It's World AIDS Day. Did You Know a Reedie Named the Disease?

Photo by Bettye Lane, via Reed Magazine

Over at Reed Magazine, there's a fascinating profile of Bruce Voeller, a biochemist and member of Reed College's class of 1956 who established the name for what became known as AIDS or Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome.

Voeller, who grew up in Roseburg, successfully argued that the pre-1980s name for AIDS—GRIDD or Gay-Related Immune Deficiency Disease—was inaccurate and stigmatizing, Reed Magazine reports.

A gay-rights pioneer, Voeller came out when he was 29, after earning a PhD from what was then called Rockefeller Institute. The college's alumni magazine includes excerpts from a 1973 article about Voeller in the now defunct National Observer newspaper.

"Today not many Roseburg folks would recognize their Bruce," the newspaper wrote. "His six-foot frame is still lean, but his flaxen hair is almost shoulder-length, his Nordic chin is bewhiskered, and a small gold ring ornaments each ear. He looks like a hip descendant of Eric the Red."

It went on: "A gay Viking with a PhD is by no means the typical new homosexual. But Voeller does exemplify a little-noticed trend; the gradual emergence of middle-class citizens risking reputation, livelihood, family relationships, and even some rights of citizenship by openly declaring their homosexuality."

Voeller died in 1994 of AIDS-related illness.