Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1997. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
CONNECT: A Weekly Guide to Today's Technology Revolution; The Orange County Register - May 11, 1997
Stephan Lynch
The Sisters of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, an Episcopal group named after the Mother Teresa of the 1200s, inherited a herd in Stover, Mo., from a charitable farmer. And Sister Mary Elizabeth of San Juan Capistrano "was lucky enough to draw the straw, and I went off to herd cows," she says.
It was a crooked journey, from that 1990 career change, to bringing Sister Mary Elizabeth back to Orange County and making her the administrator of the largest database of HIV and AIDS information in the world.
"Stover only has a doctor who came once a week, and every phone was a party line. There was no privacy," she says. So when she met a man who had AIDS, Sister Elizabeth knew he had no place to go. "There was a tremendous amount of stigma."
Sister Elizabeth suggested that the Sisters of St. Elizabeth develop some way to bring information about HIV and AIDS to people who were geographically isolated. Sister Elizabeth moved out of Stover, and the group sold the cattle and used the money to start a bulletin board called AEGIS in 1990.
Since then, the database -- a combination of independent articles and information from the National AIDS Project -- has grown to more than 350,000 documents. It's also shifted to the Web, and garnered funding from the U.S. National Library of Medicine and Roxane Laboratories.
"It's a long way from livestock," Sister Elizabeth says, "but a lot more fulfilling."
Copyright (c) 1997 - Orange County Register.
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