Josh Meyer and Jeffrey L. Rabin; Times Staff Writers
Saying that the public's confidence has been shaken by a series of highly publicized problems and irregularities, Los Angeles County Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke called Friday for an immediate and sweeping reorganization of the county's Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center.
There is no excuse for an HIV-tainted blood transfusion to take place at a major hospital. Yet, tragically, that's exactly what happened last year at the county's troubled Martin Luther King Jr. / Drew Medical Center. Aleta Clemons, who went in for a hysterectomy, came out with the AIDS virus. Such a deadly mistake is unforgivable.
Los Angeles County supervisors expressed outrage Tuesday that officials at the county's Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center overlooked problems at the hospital's blood bank that contributed to a woman receiving a transfusion of deadly HIV-tainted blood last year.
Aleta J. Clemons entered the county's Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center for a routine hysterectomy last year, without any way of knowing of the systemic problems in the hospital's blood bank. She walked out with the virus that causes AIDS.
Jeff Getty was in an isolation ward at San Francisco General Hospital on Friday reading newspaper reports about his landmark baboon bone marrow transplant as he began a nerve-racking three- to four-week wait to learn if he will live or die.
WASHINGTON -- Protease inhibitors--the powerful new generation of antiviral AIDS drugs about to enter the marketplace--have been studied in the laboratory for at least seven years. But nobody knew how potent they were in humans until a little more than a year ago.
Somewhere in Michigan is a middle-class, middle-aged woman whose married daughter was pregnant last year. It was a high-risk pregnancy, and the obstetrician asked the mother to be ready to donate blood, since both mother and daughter had the same rare type.
WASHINGTON -- The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday formally approved the first of a new generation of powerful AIDS drugs, a family of compounds that appear at least 10 times more potent than the existing most widely prescribed antiviral therapies.
IRVINE -- Despite having a conservative reputation, Orange County residents overwhelmingly favor liberal approaches toward AIDS education and awareness, according to a poll released Wednesday.
A prominent AIDS researcher said Wednesday that he has isolated three chemicals that may be the long-sought naturally occurring inhibitors of the AIDS virus.
Times Mirror Company, Los Angeles Times; Thursday, December 7, 1995
Marlene Cimons; Times Staff Writer
WASHINGTON -- President Clinton, appearing before 250 leading AIDS scientists, clinicians and activists, vowed Wednesday to fight any attempts to balance the federal budget by reducing AIDS research spending or by dismantling Medicaid, which he called "a lifeline" for people with the disease.
WASHINGTON -- An Oregon mother, her voice filled with emotion, told a congressional panel Wednesday how her son was so anguished over society's intolerance toward gays like himself that he killed himself by leaping off a freeway overpass and into the path of an 18-wheel truck.
WASHINGTON -- For months, some religious conservatives have been urging the Republican Congress to help end what they argue is promotion of a "homosexual agenda" in public schools.
In one of a number of events throughout the region observing World AIDS Day, Los Angeles officials announced Friday that they are donating thousands of papers to USC for the creation of an AIDS archive.
Somewhere in Michigan is a middle-class, middle-age woman whose married daughter was pregnant last year. It was a high-risk pregnancy, and the obstetrician asked the mother to be ready to donate blood, since both mother and daughter had the same rare type.
KAMPALA, Uganda -- Her son is 8 months old. She is 19. Shakira Nakibuka is a prostitute in a city where experts believe 30% of the sexually active population is infected with the human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV.
Times Mirror Company, Los Angeles Times - Saturday, November 18, 1995
John Balzar; Times Staff Writer
KAMPALA, Uganda -- In a not-so-terrible banana-grove slum known as Tank Hill, an adobe shanty weathers and slowly crumbles in the sun. The shanty has three rooms, no electricity or water, empty window frames and a tin roof where spears of light descend through rust holes. Here, at the fringe of Uganda's capital, we are promised we will see a marvel.
AIDS patients hospitalized with a special form of pneumonia are nearly twice as likely to die if they are covered by Medicaid than if they have private health insurance, according to a new study by RAND Corp. in Santa Monica and the Department of Veterans Affairs.
A Belgian antiviral drug can prevent infection of monkeys with the primate version of the AIDS virus, suggesting that the drug could someday protect some individuals exposed to HIV, University of Washington researchers report today in the journal Science.
WASHINGTON -- Ushering in an era of more powerful drugs to fight AIDS, a Food and Drug Administration advisory committee Tuesday recommended approval of the first in a new generation of anti-AIDS compounds.
Six years ago, the most Patricia L. Hoffman knew about AIDS was that members of her church congregation were afraid to talk about their grief for a lost son, daughter or other relative who had died of the disease.
By 2000, the total cost to the global economy of the AIDS pandemic could reach $514 billion and, in the worst-case scenario, rob the world of 1.4% of its gross domestic product--the equivalent of wiping out the economy of Australia.
Between breaths, the stillness in his chest seems to linger with finality. Eugene Lever's only sounds are occasional moans from pain the morphine cannot still. Like an aged, deciduous tree, Lever's body has lost its fullness. His arms and legs have become bare sticks, and details of his life have been swept from memory like fallen leaves.
Paul Banke, who used to grin when opponents landed their best punches, who still roars in approval when he watches a tape of one his savage struggles with Daniel Zaragoza, now worries when the wind blows.
Under California law, even if the state athletic commission suspected a boxer had AIDS, there is nothing it could do to prevent him from fighting in the state, according to Richard DeCuir, the commission's executive director.
A warrant has been issued for an HIV-positive prostitute released by a San Fernando judge over the objections of prosecutors, who warned that she was a health and flight risk.
WASHINGTON -- Programs that provide clean needles to drug addicts reduce the spread of AIDS without increasing illegal drug use, and federal funds should be made available for such efforts, a major new report concluded Tuesday.
LAGUNA HILLS - The family and friends of Channon Lee Phipps gathered here Wednesday to mourn the 20-year-old's death and reflect on his tragic, well-publicized odyssey as a hemophiliac who had to battle AIDS, a school system that did not want him and the guardian who betrayed him.
Some kids draw stick people. Channon Phipps drew a stick house, with attached garage and trees with bare branches blowing in the wind. There was even a television antenna on the roof.
At 11 years old, Leo Beckerman is pretty much your standard-issue seventh-grader. He loves skateboarding, wears braces, has a fish tank in his room and plays computer games like a fiend. But make no mistake, this San Fernando Valley youngster has more smarts and heart than a whole lot of grown-ups.
BEIJING - Toppling one of the last remaining hurdles at the U.N. Fourth World Conference on Women, delegates Monday struck a careful balance between the right of young people to have access to sex education and contraception and the right of their parents to know about it.
Stephen A. Wagner, the former finance officer who was convicted of embezzling $3.7 million from the Newport-Mesa Unified School District nearly three years ago, died over the weekend from an AIDS-related illness in a medical facility at Vacaville prison, authorities said Monday.
WASHINGTON - The photograph is propped up on a window ledge, dwarfed by a broad, government-issued desk and a metal filing cabinet, but it is his reason for going on, nevertheless. It shows two people with AIDS standing together at the podium of the 1992 Democratic National Convention in New York--Elizabeth Glaser in a smart black suit and pearls, and Bob Hattoy, requiring none of the three baseball caps he packed in case the chemotherapy made his hair fall out.
BEIJING - Delegates to the U.N. Fourth World Conference on Women drafted a controversial provision Sunday calling on governments to review laws that penalize women for having illegal abortions.
He could be any 20-year-old taking a college exam, straining with concentration, pausing over difficult questions. His smile is engaging, his manner is one of awkward innocence.
TURIN, Italy -- As manager of a small bank on a busy street, Roberto Limerutti has been through his share of stickups. "Just the hazards of the trade," the three-time robbery victim says with a shrug.
On South Grand Avenue, 10 minutes from the skyscrapers of the financial district, an ugly concrete building with slits for windows squats like a bunker among factories and warehouses.
AIDS programs, particularly those for infected women and infants, will be seriously undermined by budget cuts despite the County Board of Supervisors' vote to fully fund local AIDS services, county health workers warned Friday.
SANTA ANA -- A former employee of the American Red Cross pleaded guilty Wednesday to embezzling more than $144,000, saying he gave most of it to friends who are HIV-positive like himself or are just needy.
Scott Whiteside had been HIV-positive for more than 10 years before his vision slowly began to fade. At first, he started having trouble seeing small objects. Straight lines appeared slanted. And he began noticing a small blind spot in the center of his left eye.
MOSCOW -- Russia on Tuesday delayed indefinitely the enforcement of a controversial law requiring that anyone who wishes to visit the country for more than three months be tested for AIDS.
SOWETO, South Africa -- Dr. Glenda Gray, a pediatrician at the sprawling Baragwanath Hospital complex, remembers how she and other researchers once had to search for patients infected with the AIDS virus.
Despite an impressive roster of more than 60 Senate co-sponsors, important AIDS funding faces an uphill battle on Capitol Hill. That's because the money provided by the Ryan White CARE Act is threatened by congressional budget slashers intent on reducing outlays no matter how penny-wise and pound-foolish that might be.
The first time Jaime Silva went to a clinic to be tested for AIDS, he never returned for the results. The second time, he fled in tears, unwilling to even venture past the waiting room.
A Food and Drug Administration advisory panel Friday gave permission for a controversial experiment to infuse a San Francisco AIDS activist with bone marrow obtained from a baboon in a last-gasp effort to save his life.
BURBANK -- What began as a day of protest by activists in Burbank turned into a partial victory Thursday in Washington as Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) scheduled a vote on a bill funding the nation's largest health care program for AIDS victims.
BERLIN -- Opponents of Benetton's controversial "shock advertising" campaign won a round Thursday, when a German appeals court ruled that three of the Italian clothing company's commercial images could not be published in this country.
WASHINGTON -- Asserting that their "deliberate, disgusting and revolting conduct" is the cause of their disease, Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) has stalled renewal of the nation's largest health care program for people with AIDS, a delay that threatens to shut down a host of services in Los Angeles if not resolved by summer's end.
IRVINE -- The late President Richard Nixon's nephew Donald Nixon Jr., who was held under house arrest in Havana while Cuban officials investigated his ties to fugitive financier Robert Vesco, said Wednesday he believes that authorities might have been after a "miracle drug" that he and Vesco were testing.
CALIPATRIA, Calif. -- The Japanese engineer, the Ethiopian chemist and the Mexican American production manager looked over their simmering crop of spirulina and they were pleased.
In a ruling that runs counter to the trend of legal opinions involving health care workers with AIDS, a federal appeals court has found that the FBI illegally fired a San Francisco physician who had AIDS.
At first glance, they appear to tread little common ground. One is a doctor who drives a Mercedes through Beverly Hills. One runs a church in South-Central. Another works for the city of Los Angeles. A closer look, however, reveals that they share at least one trait: the pain that comes with personal, passionate involvement in the nation's war against AIDS.
People have inadvertently been misled into thinking that AIDS won't happen to them unless they are gay or drug users. That may have been true of the first wave of AIDS, experts say, but we are now experiencing a second wave of HIV infections, transmitted through heterosexual contact.
WASHINGTON -- Dr. Robert C. Gallo, the peripatetic and controversial co-discoverer of the AIDS virus, announced Wednesday that he will leave his job at the National Institutes of Health to create a major human virology research institute at the University of Maryland.
WASHINGTON -- The socially conservative Republican agenda became part of the House defense authorization bill Wednesday when the National Security Committee approved proposals by Orange County Rep. Robert K. Dornan to discharge military personnel who test positive for the AIDS virus and to prohibit abortions at overseas U.S. military bases.
The number of new AIDS cases in Ventura County increased by 57% during the past year, with women and Latinos representing a growing proportion of these new cases, health officials said Monday.
KIKWIT, Zaire -- Sister Dinarosa Belleri, an Italian nursing nun who devoted nearly three decades to serving the poor and sick here, had an unusual funeral Sunday in the sad and dusty graveyard behind the city's cathedral.
Times Mirror Company, Los Angeles Times - May 11, 1995
Lorenza Munoz; Special to the Times
Tony, who is HIV-positive, will never forget the night he went home with a bearded, glassy-eyed man he met in a Hollywood sex club. He ended up in the man's "dungeon," engaged in an ugly sex fantasy.
WASHINGTON -- A team of federal disease detectives was dispatched to Zaire on Wednesday to investigate a deadly outbreak of what health officials strongly suspect is viral hemorrhagic fever--a devastating illness that can cause death within days by dissolving the body's organs.
WASHINGTON -- The Clinton Administration's AIDS education program for federal employees has come under fire from Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove), who charged Wednesday that it "promotes homosexuality or bisexuality as just another healthy lifestyle choice."
LOS ANGELES -- The "Dear Parent" letters minced no words in explaining that children from the third grade up were going to see a play about AIDS and that classes would be discussing AIDS--how you get it, how you don't.
James F. Peltz and Stuart Silverstein; Times Staff Writers
Two United Airlines pilots said Tuesday that they have filed an employment discrimination lawsuit against the airline, alleging that United forbade them from flying because they have HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
The steady stream of cars, some of them blasting the booming bass guitar and screeching adolescent voice that made him famous, kept rolling slowly down Harvard Boulevard near the First African Methodist Episcopal Church during a funeral Friday for rapper and AIDS casualtyEazy-E.
The "Dear Parent" letters minced no words in explaining that children from the third grade up were going to see a play about AIDS and that classes would be discussing AIDS--how you get it, how you don't.
MOSCOW -- President Boris N. Yeltsin signed a controversial law Monday requiring AIDS testing of all foreigners living in Russia and ordering the deportation of anyone whose results show they have been infected.
Pearl Jemison-Smith; chairperson, Orange County HIV Planning Advisory Council. She also serves on the Board of AIDS Services Foundation and is a founding board member of AIDS Walk
As a child growing up in wartime England, I dreamed of blue sky and oranges, of peace and no more "buzz bombs." Fifty years later, some of my dreams are a reality. I am living in Orange County where the skies are blue (often enough) and oranges grow on trees (here and there). Unfortunately, I'm still at war.
UCLA researchers say they have documented for the first time a case in which an infant infected with the AIDS virus at birth cleared the virus from his body by his first birthday.
A Saddleback College student leader who has proposed an outdoor AIDS awareness workshop with mock demonstrations on how to "eroticize" condom use has been ordered by administrators to hold the event in a less public place.
AIDS patients whose viruses develop resistance to the drug AZT are nearly three times more likely to die within a year than those who either haven't taken the drug, or whose viruses remain susceptible to AZT.
COSTA MESA -- Researchers hope to add years to the lives of AIDS patients by combining as many as three antiviral drugs and using new medications that ambush the virus in novel ways, experts said at a regional HIV conference Monday.
A former nurse at Ventura County Jail filed a Superior Court lawsuit Friday, saying she contracted the virus that causes AIDS from inmates because she was not given proper protective equipment.
During the curtain call after one of the first performances of Larry Kramer's "The Normal Heart" in New York in 1985, cast member D. W. Moffett was stunned by the appearance of one of the audience members who was applauding the landmark play, which is a story of the early New York battles against AIDS.
ANAHEIM -- In a sharp policy shift, members of the California Medical Assn. voted Monday to ask for state legislation that would require anyone testing positive for the AIDS virus to be reported to county health authorities.
It has been 13 years since the dreaded disease that has come to be called acquired immune deficiency syndrome, or AIDS for short, was first diagnosed. Few then would have thought that the strange malady would soon become a worldwide pandemic or have imagined the human suffering it would cause.
Greg Louganis says he has "no more secrets" and is prepared to deal with the criticism he expects after his stun ning disclosure last week that he has AIDS.
SAN FRANCISCO -- This is a different kind of drugstore. A haze of marijuana smoke hangs in the air, and in the background Mick Jagger sings, "You can't always get what you want . . ."
COSTA MESA -- Mike Hylton, 48, a hemophiliac infected with AIDS, will lead a Los Angeles news conference today to focus attention on a bill that would pay $125,000 each to more than 10,000 hemophiliacs and family members infected with HIV and AIDS.
Pregnant women should be encouraged to undergo voluntary AIDS testing in light of studies showing that the drug AZT can dramatically reduce transmission to the fetus, federal health officials said.
Greg Louganis, considered the greatest competitive diver ever after becoming the only man to win gold medals in platform and springboard events at consecutive Olympics, revealed that he has AIDS in a television interview that will be broadcast Friday.
Marlene Cimons and Thomas H. Maugh II; Times Staff Writers
WASHINGTON -- After a long, cold winter of disappointment, disillusion and discontent, a warmer, more optimistic wind is wafting through the AIDS research community.
ATLANTA -- Almost three in every 10 Americans have dramatically altered their sexual behavior to lower their risk of contracting AIDS, and those at greatest risk--people with multiple sex partners--are most likely to be taking precautions, leading authorities on sexual behavior said Friday.
Chastened by previous controversies over public needle exchange programs for drug addicts, a San Fernando Valley treatment center Thursday cautiously began a new effort to give sterile needles to addicts in an effort to slow the spread of the AIDS virus among intravenous drug users.
WASHINGTON -- A new experimental antiviral drug called 3TC, taken in combination with the commonly used drug AZT, decreased AIDS infection and appeared to improve the immune systems of patients better than either drug used alone, according to new studies presented Wednesday.
Marlene Cimons and Thomas H. Maugh II; Times Staff Writers
WASHINGTON -- In the first good news to come out of the battle against AIDS in this decade, researchers reported Tuesday that a new family of drugs called protease inhibitors can sharply reduce replication of the human immunodeficiency virus and restore immune system functioning in patients in the early stages of the disease.
The number of new AIDS cases in Ventura County continued to increase steadily in 1994, health officials said Thursday, even as they released a report that seemed to contradict that trend.
By the time she was 16, Gretchen Adams was a veteran junkie, shooting up daily with amphetamines, getting so wired she often didn't sleep for days, wandering the streets of Hollywood in a hallucinatory fog.
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