Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1997. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
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The San Francisco Examiner - Wednesday, June 18, 1997
Lisa M. Krieger; Examiner Staff Writer
"Mark has provided the intellectual force behind most of the major policy initiatives of AIDS treatment activists for the past 10 years," said TAG president Barbara Hughes.
Harrington is a native San Franciscan, growing up in the Mount Sutro neighborhood and graduating from Lowell High School in 1977. He graduated from Harvard College in 1983 and lives in New York City.
His parents are Judith Harrington, a painter and James Joyce scholar, and Richard Harrington, a lawyer who litigated cases involving draft resistors, the Aliotos and people with repressed memory syndrome.
His upbringing was influenced by his family's commitment to civil rights and The City's social turbulence in the '70s.
"We believed that one needed to make the country a better place," he said in an interview Tuesday with The Examiner.
He also credits San Franciscans John James, Martin Delaney and many ACT UP members with forging a role for AIDS activism.
Harrington was diagnosed with HIV in 1990 but is on combination therapy and in good health. As policy director of TAG, Harrington was co-author of "AIDS Research at the NIH: A Critical Review," which persuaded Congress to completely reorganize AIDS research efforts. He helped design programs that allow people with HIV to obtain experimental treatments prior to FDA approval, wrote a summary of research on viral load assays and edited a collection of writings about the development of protease inhibitors.
About the prize, he said, "I hope to take some time to see what this all means. . . . I'd like to write about what we've done in the past 10 years and where we need to go in the next 10 years. Right now, it's all so new."
New treatment guidelines
The government will issue guidelines on use of a complicated mix of new AIDS medicines, sounding the death knell for single-drug therapy.
A draft obtained by the Associated Press says the standard should be one protease inhibitor - Roche's Invirase, Merck & Co.'s Crixivan, Abbott Laboratories' Norvir or Agouron Pharmaceuticals' Viracept - with two older AIDS medicines.
Protease inhibitors have revolutionized AIDS care in the past year, but the proper use of the potent medicines has proved a mystery for many doctors and patients.
Many patients rely on the drug AZT alone, which merely causes HIV to resist treatment.
Among the guidelines, which the government expects to publish next week:
* Testing the HIV in patients' blood every few months, and considering changing therapies if HIV is detectable after six months.
* When changing therapy, switching to at least two drugs the patient hasn't used, not the one-drug switch doctors typically try today.
* Avoiding switching between Crixivan and Norvir if therapy fails; cross-resistance is likely.
* Not putting patients on single-drug therapy. Substituting the drug nevirapine in the medical cocktail or taking just two drugs instead of three "should be used only if more-potent treatment is not possible."
* Advising patients that stopping drug treatment for even several weeks could render the drugs useless when therapy restarts.
News briefs
* A last-minute appeal has been filed on behalf of two HIV-infected hemophiliacs who want out of a giant legal settlement. The appeal challenges the settlement, causing a potential delay for 6,000 hemophiliacs who have already waited years in this long-running case.
U.S. District Court Judge John Grady of Chicago, who crafted the settlement, said he wanted the appeal dealt with promptly and decisively so payments could go out as scheduled. The $100,000 checks to each plaintiff are supposed to be mailed in July.
The appeal has angered hemophiliacs who are sick, poor and frustrated by earlier delays from negotiations with federal, state and private insurers. "Being screwed by business and the government is almost a definite in life, but being screwed by your own kind is disgraceful," said one hemophiliac, who asked to not be identified.
* Glide Memorial Church is offering free confidential HIV testing on Wednesdays from noon to 4 p.m. and 5 to 8 p.m. in Room 518 of the church, located at 330 Ellis St. Call (415) 567-2273.
* Larkin Street Youth Center has opened the nation's first "assisted care facility" for youth with AIDS. It will serve as a model for meeting the needs of homeless young people, ages 18 to 23, who are disabled by AIDS.
* The UCSF AIDS Program at S.F. General Hospital is seeking HIV-infected patients who suffer from diarrhea caused by cryptosporidiosis for a treatment study. Cryptosporidiosis is caused by a protozoan parasite and spread by contaminated food or water or contact with infected feces. Call (415) 476-9296, ext. 353.
* The Stop AIDS Project is honoring four Bay Area activists June 22 for their work in HIV prevention: Alvin H. Baum, a psychotherapist and fund-raiser; Matthew Denckla Jr., an AIDS prevention worker with the Stop AIDS Project and Marin AIDS Project; Steve Lew of the Asian & Pacific Islander Wellness Center; and Supervisor Leslie Katz, who spearheaded efforts to secure funding for condom distribution in San Francisco bars and clubs. Call (415) 621-7177.
The toll
Curtis Jewell, 29, an African American who created with AIDS Mastery Workshop in Memphis and who worked for the Aloysious House, a home there for people with AIDS . . . Timothy Martin Zimmerman, 41, former president of Chicago's AIDS Alternative Health Project, an AIDS health educator for the Cook County Public Health Department, a musician and a music teacher, in Oak Park, Ill.
Date
reported Cases Deaths
S.F. 6/1 21,698 15,089
Calif. 6/1 100,912 64,832
U.S. 6/1 548,102 343,000
WHO(rprtd) 6/1 8,400,000 6,400,000
Figures are cumulative since June 1981. Government officials now compile and release statistics quarterly, not monthly.
To contribute to AIDSweek, call (415) 777-7867.
AIDSweek columns are available on the Internet at www.examiner.com / aidsweek / aidsweek.html
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