- Elton John
Sir Elton Hercules John CBE (born Reginald Kenneth Dwight on 25 March, 1947) is a five-time Grammy and one-time Academy Award-winning English pop/rock singer, composer and pianist. In his four-decade career, John has been one of the dominant forces in rock and popular music, especially in the 1970s. John has sold more than 250 million albums plus hundreds of millions of singles, making him one of the most successful artists of all time.
- Ryan White
Ryan Wayne White was a young man with AIDS from Kokomo, Indiana. In the 1980s, he drew national and worldwide attention due to his infection. White became infected with HIV from a blood product known as Factor VIII, as part of his treatment for hemophilia given to him on a regular basis. He was diagnosed with AIDS (as transmitted by casual contact) on December 17, 1984, by a doctor performing a partial lung removal.
- Zackie Achmat
Zackie Achmat (born Abdurazzack Achmat in 1962) is a South African activist, most widely known as founder and chairman of Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) and for his work on the behalf of people living with HIV and AIDS in South Africa.
- Larry Kramer
Larry Kramer (born June 25 1935 in Bridgeport, Connecticut), is an American playwright, author, public health advocate and gay rights activist. He was nominated for an Academy Award, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and was twice a recipient of an Obie Award. In response to the AIDS crisis he founded Gay Men's Health Crisis, which became the largest organization of its kind in the world.
- Wan Yanhai
Wan Yanhai is the best-known AIDS activist in China. His "frank and aggressive" approach toward AIDS have led to frequent run-ins with authorities and landed him in detention three times in the past 12 years. Wan, 43, is the director of the country's foremost AIDS-awareness group, the Beijing-based Aizhixing Institute of Health Education.
- Michael Callen
Michael Callen (April 11, 1955 - December 27, 1993) was a singer, songwriter, composer, author, and AIDS activist. He was a significant architect of the response to the AIDS crisis in the United States. First diagnosed with "Gay related immune deficiency" (GRID) in 1982, Callen quickly became a leader in the response to the epidemic, coining the phrase "people with AIDS (PWAs)" in contrast to the then current "AIDS victims".
- Gao Yaojie
Dr. Gao Yaojie (born 1927) is a Chinese gynecologist, academic, and AIDS activist in Zhengzhou, Henan province, China. Gao has been honored for her work by the United Nations and Western organizations, and has spent time under house arrest.
- Elizabeth Taylor
Dame Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor DBE (born February 27 1932) is an iconic two-time Academy Award-winning British-American actress. Her eyes are sometimes said to be violet color, and at least one source refers to this suggested anomaly as her "trademark" violet eyes. It is further suggested, though photos do not support the claim, that her eyes are framed by a "double row" of eyelashes.
- Stephen Lewis
Stephen Henry Lewis, C.C. (born November 11, 1937) is a Canadian politician, broadcaster and diplomat. He is currently Social Science Scholar-in-Residence at McMaster University, having recently completed his term as United Nations special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa. Born in Ottawa, Ontario, the son of former federal New Democratic Party leader David Lewis, he attended Harbord Collegiate Institute and the University of Toronto.
- Peter Piot
Dr. Peter Piot is Under Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Director of the UN specialized agency UNAIDS. In 2004, he was awarded the Vlerick Award. "From UNAIDS.org Bio:" <blockquote> Executive Director of UNAIDS since its creation in 1995 and Under Secretary-General of the United Nations, …
- Magic Johnson
Earvin "Magic" Johnson is chairman and chief executive officer of Johnson Development Corporation and Magic Johnson Enterprises. Johnson Development Corporation is dedicated to urban revitalization by providing entertainment complexes, restaurants and retail centers in underserved communities nationwide. The company operates 103 Starbucks nationwide, and has also opened six AMC Magic Johnson Theater complexes across the United States.
- Nkosi Johnson
Nkosi Johnson (February 4, 1989 - June 1, 2001) was a South African child victim of HIV/AIDS, who made a powerful impact on public perceptions of the pandemic and its effects before his death at the age of 12. He was 5th in SABC3's Great South Africans. Nkosi, whose birth name was Xolani Nkosi, was born to Nonthlanthla Daphne Nkosi in a township east of Johannesburg in 1989. He never knew his father.
- Richard Gere
Richard Tiffany Gere (born August 31, 1949) is an American actor. He first became famous during the 1980s, after appearing in several successful Hollywood films, including "An Officer and a Gentleman", and has since retained his status as a leading man. During the 1990s and 2000s, he starred in several well-received films, "Pretty Woman", "Primal Fear", and "Chicago" for which he won a Golden Globe award as Best Actor.
- Elizabeth Glaser
Elizabeth Glaser, born Elizabeth Meyer, (November 11 1947 - December 3, 1994), was a major American AIDS activist and child advocate married to actor and director Paul Michael Glaser. She contracted HIV very early in the modern AIDS epidemic after receiving an HIV-contaminated blood transfusion in 1981 while giving birth. Like other HIV-infected mothers, Glaser unknowingly passed the virus to her infant daughter, Ariel, through breastfeeding.
- Phill Wilson
Phill Wilson (born 1956) founded the Black AIDS Institute in 1999 and is a prominent African-American HIV/AIDS activist. Wilson is himself both gay and HIV-positive. His partner, Chris Brownlie, died of HIV-related illness.
- Pedro Zamora
Pedro Pablo Zamora (February 29, 1972 in Diezmero, San Miguel del Padrón, Havana, Cuba - November 11, 1994 in Mercy Hospital, Miami, Florida USA) was an openly gay, Cuban-American HIV-positive AIDS educator who became famous for his activism, testimony before Congress, and his appearance on MTV's "The Real World: San Francisco". President Bill Clinton credited Zamora with personalizing and humanizing those with the disease.
- Bob Hattoy
Bob Hattoy was an American activist on issues related to gay rights, AIDS and the environment. Hattoy worked in the White House under American President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 1999. He also served as chairman of the research committee of the Presidential Commission on HIV/AIDS, having himself been diagnosed HIV positive in 1990. He won renown as an outspoken critic of presidents Clinton, …
- Jonathan Mann
Dr. Jonathan Mann (1947 - September 2, 1998) was a former head of the World Health Organization's AIDS program. Mann resigned his post at the WHO to protest the lack of response from the UN and international organization with regard to AIDS, and the actions of the then WHO director-general Dr. Hiroshi Nakajima. Mann's work against AIDS, his conflict with Dr.
- Tony Kushner
Mr. Kushner is a leading playwright and a major voice in American Theatre who has won a Pulitzer Prize for drama, two Tony Awards for Best Play and an Emmy. ... Tony Kushner has been hailed as one of the leading playwrights of his generation and is a major voice in American Theatre.
- Shilpa Shetty
Shilpa Shetty is a four-time Filmfare Award-nominated Indian film actress and Supermodel. Since making her debut in the film "Baazigar" (1993), she has appeared in nearly 50 films, her first leading role being in 1994 in "Aag". She resides at the centre of the Hindi-language film industry in Mumbai, India. Her younger sister Shamita Shetty is also a Bollywood film actress.
- Beatrice Were
Beatrice Were (born circa 1966) is a Ugandan AIDS activist. She discovered that she was HIV-positive in 1991, a month after her husband died of AIDS.
- Christine Maggiore
Christine Maggiore is an HIV-positive activist who claims that HIV does not cause AIDS. She is the founder of Alive & Well AIDS Alternatives, an organization which questions "most common assumptions about HIV and AIDS". She is the author of the book "What If Everything You Thought You Knew about AIDS Was Wrong?" Maggiore has long been a controversial figure, particularly following the death of her 3-year-old daughter, Eliza Jane Scovill, on May 16 2005.
- Paul Farmer
Dr. Paul Farmer (born October 26, 1959) is an American professor and physician, currently the Presley Professor of Medical Anthropology at Harvard University and an attending physician at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. His medical specialty is Infectious Diseases. Farmer is one of the founders of Partners In Health (PIH), an international health and social justice organization.
- Cleve Jones
Cleve Jones is best known as the person who conceived of the AIDS quilt. His career as an activist began in San Francisco during the turbulent 1970s when he was befriended by pioneer gay rights leader Harvey Milk. He worked as a student intern in Milk’s office while studying political science at San Francisco State University. In 1978, Milk was assassinated along with San Francisco’s Mayor George Moscone.
- Paul Michael Glaser
Paul Michael Glaser (born March 25, 1943) is an American actor and director. Originally Paul Manfred Glaser, he was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the youngest of three children. His parents were Dorothy and Samuel Glaser. Glaser attended Tulane University, where he was roommates with film director Bruce Paltrow, and earned a Master's degree in English and theater in 1966. He was a member of the Sigma Alpha Mu fraternity.
- Gugu Dlamini
Gugu Dlamini (1962-1998) was a South African woman from KwaMancinza, a town in eastern KwaZulu-Natal province, who was stoned and stabbed to death after she had admitted on a Zulu language radio on World AIDS Day that she was HIV positive. Before her death, Dlamini had been a volunteer field worker for the National Association of People Living With H.I.V./AIDS.
- Vito Russo
Vito Russo (1946 New York City - 7 November 1990 Los Angeles) was a gay activist, film historian and author who is best remembered as the author of the book "The Celluloid Closet" (1981, revised edition 1987). Russo developed his material following screenings of camp films as fundraisers for the early gay rights organization Gay Activists Alliance. He traveled throughout the country from 1972 to 1982, …
- Mathilde Krim
Mathilde Krim, Ph.D. (born July 9, 1926, Como, Italy) is most famous for her role as the founding Chairman of amfAR, a famous association for AIDS research.
- Eric Rofes
Eric Rofes was a gay activist, feminist, educator, and author who wrote or edited 12 books. Rofes was a native of Brooklyn, New York and a graduate of Harvard University. He received a master's degree from the University of California, Berkeley in 1995 and a doctorate in social and cultural studies in 1998. He was appointed to the White House Conference on the Family in 1980. He became director of the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center in the 1980s.
- Simon Nkoli
Simon Tseko Nkoli was an anti-apartheid, gay rights and AIDS activist in South Africa. Nkoli was born in Soweto in a seSotho-speaking family. He grew up on a farm in the Free State and his family later moved to Sebokeng. Nkoli became a youth activist against apartheid, with the Congress of South African Students (COSAS) and with the United Democratic Front. In 1983 he joined the mainly white Gay Association of South Africa, then he formed the Saturday Group, …
- Mechai Viravaidya
Mechai Viravaidya (born January 17 1941,) is a politician and activist in Thailand who has popularized condoms in that country. Since the 1970s, Mechai has been affectionately known as "Mr. Condom", and condoms are sometimes referred to as "mechais" in Thailand. Mechai was deputy minister of industry from 1985 to 1986 and minister for tourism, information and AIDS from 1991 to 1992. He served as senator from 1987 until 1991; as of 2004 he is again senator.
- Joseph Sonnabend
Joseph Sonnabend (born 1932 in South Africa) is a distinguished retired physician, scientist and AIDS researcher, notable for pioneering community-based research, the propagation of "safe sex" to prevent infection, and an early and unconventional "multifactorial" model of AIDS. During the 1980s and 1990s he treated many hundreds of HIV positive people.
- Richard Feachem
Sir Richard George Andrew Feachem, KBE, FREng was born in Manchester, UK in 1947. He took up his position as the first Executive Director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and Under Secretary-General of the United Nations, in July 2002. Feachem is Professor of International Health at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) School of Medicine and the UC Berkeley School of Public Health, …
- Rebekka Armstrong
Rebekka Lynn Armstrong (born February 20, 1967 in Bakersfield, California) is a "Playboy" Playmate, whose announcement in 1994 that she was HIV-positive made international headlines
- Bono
Paul David Hewson (born 10 May 1960), known as Bono, is the lead singer and principal lyricist of the Irish rock band U2. Bono was raised in Dublin and attended Mount Temple Comprehensive School where he met his wife, Ali Hewson, and the future members of U2. Since that time he has been referred to as Bono, his stage and nickname, by his family and fellow band members. Almost all U2 songs are written by Bono and he often writes lyrics using political, …
- Agnes Nyamayarwo
Agnes Nyamayarwo was a nurse in Uganda. She became an AIDS activist when the disease devastated her family. Agnes left nursing in order to take care of her eight children after losing her husband in 1992. It was determined that the cause of his death was from an HIV infection which resulted in AIDS. After receiving this news Agnes had herself and her family tested for the virus. She was found to be HIV positive.
- Naomi Watts
Naomi Ellen Watts (born September 28, 1968) is a British actress known for her roles in "Mulholland Dr.", the film remakes of "The Ring" and "King Kong", as well as her Academy Award-nominated role in the film "21 Grams".
- Alison Gertz
Alison Gertz (1966 - August 8, 1992) was a prominent AIDS activist in the late 1980s and early 1990s, who died from the disease in 1992. Gertz was first diagnosed with AIDS in 1988 and later found out that she had contracted HIV from her first sexual encounter in 1982. She became an AIDS activist, appearing on numerous television shows and also speaking with teenagers on the subject of safe sex.
- Noerine Kaleeba
Noerine Kaleeba is a Ugandan physiotherapist and educator. She is the co-founder of the Aids activism group "The AIDS Support Organization" (TASO). She is currently a programme development adviser for the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS). Noerine Kaleeba specialised in orthopaedics, physiotherapy and community rehabilitation at Makerere University in Kampala, and the Robert Jones & Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic & District Hospital in Oswestry, England.
- Tom Kalin
Tom Kalin (born 1962) is an award-winning screenwriter, film director and producer. His debut feature, "Swoon", is considered an integral part of the New Queer Cinema. In addition to his feature work, Kalin has created a number of short films, many of which are collected in the compilations "Behold Goliath or The Boy With the Filthy Laugh", "Third Known Nest" and "Tom Kalin Videoworks: Volume 2".