Open the ACT UP New York PDF first. It carries the full text of the Denver Principles AIDS statement, written by people living with AIDS at a national health conference in Denver. Open the NAPWA PDF second, because it publishes the statement together with its origin. Three more publishers add the opening declaration, the background and the history. The authors rejected the labels "victims" and "patients" and chose their own term, "People With AIDS." Read the complete text end to end, then choose the next source by what you still want to know.
The Fifth Annual National AIDS Forum
The statement belongs to Denver. People living with AIDS drafted it during a national health conference held in the city, then read it from the stage themselves. NAPWA publishes the text together with its origin, which makes that PDF the best second stop for the story of where the document came from.
The conference is the setting, and the authors are the subject. They were living with AIDS, and the document speaks for people in that position rather than describing them from the outside. That difference is the first thing to notice when reading the full text. A statement about a group is one kind of document. A statement by the group, delivered in person, is another.
The HIV Caucus places gay men with AIDS from around the U.S. at the Denver conference where the statement was drafted. That detail matters for the geography of the document: the authors came to Denver from elsewhere, and what they wrote here travelled back out with them. NAPWA, in turn, publishes the statement as one from the People with AIDS advisory committee.
The Denver Principles site covers the history of the statement and what followed from it. Used together, the NAPWA PDF and that site tie the document to a specific city and a specific gathering, and then follow it forward from the room where it was read. The PDF answers where the words came from. The site answers what became of them.
The name follows the place. The statement is called the Denver Principles because it was written here, and that name is how the publishers named on this page cite and reprint it. A search for the people with AIDS statement, the Denver Principles full text or the Denver Principles history lands on the same document under the same name.
For wider research into queer history in the city, see Denver LGBTQ+ Archives: Where to Research Queer History. It points to archives rather than to this one document, so it is the natural next step once the statement has been read.
An exact date for a citation should come from the PDF itself and be quoted from there. No month or year is stated here.
The Words of the Denver Principles
The opening declaration is short and direct. As printed by the HIV Caucus, the authors condemn attempts to label people with AIDS as "victims," a term "which implies defeat." They add that they are "only occasionally 'patients,'" a term "which implies passivity, helplessness, and dependence upon the care of others." The same passage names the term the authors chose for themselves, "People With AIDS." The ACT UP New York PDF of the statement from the People with AIDS advisory committee carries that same term.
Taken one step at a time, the passage does three things:
- It rejects "victims" because the word implies defeat.
- It limits "patients" to an occasional role.
- It puts the authors' own term, "People With AIDS," in place of both.
The order matters. The statement clears away two labels and only then supplies its own. The argument is already in the opening lines: the words used for people with AIDS shape how they are treated. A label that implies defeat invites pity, and a label that implies helplessness invites others to decide on someone's behalf. The authors answer both by naming themselves.
There is no technical vocabulary and no long preamble. Each rejected word comes with its reason, and each reason is a single plain phrase. That economy makes the declaration easy to read on its own, and it is why the HIV Caucus page works as a quick read.
The HIV Caucus page also includes recommendations for health care professionals, and NAPWA publishes the "victims" and "patients" passage along with its recommendations. The recommendations are not an afterthought attached to the declaration. They travel with it on more than one publisher's page.
To get the argument quickly, start with the HIV Caucus page. Then open the ACT UP New York PDF to see how the same words sit inside the complete statement. Reading in that order shows the declaration first as a quotation and then as part of a whole document, which is the clearest way to see how the opening lines frame what follows.
Two details of the quoted wording repay a second look. The authors do not deny that they are sometimes patients. They say "only occasionally," which places the role in a particular setting rather than making it an identity. And the phrase "dependence upon the care of others" names exactly what the word "patients" is said to imply. The objection is to a label that describes a whole person by one relationship, and the statement replaces it with a term the authors chose themselves.
When quoting the declaration, copy the wording from the page it came from and name that page. The HIV Caucus page prints the "victims" and "patients" passage in the form quoted above. The ACT UP New York PDF is the one to name when the quotation is "People With AIDS" as it appears in the complete statement.
A short quotation is safest when it carries its own reason. "Which implies defeat" is the reason attached to "victims," and "which implies passivity, helplessness, and dependence upon the care of others" is the reason attached to "patients." Lifting the label without the reason loses what the authors were arguing, so the two travel together.
The same care applies to the chosen term. "People With AIDS" is the authors' own phrase, and it appears in the ACT UP New York PDF and in the HIV Caucus passage alike. Quoting it with its capital letters keeps it as the authors wrote it, which is the form to carry into any citation.
Colorado Community Response
The statement came out of a community, not a single author. The ASLD background PDF gives context on the statement and the setting in which it was written. The Denver Principles site adds the history behind the document and how it has been carried forward.
Read side by side, the two sources frame the statement as part of the early organizing by people living with AIDS. The people on that stage put into one text a position that others in the same situation could use. The document was read aloud from the stage, and the plain wording suits that setting.
That is why the statement reads as a piece of organizing as well as a piece of writing. It names a term, "People With AIDS," that others could take up, and it sets out recommendations that follow the opening declaration. The term and the recommendations travel with the text wherever it appears, whether on the ACT UP New York PDF, the NAPWA PDF or the HIV Caucus page.
The ASLD PDF suits anyone who wants the setting before the wording. It is the document to open when the question is what the statement came out of, and it gives surrounding context that the declaration itself does not. The Denver Principles site suits anyone who has finished the text and wants to know what came after. Neither replaces the full statement, and both make it easier to read.
A useful order for the community angle is the ASLD PDF, then the statement itself, then the Denver Principles site. That sequence moves from setting to words to afterlife. It keeps each source doing the job it does best, and it keeps the authors' own text at the center.
Denver is part of that story twice over. It hosted the gathering where the statement was drafted, and it gave the document its name. Every publisher here, from the ACT UP New York PDF to the HIV Caucus page, refers to the statement by that name, so the city travels with the text wherever it is reprinted.
The authors were people who lived with the condition the statement addresses, and the recommendations for health care professionals come from that position. Reading them on the HIV Caucus page or in the NAPWA PDF, the point to hold onto is who is speaking: people with AIDS addressing those who provide care, in their own words and under their own term.
For readers in Denver, the same thread continues in the city's archives. The archives guide is the place to go when the question widens from this one statement to the broader record of queer life in the city.
Where to Read the Full Denver Principles
Five publishers carry the text or its background, and each does it a little differently. The ranking below puts the full statement first because every other source is easier to follow once the whole text has been read. The background PDF comes last because it adds the least to the wording itself, though it adds the most to the setting.
- For the complete statement, open the ACT UP New York PDF. It is the one to cite when the wording of the full document matters.
- For the origin of the document, open the NAPWA PDF. It publishes the statement with its origin and recommendations.
- For the opening declaration and the recommendations, open the HIV Caucus page. It is the quick route when only those parts are needed.
- For the history and what followed, open thedenverprinciples.com. It suits anyone who has finished the text.
- For background on the setting in which the statement was written, open the ASLD PDF. It is last only because it is context rather than text.
The document did not stay in the room where it was read. The publishers above still carry it, which is how it can be opened today. The Denver Principles site treats the document as something still read and republished, not as an item sealed in the past.
Two of these sources overlap on purpose. The NAPWA PDF and the HIV Caucus page both carry recommendations, so anyone who wants only those can choose between the longer document and the shorter page. The ACT UP New York PDF and the HIV Caucus page both carry the term "People With AIDS," so either can be named when the term is the point.
The choice between the first two stops comes down to the question being asked. If the question is what the words say, the ACT UP New York PDF answers it in full. If the question is where the words came from, the NAPWA PDF answers it with the origin printed beside the text. Neither needs the other, but together they cover the wording and its source.
The third stop is the shortcut. The HIV Caucus page gives the opening declaration and the recommendations without the rest, which suits a quick check of the "victims" and "patients" passage before quoting it. Because it prints the passage in full sentences, it is also the easiest place to confirm the exact wording of the reasons the authors gave.
The last two stops widen the frame. The Denver Principles site follows the document forward, and the ASLD PDF steps back to the setting. Opening both after the statement gives the whole arc, from the circumstances of the writing to the text and then to what came of it.
Start with the ACT UP New York PDF, then open the NAPWA PDF for where the document came from.
