the American Legion also began getting notices of the sudden deaths of several members, all at the same time. Within a week, more than 130 people, mostly men, had been hospitalized, and