Images from the controversial Grim Reaper TV campaign of 1987.

For more than a quarter of a century the world has been battling AIDS and, as DNA magazine's Nick Cook discovers, Australia has done better at it than most thanks to the cooperation between several very unlikely groups.

The slogan for 1983’s Mardi Gras was “On Our Way To Freedom”; by 1985 it was “Fighting For Our Lives”. That’s how quickly the world changed for gay men.

By the early ’80s it looked like the worst of the equal rights struggle was behind them, with law reform on the agenda in most states, but that optimism faded in the face of a terrifying new killer that began striking people down by the hundreds.

1985 was also the year the AI DS Council Of New South Wales (ACON) was created. As it celebrates 25 years of achievement in the face of sometimes overwhelming adversity, it’s worth looking back and reflecting on the epidemic that wracked Australia for more than a decade, defined gay culture as we know it and is still lurking in the shadows waiting for a moment of carelessness to pounce.

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Download: United We Stand - A Story of Survival (PDF)

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