The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) received a report that five otherwise healthy gay men in Los Angeles had suddenly come down with pneumocystis pneumonia. This infection is one that any healthy person’s immune system should be able to easily fight off. Within days, the CDC was flooded with similar cases from all over the country. Because the first cases of the illness were documented in gay men in the United States, people called it GRID (gay-related immune deficiency), gay cancer, or the gay plague. This stigma assigned to AIDS and the gay community would make the spread of the illness even harder to stop for decades to come.