Forty years ago, Lawrence Mass, a young, gay doctor living in New York City, made history. It is the kind of history no one wants to make. Mass began writing news stories about a disease that many did not want to acknowledge.

At the time, gay men were falling ill from a mystery illness that left them with severely compromised immune systems. Mass's first article about it published May 18, 1981, for the New York Native, a gay newspaper. He'd gotten a tip from a friend who worked in a city ER and saw these cases up close. The article Mass wrote was a landmark: it was the first story about AIDS in a U.S. publication.

That article carried this headline: Disease Rumors Largely Unfounded. But what was unfounded then would soon become one of the biggest pandemics the modern world had ever seen. Mass said he was trying to stop what was then just a rumor and prevent a panic.

The article was a milestone in public awareness, and it marked the beginning of Mass' journey as an AIDS writer and advocate. Through the 1980s and '90s, Mass' stories were prolific as he explored all aspects of the emerging science and denial. But because science lacked any definitive answers for so long, some of those early theories turned out to be wrong, and with the lack of concrete information came misinformation and denial. Read more via NPR