In 1985 I was one of the first people ever tested for HIV. Since then millions of people have visited clinics and testing centers around the world to find out their status. Before that you couldn’t get tested for HIV – there were no testing centers. The HIV antibody test had just been developed. But I didn’t need to get a test. Scientists already had dozens of vials of my blood stored away since April 1984. I am 40623 - the 623rd participant enrolled at the fourth MACS study site – UCLA. “MACS” stands for Multi-Centered Aids Cohort Study, the largest and longest running study in the world about how HIV is transmitted from one person to another and how it progresses in the body and the brain. Much of what we know today about HIV disease we learned from the MACS study. It began in 1984 when the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) enrolled over 5,500 volunteer participants at four university sites – Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, University of Pittsburg in Pennsylvania, North W...