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AIDS Healing Alliance records
1991-06  
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Collection Details
 
Table of contents What's This?
  • Descriptive Summary
  • Access
  • Publication Rights
  • Preferred Citation
  • Acquisition Information
  • Biography/Administrative History
  • Scope and Content of Collection
  • Indexing Terms
  • Additional collection guides

  • Descriptive Summary

    Title: AIDS Healing Alliance records
    Dates: 1983-1989
    Collection Number: 1991-06
    Creator/Collector: AIDS Healing Alliance
    Extent: 1 linear foot (2 manuscript boxes)
    Repository: GLBT Historical Society
    San Francisco, California 94103
    Abstract: Records of a self-help alternative treatment organization that dissolved in 1989. This group promoted awareness of alternative therapies in treating HIV infection and conducted workshops conducted by long-term survivors.
    Language of Material: English

    Access

    Collection is open for research.

    Publication Rights

    Copyright to unpublished manuscript materials created by the donor has been transferred to the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society.

    Preferred Citation

    [Identification of item]. AIDS Healing Alliance records. Collection Number: 1991-06. GLBT Historical Society

    Acquisition Information

    Donated to the Historical Society by Steve Kuttner, January 25, 1991.

    Biography/Administrative History

    The AIDS Healing Alliance (AHA) was a pioneering self-help organization founded in 1986. The group's stated purpose was to "dispel the myth that AIDS or ARC inevitably result in death." The organization had several key goals: establish a network of long-term survivors, provide a forum where their knowledge of the successful use of alternative therapies could be shared, catalog all available alternative therapies, and promote the concept that health management is a personal responsibility. As one member, Steve Kuttner, put it, "We operated from the philosophy that disease is more than a physical crisis; it presents some kind of personal lesson which offers an opportunity for inner healing as well as outer cure." Through workshops, a phone line and the "First AIDS Pack," the organization attempted to collect and disseminate information on treatments, clinics or practitioners who were having some success in retarding or curing the condition of AIDS. They also developed an in-depth, long-term survivor's questionnaire (though this was never actually administered). The group was particularly interested in the scientific literature on the etiology and epidemiology of the disease and on potential treatments and how these treatments were tested and developed. Notably, the group refused to subscribe to the view that HIV was the proven cause of AIDS, that AIDS had a single cause or that AIDS was the same disease in every person. The organization dissolved in 1989.

    Scope and Content of Collection

    The Records of the AIDS Healing Alliance consist of the internal records, correspondence, information packets, surveys, grant proposals, correspondence, and information regarding "alternative therapies" for AIDS treatment produced by the organization. The records document AHA's efforts to find alternative approaches to treating and curing AIDS. This collection documents one response to the AIDS epidemic - one that was skeptical of mainstream medicine -- as well as the uncertainty and unease which particularly characterized the first decade of the epidemic.

    Indexing Terms

    AIDS (disease)

    Additional collection guides