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How The Golden Girls tackled HIV in one of their most memorable episodes
The team behind Golden Girls’ HIV episode say it was an episode that needed to be done

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The Golden Girls has many memorable episodes, but few are as memorable as ’72 Hours.’ The season five episode begins with Rose discovering that she may have contracted HIV during a routine medical appointment. After getting tested, Rose learns that she won’t receive the results for three days, causing her to have 72 hours of anxiety. In the end, Rose was given a clean bill of health.
The episode dispelled a lot of myths about HIV and how it’s contracted. At the time there was a lot of misinformation out there, and the subject was considered taboo for a television sitcom. Nevertheless, the team behind Golden Girls knew this was an episode that needed to be done.
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“Richard [Vaczy] and Tracy [Gamble wrote the episode] and I remember [Paul Junger Witt] made them put in a serious – the b-story was about an auction, because I remember Richard and Tracy having a meeting with [producer Paul Junger Witt] about that episode. [Witt was] trying to make sure it was serious on all fronts or had something meaningful going on,” Golden Girls writer Marc Cherry says during a Golden Girls panel at PaleyFest LA 2006.
“It was an episode that needed to be done,” The Golden Girls executive producer Paul Junger Witt says. “We had gained the kind of recognition and power at the network and trust so that they knew we would handle it respectfully. There was no way to deny that this was an important issue that needed to be talked about, and this was really the perfect show to do it on, so they were very supportive.”
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