In 1983, researchers at the Pasteur Institute, including Luc Montagnier and Françoise Barré-Sinoussi, identified a retrovirus later known as HIV. American researchers led by Robert Gallo also played a major role in connecting the virus to AIDS. The discovery made testing, prevention research, and eventual drug development possible.

The identification of HIV changed AIDS writing from bewildered witness to a literature shaped by diagnosis, blood, testing, and activism. Poets such as Thom Gunn and Mark Doty wrote in a world where scientific naming did not remove grief, but gave the crisis a sharper public and political vocabulary.