WORLD AIDS DAY

EARLY AIDS, New York City, circa 1980. (Reflection on WORLD AIDS DAY 2016) By Phillip Elton Collins, Co-founder The Angel News Network One of my closest friends, Nick Rock, died of AIDS and never knew what it was. His last words to me were, “I do not want to die, please find out what in the hell this is.” His doctors called it ‘cat scratch fever’ and said that Nick died of a disease transmitted from his cats. Some of us had the foresight to freeze some of Nick’s brain tissue and when the virus was later identified we confirmed that Nick was one of the first persons in America to have died of some mysterious illness that would soon rock the entire world. Nick’s last name “Rock” became even more prophetic. At the time of this brewing crisis, I was in the film production business partnering with the likes of film directors, Ridley Scott and George Lucas, and introducing the personal computer to the world with Steve Jobs of Apple. So many people began dying that we could not put complete film crews together for productions and both my business colleagues and close friends began departing this world in epic “world torn” proportions. At thirty years of age I had lost a large majority of my friends and business associates. And no one had any answers how or why.