Helen Miramontes, who later became one of the world's leading nurse advocates, specialists and educators in HIV/AIDS was then a clinician. She said that: "There was a lot of fear among health care providers about contagion, but there was also significant prejudice and discriminatory behavior because the new disease was identified in a population that was stigmatized by the larger society. Identification of the disease in people of color, especially African Americans and injection drug users, only exacerbated the biases, prejudices, and discriminatory behavior. Many nurses demonstrated the same attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors seen in the larger society. I was a critical care nurse working in an intensive care unit (ICU) in a large teaching facility. In the early years of the epidemic, it was not unusual to have two to three patients with Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia on ventilators in the ICU at any one time. Because some nurses avoided taking care of these patients, several of us volunteered to care for them on a regular basis. There were frequent breaches in confidentiality, not only among nurses but also among other health care workers" [7] . Gary Carr, who was a Nurse Practitioner at the AIDS Clinic at San Francisco General Hospital, described the perverse ambivalence of a wider community that lauds and praises nurses for their 'heroic efforts' in the face of such public health crises. Gary says: "I have no memories of being afraid or being brave. I just wasn't afraid. I just said to myself, this is what I want to do. This is important. The community needs this, and it's what I want to do. I remember there were people who stopped speaking to me. My mother for years didn't tell anybody what I did. My relatives for years thought I still worked in the trauma unit" [6] .