The Bay Area Reporter - September 10, 1999
Terry Beswick

A charter member of the local affiliate of GLMA, the Bay Area Physicians for Human Rights (BAPHR), Abrams is widely known as both an AIDS researcher and a primary care physician.

Founded in 1981, the San Francisco-based GLMA is an association of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) physicians, medical students, and their supporters in all 50 states and 12 countries.

"GLMA works to combat homophobia within the medical profession and in society at large; and to promote quality health care for LGBT and HIV-positive people," said Abrams.

Among Abrams's goals over the next year are to open an office in Washington, D.C. to extend greater influence on policy-makers, to organize a Lesbian Health Summit in conjunction with the April 2000 March on Washington, and to expand the organization's membership and physician referral program.

The "party drug" scene is of special concern to Abrams, who told the Bay Area Reporter that he "lost a dear, dear friend to the ravages of speed."

Abrams said he is particularly concerned about the long-term effects of popular drugs such as crystal methamphetamine (speed), ecstasy, ketamine, and gamma hydroxy butyrate acid (GHB) on the human body, and that not enough is known about ways to treat addiction to these drugs. "Do we have any idea what this generation of our community is doing to their serotonin stores?" he rhetorically asked the GLMA members in San Diego.

Abrams, who is currently conducting the only federally funded research on medical marijuana, told the B.A.R. that he has attempted to interest the National Institutes of Health in funding research on party drugs, but was told that they felt the problem was a "coastal phenomenon." Since then, GLMA has been in contact with the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy in an effort to secure funding for public service announcements warning of the dangers of speed and other drugs. Abrams reported that these discussions have been encouraging; he hopes to secure funding for GLMA-produced videos that specifically target the gay community.

"It's reminiscent of the early days of the HIV epidemic. We're counting the bodies before anyone stops to recognize there's a problem," Abrams commented. "I don't like seeing our community decimated. I've already been there once."

Abrams, who is celebrating five years with his partner Clint Werner, is assistant director of AIDS programs at San Francisco General Hospital; professor of clinical medicine at the University of California, San Francisco; and principal investigator and chairman of the Community Consortium, a community-based AIDS research organization.
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