Freddie Mercury's HIV Diagnosis – Some Insight – 1985 to 1987

Does anybody notes my posts, I hope?

Scofflaw wrote:

I remember him playing on Saturday Night Live in 1982 and it seemed he had the flu, his voice sounded shot, and he was obviously sick. To me, that makes more sense as a time period for infection, especially since he was in NYC at the time, where HIV had already begun to spread like wildfire. The flu during that time could possibly have been the flu like symptoms someone gets immediately following infection.

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Very interesting observation.  It has been traditionally told that he had a fight with his boyfriend the entire night before, but who knows what's true..

Nice to see the scientific side brought into the mix.

Thanks. like I said, those are all my opinions. I worked with AIDS patients in the early 90's and saw quite a lot with how the disease works, progresses, responds to various medicines. The Freddie time line has never made much scientific sense to me.

I'd say infection around 1980-1982,  he probably found out he was positive around 1985 or 1986, developed AIDS in 1987, and some experimental therapies were to credit for keeping him alive until 1991. I believe he was probably given some of the very early experimental cocktail drugs, maybe p.i.s, because we know he was very sick in 1989 and 1990, but managed to recover. I'd also guess around the Miracle time, he was experimenting with AZT mixed with emerging cocktail therapies, because  the edema in his face is really pronounced (look at  the video for "I want it all"). 

 It's most likely that being Freddie Mercury, he was able to get his hands on more advanced medicine than the general public , but because of how far advanced his disease was, he had already sustained substantial and severe organ damage by that point (wasting syndrome, multiple opportunistic respiratory infections, maybe CMV or other severe eye complications, etc....) and he was beyond repair.

I guess one (small) good thing about his passing is that he inspired me to work with AIDS patients as a young adult. :)

Edema... is that in reference to how 'puffy' his face looked at times, specifically in the I Want It All video?

I've always wondered about that.  I had assumed his face puffed up because of some type of steroid he may have been on at the time to try and keep his body strong.  My ex-girlfriend (who has since passed) had a similar reaction when on steroids (she had cystic fibrosis), and the look was very similar.

I have to give Bob credit for displaying this picture on his site--this may help solve mysteries:

http://www.queenlive.ca/queen/live%20pics/86-08-09_Knebworth_14.jpg

On Freddie's left cheek, there's a small collection of little red bumps (it's right in-between the light reflecting on his face). These are not Kaposi's Sarcoma, but what appear to be shingles/herpes blisters. I read that it's common to get this type of rash during the HIV stage after the latent stage (when the symptoms start to appear--but not yet at the severe stage).

The way you people are trying to find out as much as you can about Fred when he was dying makes me sick.  Haven't you ever heard the term Rest In Peace?

Eh, I think it's more human nature than anything else. For me, and I'm sure for a lot of  other Queen fans, Freddie seemed almost super human, a larger than life figure.  I'm sure the last few years of his life included more pain and suffering than most of us have experienced and it's natural to be curious about the devastating lows of a life so full of extremes.  It's why people read novels and tabloids and watch movies and plays and why they care in the first place.

Hehe, that's why I love these threads.  Every flu he had in the 80's was "the big one where he copped HIV", and every photo where his face isn't silky smooth is evidence of the infection.  What a laugh, seriously.

Regardless, I'll play along.  My gut says he knew by the Magic Tour, whether he had a doctor telling him or not.  With all of those people in the gay scene dropping like flies, he'd have to have had an inkling of what the possibilities were.

Freddie found out he was HIV positive in April 1987. Doctors had taken a skin sample from his shoulder and the results came back positive. I saw a documentary about the infamous New York nightclub Studio 54 and one of the busboys there claimed to have had sex with both Rock Hudson AND Freddie Mercury there. He claimed he went "around the world" which was a term for doing everything with both of them. Would be interesting to see a documentary about Freddie's battle with AIDS as it's something nobody seems to want to tackle, even the movie about him with Sacha Baron Cohen ends at Live Aid and doesn't touch on his HIV years. It's not disrespectful to want to know more about your idol so many years after his death.

Yes, I saw the Magic Tour too and I noticed something odd about Freddie. It's his eyes, they look very watery and white. His voice was also the worst I'd heard it on that tour, he was straining to hit notes he hit with ease on the Milton Keynes show a few years before.

SimonFerocious wrote: Yes, I saw the Magic Tour too and I noticed something odd about Freddie. It's his eyes, they look very watery and white. His voice was also the worst I'd heard it on that tour, he was straining to hit notes he hit with ease on the Milton Keynes show a few years before.

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Having a strained voice has nothing to do with HIV/AIDS. The Works Tour is far worse for Freddie's vocals. Have a listen to Vienna 1984--that's worse than anything I've heard on the Magic Tour.

No one ever really knows the truth it or lies  When he was infected with HIV, under any circumstances. Who infected him, nobody knows. Tales about Russian soldier, who came to America to  infect everybody  does not hold water.
Are you wondering when and who infected him with HIV?
Freddie could infect in the hospital, which he visited,specifically it was done or not is unknown.And is it really so important to who and when Freddie became infected with HIV? Time frame can be between 1985 and 1986.

Promoters and management in the person of Jim's Beach killed Freddie. Freddie was not gay. He was bisexual

[QUOTE]SimonFerocious wrote:
He claimed he went "around the world" which was a term for doing everything...[/QUOTE]

Can we please rename this thread:
AROUND THE WORLD WITH FREDDIE MERCURY

No one ever really knows the truth it or lies  When he was infected with HIV, under any circumstances. Who infected him, nobody knows. Tales about Russian soldier, who came to America to  infect everybody  does not hold water.
Are you wondering when and who infected him with HIV?
Freddie could infect in the hospital, which he visited,specifically it was done or not is unknown.And is it really so important to who and when Freddie became infected with HIV? Time frame can be between 1985 and 1986.Promoters and management in the person of Jim's Beach killed Freddie. Freddie was not gay. He was bisexual

I think Freddie strongly suspected he had Aids throughout 1986 and maybe even as early as Autumn 1985. There were some articles in the press with info from Paul Prenter about phone calls from Freddie worrying about having the disease because a lot of his former lovers had recently died or were sick. It was getting too close to home. I know Paul Prenter isn't well liked for betraying Freddie and it was a tabloid story but I'm inclined to believe they did have this conversation.

 I also remember reading about the lead singer of Erasure (I think it was him anyway, may have been Holly Johnson from Frankie GTH). He said that when he received a positive result for Aids he wasn't really surprised because he had been having a lot of unexplained minor illnesses in the weeks and months prior to his result. I reckon Freddie may have had a lot of colds or rashes or whatever that were annoying but went away quickly. This would have been enough to make him worry about having the disease. Ultimately it seems to be the KS that led to the eventual diagnosis - I also read that it was Freddie's 13th test when the result came back so he had taken quite a few so it was obviously on his mind. If you look at the interview he gave on German TV promoting The Great Pretender you can clearly see the KS on his cheek. He received his positive result a few weeks later just after Easter Sunday.

No idea when he contracted it but if we believe Freddie genuinely stayed faithful to Jim from mid 1985 onwards as Jim says in his book (RIP Jim btw) then it was before Live Aid. I always felt he picked the disease up in New York (as opposed to Munich) where it seemed to take hold of the population quite quickly and Freddie spent a lot of time there in the early eighties. Paul Gambacini asked Freddie in 1983 in the Heaven club what he thought about this new disease and if he was going to take precautions but Freddie said no he was going to "do everything to everybody". So it wasn't a concern for him in 1983. The consistent issues with his voice throughout The Works tour and then in South Africa do point to him being under the weather to an extent. Whether this was partying, nodules or something worse it's hard to say. But I think it fits timing wise to contract the disease in 84 and become properly symptomatic with it in 1987 (KS at least) although I stress I am only guessing.

It's a macbre subject I know but we all love Freddie and it's only natural to speculate about what happened to someone who is taken from us so please don't judge.