Though most of the dead were gay and bisexual men, by 1991 the face of the epidemic had become someone else entirely. Kimberly Bergalis was young, attractive, and, crucially, straight. Today few remember her name. But in the early ’90s, she was everywhere, a fixture in magazines and on the TV news, an unlikely victim devastated by a cruel disease.
The press and the public found her fascinating not just because of who she was and how she looked. They were also captivated, and terrified, by how she’d supposedly gotten HIV. Her account of it was scandalous and strange—almost unbelievable.
In December 1987, when Bergalis was 19 years old, she went to a dentist in Jensen Beach, Florida, to get her bottom molars pulled. “She said that she remembered he wore gloves and a mask and she was awake the whole time,” a CDC investigator recently recalled to me. The whole thing seemed uneventful—but Bergalis told the investigator that she’d also heard a rumor that the dentist might have AIDS. Everything would snowball from there, grabbing America’s attention and creating a monumental controversy.
It is hard to overstate the AIDS paranoia of the early 1990s, the intense fear and powerful stigma of the disease. Drug treatments were experimental, and little was known about how long they might keep people alive. And the people driving the spread were seen by many Americans as degenerates who couldn’t control themselves.
All these decades later, despite medical and social progress, the epidemic is far from over, even in the United States, and stigma against HIV-positive people persists. The new Trump administration’s cuts and policies seem certain to make things worse, if not send us back in time.
Back in 1991, AIDS deaths were still soaring, with the peak of the American epidemic still four years away. And the story of Kimberly Bergalis was an irresistible flash point.
That’s largely because of who she believed had infected her. The man whom she accused would be turned into a national villain, without America ever knowing who he really was. Even now, Bergalis’ own story remains incredibly thorny. It’s a warning to a country that still hasn’t fully reckoned with the national disgrace of the AIDS epidemic. It’s also a parable about how we decide who’s guilty and who’s innocent—and about whose lives we ought to protect.