Dr. Peter Piot, the only head of the United Nations AIDS program in its 13-year history, is retiring on Wednesday. He is credited as the person most responsible for making heads of state understand the political, economic and social ramifications of a pandemic that rivals the worst in history. Although the toll of infe
IN his first press conference after his re-election in 2004, President Bush memorably declared, I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it. We all know how that turned out. Barack Obama has little in common with George W. Bush, thank God, his obsessive workouts and message control
WASHINGTON - Former President Bill Clinton has collected tens of millions of dollars for his foundation over the last 10 years from governments in the Middle East, tycoons from Canada , India , Nigeria and Ukraine , and other international figures with interests in Americ
SAN FRANCISCO -- They re calling it Stonewall 2.0. Outraged by California voters ban on same-sex marriage, a new wave of advocates, shaken out of a generational apathy, have pushed to the forefront of the gay rights movement, using freshly minted grass-roots groups and embracing not only new technologies but also old-s
Around the globe, accidents kill 830,000 children - the equivalent of all the children in Chicago - every year, according to a report issued Tuesday by the World Health Organization and Unicef. The report, the first to collect all known data on child injuries worldwide, makes broad estimates because many poor countries
YEREVAN, Armenia - As if you didn t have enough to worry about ... consider the deadly, infectious and highly portable disease sitting in the lungs of a charming young man here, Garik Hakobyan. In effect, he s a time bomb. Mr. Hakobyan, 34, an artist, carries an ailment that stars in the nightmares of public health exp
Carla Sarkozy, the wife of President Nicolas Sarkozy, announced that she would serve as a good-will ambassador to fight AIDS with the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. “I ll do it as ambassador of the global fund, by using the exceptional people that my new position makes possible to meet,” she said
Thousands of people in Myanmar are dying needlessly of AIDS each year because too little money is allocated to treating them, the international charity Doctors Without Borders said last week. About 240,000 people in Myanmar are infected with the virus that causes AIDS, and about 76,000 are sick enough to need antiretro
The American College of Physicians is urging doctors to screen all patients for H.I.V. routinely beginning at age 13, whether or not they engage in risky behaviors. The guidelines differ slightly from those of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which recommends routine screening of patients until a
This December 1st marks the 20th commemoration of World AIDS Day. The international commemoration has perennially been accompanied by new, bleak reports, and bureaucratic hand-wringing over the invariable failure of supply - in the form of drugs, management and financing - to keep up with the needs of the desperately i
It sounds too good to be true, and it may prove to be so in the real world, but researchers at the World Health Organization have come up with a suggestion to drastically reduce the transmission of AIDS and virtually halt the widening epidemic in Africa within a decade. On this 20th anniversary of World AIDS Day, after
At 4 o clock on Sunday morning, Andrew Marber was wide awake, thinking of his past and the people who populated it. He got out of bed and pulled out two address books, his own and another, a small, overflowing black book that had belonged to his late companion. He flipped through the two books until he was satisfied he
CHICAGO - Former President Bill Clinton has agreed to disclose publicly the names of more than 200,000 donors to his foundation as part of an accord with President-elect Barack Obama that clears the way for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to become secretary of state, Democrats close to both sides said on Saturday. Mr.
We now know that blacks probably didn t tip the balance for Proposition 8. Myth busted. However, the fact remains that a strikingly high percentage of blacks said they voted to ban same-sex marriage in California. Why? There was one very telling (and virtually ignored) statistic in CNN s exit poll data that may shed so
JOHANNESBURG - A new study by Harvard researchers estimates that the South African government would have prevented the premature deaths of 365,000 people earlier this decade if it had provided antiretroviral drugs to AIDS patients and widely administered drugs to help prevent pregnant women from infecting their babies.
Doctors in Berlin are reporting that they cured a man of AIDS by giving him transplanted blood stem cells from a person naturally resistant to the virus. But while the case has novel medical implications, experts say it will be of little immediate use in treating AIDS. Top American researchers called the treatment unth
Washington - IN late September, the authorities in Belgium seized more than two million counterfeit painkillers and antimalarial drugs that had been manufactured in India and were en route to Africa. It was the largest seizure ever of fake pharmaceuticals in Europe. The incident shines a light on one of the most pr
SANTIAGO, Chile - Chile s health minister said Thursday that the country s public health system had failed to notify at least 512 people that they were infected with H.I.V., and that private-sector services did not inform an additional 1,364 that they were carrying the virus, which causes AIDS. Speaking to lawmaker
On the top floor of a hulking 90-year-old building on Brooklyn s western waterfront, plasterers and electricians are preparing what city officials hope will be an economic antidote to the implosion of the financial services industry. In a cavernous warehouse built as a military supply depot during World War I, medical
SYRACUSE - Even by the standards of upstate New York, where the abundance of shuttered factories and storefronts serve as a reminder that nobody s job is ever really safe, these have been rough times for Kathleen Regan. So when Ms. Regan, a public school teacher whose husband was recently laid off, stepped to the micro
In the early 1990s, a diagnosis of AIDS was both a likely death sentence and a stigma. There were few treatment options, and many Americans were terrified of people infected with H.I.V. Today, because of antiretroviral therapy and an array of drugs to treat both symptoms and side effects, AIDS has become a chronic cond
ST. LOUIS - Walking the halls of Normandy High School between classes, Mya McLemore, a senior, pays close attention these days to the faces of her fellow students. She keeps an eye out for those who avert their gaze, whose lips quiver or who allow a telltale tear to roll down their cheeks. I ve been observing people, t
Philip Reed, a former elevator salesman who devoted himself to health issues as a member of the New York City Council, where he was a pioneer as a black, openly gay and H.I.V.-positive lawmaker representing a largely Latino district, died on Thursday at St. Luke s-Roosevelt Hospital Center. He was 59. The death was con
JOHANNESBURG - The government of Zimbabwe , led by President Robert Mugabe, spent $7.3 million donated by an international organization to fight killer diseases on other things and has failed to honor requests to return the money, according to the organization s inspector general. The actions by Zimbabwe have depri
A judge has found that a provincial Health Department wrongly fired Dr. Malcolm Naude in 2001 for prescribing antiretroviral drugs to rape victims to reduce their risk of H.I.V. infection and for trying to stop the eviction of a rape crisis group that favored the preventive doses. The Health Department in Mpumalanga Pr
SITTWE, Myanmar - The cyclone that ravaged Myanmar s Irrawaddy Delta five months ago has led to an unexpectedly robust influx of foreign money and relief workers, showering aid on a small part of Myanmar s population but leaving other, equally desperate parts of the country to fend for themselves. After initial res
For Nathan Wolfe, a 38-year-old visiting professor at Stanford, an ordinary workday can look like a clip from Survivor - chasing primate hunters through the dense foliage of rural Cameroon , sloshing through mud and streams, dodging branches and malaria-carrying mosquitoes. The subsistence, or bushmeat, hunters he tr
JOHANNESBURG - A foundation dedicated to celebrating and encouraging good government in Africa awarded its annual prize on Monday to Botswana s former president, Festus G. Mogae. He was honored for consolidating his nation s democracy, ensuring that its diamond wealth enriched its people and providing bold leadership d
Allan Rosenfield, who as dean of the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University became a leading advocate for women s health during the global H.I.V./AIDS epidemic, died on Sunday at his home in Hartsdale, N.Y. He was 75. The cause was amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or A.L.S., said his son, Paul Rosenfield.
The Bush administration this month is quietly cutting off birth control supplies to some of the world s poorest women in Africa. Thus the paradox of a pro-life administration adopting a policy whose result will be tens of thousands of additional abortions each year -- along with more women dying in childbirth. The sa
The Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded Monday to three European scientists who had discovered viruses behind two devastating illnesses, AIDS and cervical cancer. Half of the award will be shared by two French virologists, Francoise Barre-Sinoussi, 61, and Luc A. Montagnier, 76, for discovering H.I.V., the virus that c
Infection with the AIDS virus in China is spreading beyond the country s original high-risk groups - heroin addicts in the south and blood sellers in rural central counties. A new study finds that the virus has spread to all provinces, and cases are rising quickly among gay men and female prostitutes. Heterosexual tran
DIEPSLOOT, South Africa - A dusty maze of concrete, sheet metal and scrap wood, Diepsloot is like so many of the enormous settlements around Johannesburg, mile after mile of feebly assembled shacks, the impromptu patchwork of the poor, the extremely poor and the hopelessly poor. Monica Xangathi, 40, lives here in a s
LOS ANGELES - California came closer than any other state to instituting routine H.I.V. screening as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Tuesday signed into law a bill requiring private health insurance providers to cover the cost of the testing regardless of a primary diagnosis. As soon as next year, health care providers i
By the time the doors open to the soup kitchen at St. Benedict the Moor Neighborhood Center, the line is already snaking down St. Ann s Avenue. Old people sit on crates, children shuffle impatiently and adults avert their gaze. This happens every day of the year in Mott Haven, no matter the weather. That is because for
JOHANNESBURG -- Kgalema Motlanthe, 59, a former trade unionist once imprisoned during the apartheid era on charges of terrorism, was overwhelmingly elected Thursday by Parliament as South Africa s president. But whether he merely keeps the seat warm until elections next year -- when Jacob Zuma, his party s leader, pres
Thabo Mbeki s resignation this week as South Africa s president was swift and humbling. Once called the most powerful man in Africa, he was pushed out by his party after protracted internal squabbling, and he leaves a legacy of squandered potential and significant failures. Mr. Mbeki s party, the African National Congr
JOHANNESBURG - Panic surged through South Africa s financial markets early Tuesday when the president s office, still controlled by the departing Thabo Mbeki, announced that 14 of the government s top officials had resigned, including Trevor Manuel, the powerful finance minister regarded internationally as the anchor o
The world has many fewer cases of malaria than previously thought, the World Health Organization is reporting. But the agency says the apparent drop is not a result of mosquito nets, miracle drugs and DDT spraying - just better statistical techniques. The war on the disease still needs to be prosecuted with vigor, the
JOHANNESBURG - President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa , the loser in a prolonged power struggle with his rival, Jacob Zuma, agreed Saturday to resign after the top leaders of his party, the African National Congress, asked him to step down. The party s fateful decision is a harsh rebuke to Mr. Mbeki, the aloof and schol
The release of All of Us, a documentary about H.I.V./AIDS and African-American women in New York, is well timed given recent headlines about the alarming persistence of the crisis. But this powerful, conceptually sure film is relevant beyond the concerns of the moment as both a model of documentary method and compassio
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction: Correction: September 19, 2008 [An article on Thursday about the Mayor s Management Report, which assesses how New York City government responded in all areas during the past fiscal year compared with the previous year, misstated the number of free cond
RENT closed with the usual celebratory brouhaha. Hours before its final curtain on Sept. 7, the sidewalk in front of the Nederlander Theater, where the musical had played for more than a dozen years, was strewn with barricades signaling the potential presence of celebrity - or at least the expensively self-important.
An unusually detailed study of people newly infected with H.I.V. in the United States has confirmed that the majority of new cases occur among gay and bisexual men and that blacks are most at risk. But the data show that whites and blacks tend to be infected at different times in their lives with the virus that causes
Rwanda , a country that suffered 100 days of tribal genocide in 1994 and has also been hit hard by the AIDS epidemic, is believed to have the highest percentage of orphans in the world. Now a survey finds that depression is alarmingly common among teenage and young adult orphans there who head households and care for
LUDZIDZINI, Swaziland - Once upon a time, a young and handsome king ruled over a land of mountainous splendor near the southern tip of Africa. He liked to marry, and as the years passed he took 13 wives, each of them a great beauty. His countrymen wanted His Majesty to be happy, but some also thought so many spouses we
UNITED NATIONS - Aid to poor nations has slumped even as higher food and energy prices and slowing global economic growth have made such assistance more urgent, according to a report released Thursday by the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon. The question of how to increase development aid will be the main
It has been difficult over the years to get a good statistical handle on the size of the AIDS problem in this country. But by the latest and most sophisticated measurements, the disease continues to frustrate federal and local efforts to rein it in. A recent report from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Preve
An early test of the next president s moral courage will come as he decides how to engage two Sudanese people named Bashir. One is President Omar al-Bashir, who faces indictment for genocide by the International Criminal Court. The other is Dr. Halima Bashir, a young Darfuri woman whom the Sudanese authorities have tri
The virus that causes AIDS is spreading in New York City at three times the national rate - an incidence of 72 new infections for every 100,000 people, compared with 23 per 100,000 nationally - according to a study released on Wednesday by the city s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. The findings, based on a new
Compared with their peers in 1991, high school students today are less likely to be sexually active, and when they are, more likely to use condoms. The percentage of high school students in 2007 who had ever had sexual intercourse declined by 12 percent since 1991, the percentage who had had intercourse with four or mo
MEXICO CITY -- Officially, there is no sex among the male inmates at the over-packed Oriente prison on the outskirts of the Mexican capital. The only sexual relations in the male portion of the facility, administrators say, occur in the special rooms set aside for male-female conjugal visits. But talk to the prisoners,
Sabrina Wilson did not know she would have to move out of her Brooklyn apartment until she saw the for sale sign outside the building. Mrs. Wilson, whose H.I.V. was diagnosed 18 years ago, had always dreaded the thought of having to find another landlord who would accept her rental subsidy from the city. But this time,
ATLANTA -- Eight states and Puerto Rico will no longer receive federal money for an advanced H.I.V. monitoring system that showed that the annual infection rate in the nation was 40 percent higher than previously estimated, officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday. The change will low
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction: Correction: August 23, 2008 The Doctor s World column on Tuesday, about the International AIDS Conference, misidentified the organization that recently issued guidelines urging earlier treatment of H.I.V. in the developed world. The guidelines were deve
MEXICO CITY - A follow-up look at men who were circumcised in an African study shows that the procedure s protective effects against H.I.V. last for at least three and a half years, researchers said at the 17th International AIDS Conference here last week. The study was one of three that were stopped before their sched
Here are some things Internet users can discover about Kiyoshi Martinez, a 24-year-old man from Mokena, Ill., from some of his recent posts online. He watched The Colbert Report on Tuesday night, he likes the musician Lenlow and he received bottles of olive oil and vinegar for his birthday. Mr. Martinez has Facebook an
MEXICO CITY - Like most scientific conferences, the 17th International AIDS Conference, which ended here on Friday, had its share of researchers presenting and discussing the findings of multiyear investigations in clinical terms. There was a planting and eating soybean project for people living with H.I.V./AIDS in rur
MEXICO CITY - The 17th International AIDS Conference ended here on Friday with a call for the reversal of laws that criminalize and stigmatize groups at risk for H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS. Criminalization is a poor tool for regulating H.I.V. infection and transmission, Edwin Cameron, a justice of the Supreme C
MEXICO CITY - A 13-year-old girl was abducted, then raped repeatedly over a two-week period during a campaign of political terror in Zimbabwe surrounding recent elections there. Hers is one of 53 cases documented by AIDS-Free World, an advocacy group investigating rape as a political weapon in Zimbabwe, activists said
MEXICO CITY - The global response to the AIDS epidemic has short-changed children, health workers at the International AIDS Conference said here on Wednesday. Although governments and donors provide large amounts of money for H.I.V. treatment in the developing world, too little of that money reaches children, said Lind
MEXICO CITY - The 29-year-old is not gay. He wants that known. He did have sex with a man once, but that was the result of loneliness and his hormones being in overdrive, he said, not because of any attraction to men. He suspects that the one encounter was responsible for giving him the virus that causes AIDS. But he i
MEXICO CITY - While the world awaits findings from new AIDS prevention trials, millions of people are becoming infected because governments are overlooking studies showing that behavior modification works, AIDS experts said Tuesday. Among the behavior modifications the experts cited: promoting safer sex through delayed
MEXICO CITY - Can a pill a day help prevent infection from H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS? No one knows. But researchers in a number of countries are conducting trials and planning others to test the unproven strategy that a daily pill, or a combination of drugs, can prevent H.I.V. By mid-2009, more people will be
MEXICO CITY - The United States has significantly underreported the number of new H.I.V. infections occurring nationally each year, with a study released here on Saturday showing that the annual infection rate is 40 percent higher than previously estimated. The study, conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Pr
President Bush signed into law on Wednesday an important bill that authorizes greatly increased American spending to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria around the world. Although the money is more than he had originally wanted, the president willingly accepted the higher numbers. He can be justifiably proud of his ad
If black America were a country, it would rank 16th in the world in the number of people living with the AIDS virus, the Black AIDS Institute, an advocacy group, reported Tuesday. The report, financed in part by the Ford Foundation and the Elton John AIDS Foundation, provides a startling new perspective on an epidemic
For a mother infected with the virus that causes AIDS, breast-feeding presents a life-and-death dilemma. Using formula protects her child from H.I.V. But mixed with dirty water, it increases the chances that the child will die of diarrhea or malnutrition. In poor countries, most mothers still breast-feed, because it is
TEHRAN: Ali blew out a candle on a small round cake. More than 200 people cheered, celebrating the first anniversary of his becoming drug-free. I was in an awful condition, said Ali, describing 12 years of addiction to opium and alcohol. I reached a state that I smashed our furniture and threw our television out of the
Seeking to prevent life-threatening side effects, the Food and Drug Administration is urging doctors to use a genetic test to screen patients before prescribing a drug widely used for H.I.V. infection and AIDS. In an advisory it is expected to issue Thursday, the agency says that patients with a particular variation in
A survey of 452 New York City men who had had sex with other men within the past year found that 39 percent had not disclosed their sexual orientation to their doctors, a problem particularly acute among black, Hispanic and Asian men, the city s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene announced on Wednesday. Health off
MOSCOW - The conference seemed innocuous enough: a Moscow hotel, slide shows and several dozen doctors and specialists gathered to discuss how to treat heroin addiction. But then members of a Kremlin youth group called the Young Guard arrived, crowding the hotel s entrance and denouncing the participants as criminals a
In Pakistan , seven times as many men as women are reported to be infected with the AIDS virus, but the country s taboos about sex make it very difficult to even address the epidemic, researchers are reporting this week. The findings, published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, are by researchers at two Pakistani univ
It has taken a man of God, perhaps, to do what nobody else has been able to do since the general election season began: Get Barack Obama and John McCain together on the same stage before their party conventions later this summer. The Rev. Rick Warren has persuaded the candidates to attend a forum at his Saddleback Chur
SYDNEY, Australia - In his final address to hundreds of thousands of young Catholics gathered in Australia on Sunday, Pope Benedict XVI attacked the violence and materialism of the modern age, and called on his audience to build a new age. A new generation of Christians is being called to help build a world in which Go
Plans for a large human trial of a promising government-developed H.I.V. vaccine in the United States were canceled Thursday because a top federal official said scientists realized that they did not know enough about how H.I.V. vaccines and the immune system interact. The decision is a major setback in an effort to dev
A genetic variation that once protected people in sub-Saharan Africa from a now extinct form of malaria may have left them somewhat more vulnerable to infection by H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS. The gene could account for 11 percent of the H.I.V. infections in Africa, explaining why the disease is more common ther
For 15 years, the American Red Cross has been under a federal court order to improve the way it collects and processes blood. Yet, despite $21 million in fines since 2003 and repeated promises to follow procedures intended to ensure the safety of the nation s blood supply, it continues to fall short. The situation has
After finally breaking a procedural logjam, the Senate this week will move ahead with a $50 billion AIDS initiative that has the support of Democrats, Republicans and the White House. It would seem like a sure bet - except for Senator Jim DeMint. Mr. DeMint, a Republican from South Carolina, forced the Senate last week
I WAS late to Rent. Late to the show, and late to the city it portrays. When I arrived in New York, in the fall of 1998, bistros and boutiques had already infiltrated the East Village, gentrification was spreading into the Lower East Side, and northwest Brooklyn had largely fallen to the forces of the Rent had already
IN New York State, a person with AIDS is eligible to receive food stamps and housing assistance, along with a small daily stipend. Eleven dollars is what Wayne Starks, who is 52 years old and lives in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, receives every day to improve the quality of his life. Every day, Mr. Starks records in a
If you caught your son burning ants with a magnifying glass, would it bother you less than if you found him torturing a mouse with a soldering iron? How about a snake? How about his sister? Does Khalid Shaikh Mohammed - the Guantanamo detainee who claims he personally beheaded the reporter Daniel Pearl - deserve the ri
As President Bush and the Group of 8 leaders who are meeting in Japan again shun their responsibilities in Darfur, there is a serious argument to be made that genocide is overrated as an international concern. The G-8 leaders implicitly accept that argument, which goes like this: Genocide is regrettable, but don t los
Unitaid, the international agency created in 2006 to buy medicine to counter AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, has taken the first step toward establishing a mechanism to deal with a vexing problem of drugs so expensive they are out of reach for most poor The agency is endorsing the creation of a panel of experts to expl
TOYAKO, Japan : As world leaders convened in this resort town in northern Japan on Monday for three days of talks on issues including climate change and rising food and energy prices, the agenda quickly shifted to the political crisis in Zimbabwe , exposing a split between Western and African leaders.
These are tough times. But the newly passed $59.1 billion New York City budget cut nearly $300 million in spending, a good part of it for programs meant to protect the city’s most vulnerable people, including the elderly, youth, the unemployed, people who need legal aid and those with H.I.V. and AIDS. Traditionally, Ne
A tiny group of Republican senators continues to block a vote on an important bill to increase American spending on AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis around the world. Their obstructionism has deprived President Bush of a legislative achievement that could help him spur other industrialized nations to contribute substanti
WASHINGTON - Amid signs that his quest for more aid to Africa is in danger of unraveling, President Bush called Wednesday for Congress to renew his global AIDS initiative and urged other nations to live up to their own promises to fight poverty and disease on the continent. President Bush entering the Rose Garden befor
Sometimes stubbornness gets measured in blood, and sometimes the wounds of race are blinding. That s the kindest verdict I can find for the listless mediation in a devastated Zimbabwe of Thabo Mbeki, the South African president. Faced by all the brutal expressions of his neighbor Robert Mugabe s megalomania, Mbeki has
A new test that can detect multiple-drug-resistant tuberculosis in two days instead of the standard two to three months promises to help significantly improve treatment and prevent the spread of the airborne infection, the World Health Organization said Monday. Multiple-drug-resistant TB, or MDR-TB, is a growing public
The music business is known for supporting causes with events like the Live Aid and Live Earth concerts, which generate lots of money and publicity for a relatively short time. But on Monday (RED), a nonprofit organization that arranges for companies to contribute a share of profits on certain products to fight AIDS in
Diagnoses of H.I.V. and AIDS in men who have sex with men rose significantly between 2001 and 2006 while declining in other demographic groups, the federal Centers for Disease Control reported Thursday. The increase in diagnoses was especially high among males between the ages of 13 and 24, with an annual increase of 1
TEHRAN - Ali blew out a candle on a small round cake. More than 200 people cheered, celebrating the first anniversary of his becoming drug-free. A trash collector gathers used syringes taken from Tehran parks. Free needles are offered in Iran to counter H.I.V. risks. A ceremony in Tehran in May celebrated a recovering
Christopher Cooper-Hohn and his wife, Jamie, follow a simple economic formula: he makes money, and she gives it away. Mr. Cooper-Hohn runs the Children s Investment Fund, or T.C.I., a successful - and controversial - hedge fund that has become a gadfly to corporate giants like CSX, the American railroad. Ms. Cooper-Hoh
The New York City health department plans to announce on Thursday an ambitious three-year effort to give an H.I.V. test to every adult living in the Bronx, which has a far higher death rate from AIDS than any other borough. The campaign will begin with a push to make the voluntary testing routine in emergency rooms and
Michael Shernoff, a psychotherapist who beginning in the early years of the AIDS epidemic wrote widely on its emotional toll on gay men and who organized an early safe-sex workshop, died on Tuesday at his home in Manhattan. He was 57. The cause was pancreatic cancer, his brother Jeffrey said. In his practice and in his
A handful of Republican senators is blocking action on a bill that would greatly increase American funding to combat AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria around the world. If their delaying tactics succeed, the United States will lose considerable leverage in trying to persuade other advanced nations to contribute substantia
An unusual ranking of pharmaceutical companies is being unveiled this week. It evaluates them by how easy they make it for patients in poor countries to get drugs and vaccines. The list, called the Access to Medicine Index, has been created for social responsibility funds and investors who want to know how companies wh
A YEAR before his death, my dad was forced to come out to me. I thought he was in Paris for a vacation. Instead, he was there for treatment with AZT , which in 1986 was experimental and not yet approved in the United States for people infected with the virus that causes AIDS. After my mother died when I was 16, my
WASHINGTON - Gen. Peter Pace, who was denied a second term as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff a year ago because of the war in Iraq , will receive a Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award, the White House announced on Wednesday. General Pace, a retired marine, is one of six medal r
Inadequate attention to the spread of tuberculosis is undermining recent gains made against the virus that causes AIDS, United Nations officials said Monday. Tuberculosis and AIDS are now epidemic in many areas of the world, and the two infectious diseases must be addressed together, said the officials, who spoke from
UKIAH, Calif. - There is probably no marijuana-friendlier place in the country than here in Mendocino County, where plants can grow more than 15 feet high, medical marijuana clubs adopt stretches of highway, and the sticky, sweet aroma of cannabis fills this city s streets during the autumn harvest. Lately, however, re
JOHANNESBURG - With only three weeks to go before Zimbabwe s presidential runoff, the police briefly detained the opposition s standard-bearer, Morgan Tsvangirai, on Friday for the second time this week and directed his party to cancel political rallies, effectively preventing him from addressing voters. Morgan Tsvangi
WASHINGTON - Scenes from the quiet life of George W. Bush, master of ceremonies and president of the United States : On Sunday, Mr. Bush presented awards to the poet Maya Angelou and the actress Ruby Dee at the annual Ford s Theatre Gala. On Monday, he gave a three-minute talk about tax cuts, and bestowed a posthumous
Dr. Oscar D. Ratnoff, whose insightful research into how the blood coagulates helped reveal the waterfall biochemical response involved in the body s reaction to wounds and trauma, died on May 20 in Cleveland. He was 91. The cause was respiratory failure, his family said. In the late 1950s and early 60s, Dr. Ratnoff, a
JOHANNESBURG - Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Zimbabweans - orphans and old people, the sick and the down and out - have lost access to food and other basic humanitarian assistance as their government has clamped down on international aid groups it says are backing the political opposition, relief agencies
As the world’s population ages, gets richer, smokes more, eats more and drives more, noncommunicable diseases will become bigger killers than infectious ones over the next 20 years, the World Health Organization is reporting. The report, World Health Statistics 2008, shows that diseases like diarrhea, AIDS, tuberculosi
JOHANNESBURG - The good news on AIDS: Nearly a million people began life-prolonging drug treatment in developing countries last year. The bad news: 2.5 million people were newly infected with the HIV virus. As new infections continue to far outstrip efforts to treat the sick, the United Nations released a progress repo
NEW ORLEANS - Mayor C. Ray Nagin recently suggested a way to reduce this city s post-Katrina homeless population: give them one-way bus tickets out of town. Patrick Pugh and Clara Gomez outside their tent at a homeless encampment under a highway overpass in New Orleans. Mr. Nagin later insisted the off-the-cuff proposa
To the Editor: Prison for Man With H.I.V. Who Spit on a Police Officer (news article, May 16) appropriately noted that according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that contact with saliva, tears, or sweat has never been shown to result in the transmission of H.I.V. Even though we know that there is no s
Crackpot and dangerous theories on AIDS. Extreme and widening levels of income inequality. Enabling Zimbabwe s Robert Mugabe and only belatedly trying to halt mob atrocities against desperate Zimbabwean and other African immigrants. This is the legacy of South Africa s president, Thabo Mbeki, who has one more year in h
Florent Morellet will switch off his neon sign after almost 23 years on Gansevoort Street. ALMOST 23 years ago a transplanted young Frenchman named Florent Morellet, the youngest son of the conceptual artist Francois Morellet, took over a diner named the R & L on Gansevoort Street. In Paris he had owned a little re
Hot or Not, a Web site where people submit photographs of themselves so that strangers can rate how attractive they are on a scale of 1 to 10, has spawned many imitators (plus a fair number of critics who view it as a sign of the end of civilization as we know it). One new spinoff, Pos or Not, has a serious purpose (ta
Patricia Clouden dresses in a whirl of color, from her bright African dress to her shiny green toenail polish. She is a grandmother of eight who gets noticed in her Harlem neighborhood and is not afraid to speak her mind. I m not a Yes, ma am no more, she told a group of about a dozen women seated around a boardroom ta
Health care workers at a Las Vegas endoscopy clinic linked to more than 80 cases of hepatitis C routinely mishandled injection equipment and medication vials and often failed to perform basic hand hygiene, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released Friday. The Endoscopy Center of
DALLAS - A homeless man who spit in the mouth and eye of a police officer and then taunted him, saying he was H.I.V. positive, was sentenced to 35 years in prison on Wednesday for harassing a public servant with a deadly weapon: his saliva. Because of the deadly weapon finding, the man, Willie Campbell, 42, of Dallas,
Word spread quickly inside the windowless walls of the Elizabeth Detention Center, an immigration jail in New Jersey: A detainee had fallen, injured his head and become incoherent. Guards had put him in solitary confinement, and late that night, an ambulance had taken him away more dead than alive. But outside, for fiv
NOW that Nassau and Suffolk Counties have won their lawsuit to restore full federal financing for helping those with AIDS and the H.I.V. infection, health and social service officials say they hope to boost medical and support services to Long Island patients. An April 25 ruling by the United States Court of Appeal
My Times colleague Barry Bearak was imprisoned by the brutal regime in Zimbabwe last month. Barry was not beaten, but he was infected with scabies while in a bug-infested jail. He was finally brought before a court after four nights in jail and then released. Alas, we don t treat our own inmates in Guantanamo with even
Design on a Dime, the annual sale to benefit Housing Works thrift shops, which raise money for poor New Yorkers with H.I.V. or AIDS, begins next Thursday evening. All furnishings will be sold at 60 to 80 percent off retail, and vignettes will be created by 30 designers, including Jamie Drake, Thom Filicia and James Hun
THROUGHOUT the 20th century, it was an American birthright that each generation would live longer than the last. Year after year, almost without exception, the anticipated life span of the average American rose inexorably, to 78 years in 2005 from 61 years in 1933, when comprehensive data first became available. AN APP
ONE man is a former professional football player. The other has been a security guard and a short-order cook amid stints in prison for selling drugs. As different as their backgrounds are, both men are now homeless, jobless and infected with the virus that causes AIDS. Roy Simmons, 51, was an offensive lineman for the
On a night when many people around the country may have been focused on the Democratic primary in Pennsylvania, some in New York showed up at a Bush event - that is a Laura and Jenna Bush event. At least 500 people turned out at the 92nd Street Y on Lexington Avenue to hear the first lady and one of the Bush twins, Jen
The coach of Chelsea, the Israeli Avram Grant, has been bombarded by many more than the four questions of Passover the past week from the news media, which have often been hostile during his tumultuous eight-month reign with the English Premier League club. Grant is a friend of Chelsea s billionaire Russian owner, Roma
Life expectancy has long been growing steadily for most Americans. But it has not for a significant minority, according to a new study, which finds a growing disparity in mortality depending on race, income and geography. The study, published Monday in the online journal PLoS, analyzed life expectancy in all 3,141 coun
Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, the Vatican s leading voice in defense of traditional family values and in opposition to abortion, contraception and gay marriage, died of cardiac arrest on Saturday in Rome, the Vatican said Sunday. He was 72 and had been hospitalized in recent weeks for treatment for complications fro
BEIJING - One of China s most prominent human rights advocates has missed the deadline to appeal his recent conviction for inciting subversion after prison guards denied him the chance to meet with his lawyer to discuss whether to proceed, his wife and his lawyer said Thursday. The advocate, Hu Jia, 34, had faced a Mon
A new book of documentary photographs, Shelter, examines a group of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender young people living, off and on, at a homeless shelter in Hell s Kitchen - a group for whom growing up could hardly be more difficult. That the book is the product of a 27-year-old photographer who is gay, grew up
On a Sunday in July 1832, a fearful and somber crowd of New Yorkers gathered in City Hall Park for more bad news. The epidemic of cholera, cause unknown and prognosis dire, had reached its peak. People of means were escaping to the country. The New York Evening Post reported, The roads, in all directions, were lined wi
LOS ANGELES - Just about anyone who has tuned in American Idol this season has seen video clips of Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul and Simon Cowell touring slums in Africa or working with victims of poverty in the United States as part of the program s Idol Gives Back charity. Ryan Seacrest, the show s host, has repeatedly
IN 1992, Paul Lustig Dunkel, the music director and conductor of the Westchester Philharmonic, commissioned the composer Laura Kaminsky to write a piece for the orchestra. Sixteen years later, Ms. Kaminsky, now the dean of music at the Purchase College Conservatory of Music and the interim artistic director of the Perf
Ten days ago, I noted the reckless assertion of Barack Obama s former pastor that the United States government had deliberately engineered AIDS to kill blacks, but I tried to put it in context by citing a poll showing that 30 percent of African-Americans believe such a plot is at least plausible. My point was that
Back in 1984, federal health officials, flush with excitement over discovery of the virus that causes AIDS, famously predicted that they would have a vaccine ready for market within three years. Now, after almost a quarter-century of toil and struggle, the effort has crashed in failure. No one yet knows whether a vacci
WASHINGTON - Researchers must go back to the drawing board before they can develop an effective vaccine against H.I.V., AIDS experts said at a scientific meeting on Tuesday. And Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the top federal official responsible for AIDS research, agreed that more fundamental knowledge is needed about H.I.V. an
PORT ELIZABETH, South Africa - The Jose Pearson TB Hospital here is like a prison for the sick. It is encircled by three fences topped with coils of razor wire to keep patients infected with lethal strains of tuberculosis from escaping. But at Christmastime and again around Easter, dozens of them cut holes in the fence
The first large-scale scientific test of family planning took place in Khanna, India , beginning in the early 1950s. Backed by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health, researchers asked 8,000 villagers how often they had sex, whether they wanted to conceive and the details of the women s mens
WASHINGTON - New government research has found large and growing disparities in life expectancy for richer and poorer Americans, paralleling the growth of income inequality in the last two decades. Life expectancy for the nation as a whole has increased, the researchers said, but affluent people have experienced greate
Barack Obama this week gave the best political speech since John Kennedy talked about his Catholicism in Houston in 1960, and it derived power from something most unusual in modern politics: an acknowledgment of complexity, nuance and legitimate grievances on many sides. It was not a sound bite, but a symphony. But the
WASHINGTON - Progress in detecting new cases of tuberculosis is slowing, threatening to increase the risks of transmitting drug-resistant strains, the World Health Organization said Monday. From 2005 to 2006, the rate of increase in detecting new cases fell to 3 percent from an average of 6 percent in the preceding fiv
Teenage girls and their parents need to read the latest government study of sexually transmitted diseases. The infections are so prevalent they are hard to avoid once a girl becomes sexually active. One in four girls ages 14 to 19 is infected with at least one of four common diseases. Among African-American girls in th
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Most Haitians are unemployed, but the first lady, Laura Bush, spoke to some of the fortunate few who do have jobs here in the poorest country in the hemisphere during her visit on Thursday. The trip was aimed at putting a positive face on some of the country s social ills and highlighting what t
The last time I saw Eliot Spitzer, he encouraged me to write about his work involving prostitution. So here goes. The governor buttonholed me because he wanted credit for passage of a tough state law against sex trafficking. Frankly, he deserves credit, for the law took the innovative step of cracking down on johns by
Many cases of sexually transmitted diseases are escaping detection because gay men are not being tested each year as advised, federal health officials said Wednesday. And if the men do show up, the officials added, many doctors and clinics are not following screening recommendations. But more cases could be detected if
The first national study of four common sexually transmitted diseases among girls and young women has found that one in four are infected with at least one of the diseases, U.S. health officials reported Tuesday. Nearly half the African-Americans in the study of teenagers ages 14 to 19 were infected with at least one o
It is a basic tenet of human biology, taught in grade schools everywhere: Identical twins come from the same fertilized egg and, thus, share identical genetic profiles. But according to new research, though identical twins share very similar genes, identical they are not. The discovery opens a new understanding of why
KWANGWANASE, South Africa - Colin Pfaff, a slight doctor imbued with Christian zeal, had reached a moral crossroads. Dr. Pfaff knew that giving H.I.V.-positive women and their newborns two anti-AIDS drugs instead of one would reduce the odds that mothers would pass the virus to their babies. For months, he and doctors
NUBA MOUNTAINS, Sudan - The farm families living in these rocky hills in central Sudan confront every disease imaginable, from leprosy to malaria, and perhaps one-quarter of children die by the age of five. Yet this is a good news column. Karlo will live. The number of children who die worldwide each year before the ag
NEW YORK: Years ago, a large poster featuring an appealingly sweaty and smiling young man climbing a mountain appeared in my subway station, directly across from my usual waiting spot. Purportedly he had been invigorated by one of the first AIDS drugs marketed directly to the public. He looked magnificent on top of his
Patients might not particularly like the new admission procedure at a growing number of hospitals: having what looks like an elongated Q-Tip stuck up their noses. But it smells great to Cepheid. Cepheid, a biotechnology company in Silicon Valley, sells a rapid genetic test to detect MRSA, an antibiotic-resistant superb
MICHELLE OUTHOUSE, 17, has never had a friend or family member stricken with AIDS. But she has cared deeply about fighting the disease ever since a speaker on the subject came to her school when she was a sophomore. So she made a movie about it. Ten minutes of her 35-minute Negative for Life will be shown at the Ninth
SHARES of drug makers are usually in demand when the economic outlook is cloudy and investors are avoiding risk. The companies stable earnings may be less appealing this time because the sector faces some new risks. Widespread calls by political leaders to overhaul the health care system have hit the stocks, as has con
Congress and the White House are preparing to ramp up spending on programs to combat AIDS and related diseases around the world while removing some of the ideological blinders that have long undermined the effort to slow the spread of the AIDS virus. It will be a welcome strengthening of a foreign aid program that was
Drug-resistant tuberculosis cases in parts of the former Soviet Union have reached the highest rates ever recorded globally, the World Health Organization said Tuesday. The rates could soar even higher, spreading the potentially fatal disease elsewhere, a top W.H.O. official said, releasing findings from the largest gl
A new documentary, Please Talk to Kids About AIDS, raises this question in a cute but discomfiting way. So far it has been seen only at film festivals and at schools of public health, including those at Harvard and Johns Hopkins. But the film will soon be available at www.eztakes.com/Talk-to-Kids. I saw it last month a
Needle exchange programs save lives. They slow the spread of H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, and they help get addicts into treatment. Yet when it comes to supporting these programs, it seems that the political cowardice never ends. For the last 20 years, Congress has blocked the use of federal money to pay for nee
ACCRA, Ghana - Traveling across Africa this week, President Bush has been a little like Santa Claus, a benevolent figure from another land handing out gifts - American foreign aid - and generating smiles wherever he goes. But here in the capital of Ghana on Wednesday, the smiles stopped for a moment as Mr. Bush confron
DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania - President Bush has been smothered with affection here, never more so than on Sunday, when he sat at a wooden desk under a sweltering sun with President Jakaya Kikwete by his side and signed a $698 million grant of foreign aid to Tanzania. But while people here in the capital city of this East
IT was a slow weeknight at the Comfort Zone, a meeting place for men that is in a drab office building amid the Broadway musicals on West 49th Street. Although snow and sleet fell in the streets, several men endured the frigid weather to make their way to the club s spacious second-floor suite, eager to indulge the yea
WASHINGTON - On the eve of a planned trip to Africa, President Bush thrust himself into the role of peacemaker on Thursday, as his plans to promote American efforts against poverty and disease gave way to a more pressing imperative: addressing the violence and turmoil on the continent. Mr. Bush injected his administrat
SAN FRANCISCO - Government scientists have discovered a new way that H.I.V. attacks human cells, an advance that could provide fresh avenues for the development of additional therapies to stop AIDS, they reported on Sunday. The discovery is the identification of a new human receptor for H.I.V. The receptor helps guide
SEATTLE - Patty Stonesifer, who helped start the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in an office over a pizza parlor seven years ago and has overseen its growth it into the world s largest philanthropic institution, said in an interview on Wednesday that she would step down by the end of the year. Her decision marks a m
BOSTON - Researchers have identified another way that babies can be infected with H.I.V. - through food pre-chewed by an infected parent or caretaker. Although thousands of babies have been infected in the United States over the last 15 years, pre-chewed food has been documented as the cause of just three cases, federa
KIGALI, Rwanda - A year ago, staff members at the Treatment and Research AIDS Center could barely cope. Patients, unable to find care elsewhere, flowed in from every corner of the country. And if one of them was fortunate enough to find a bed here, she often had to share it. Today, a dozen patients, mostly women, sit i
BOSTON - Over recent years, giving an antiretroviral drug to a woman infected with the AIDS virus in labor and to her baby at birth has reduced the risk of transmitting the virus to the baby. Yet many babies born uninfected go on to acquire H.I.V., the AIDS virus, in the lengthy period of breast feeding because of cont
Charles Van Der Horst, M.D.; As told to Joan Raymond, joan.raymond@nytimes.com.
AS an infectious diseases specialist, I travel to Johannesburg, South Africa , and Lilongwe, Malawi , four times a year for various projects related to my work with the human immunodeficiency virus or, as we all know it, H.I.V. I also go to
BOSTON - A number of studies showing that circumcision among men reduces their risk of infection from the AIDS virus has raised the hope that the procedure would also benefit their female sexual partners. But the expectations were challenged Sunday by a new study showing that male circumcision conferred no indirect ben
At a New York or Los Angeles cocktail party, few would dare make a pejorative comment about Barack Obama s race or Hillary Clinton s sex. Yet it would be easy to get away with deriding Mike Huckabee s religious faith. Liberals believe deeply in tolerance and over the last century have led the battles against prejudices
The French director Andre Techine is a master at evoking personality quirks, the unpredictability of relationships and the haphazard way love affairs, friendships and social groups form and dissolve. Many of his films, like Changing Times and Wild Reeds, portray a multicultural environment in which French and North Afr
The United States Institute of Peace is building a headquarters on the Mall in Washington. WASHINGTON - The economy may be slowing down, but Washington s ideas industry is booming. The Center for Strategic and International Studies, a research institution that was effectively broke seven years ago, just bought a $33 mi
WASHINGTON - Facing an unstable economy and an unfinished war, President Bush used his final State of the Union address Monday night to call for quick passage of his tax rebate package, patience in Iraq and a modest concluding agenda that includes $300 million in scholarship money for low-income children in struggling
SAN FRANCISCO - In a matter of days, it jumped from a routine press release to a medical controversy. On Monday, a team of researchers led by doctors from the University of California at San Francisco announced that gay men were many times more likely than others to acquire a new strain of drug-resistant staphylococcus
Scientists have discovered a previously unknown virus and strongly linked it with the most aggressive form of skin cancer, they reported in a scientific journal on Thursday. The cancer, Merkel cell carcinoma, tends to occur most often on the sun-exposed areas of the body like the face, the head and the neck. Although i
Nine hundred thirty thousand, one hundred eighty minutes. That s how you measure the total running time Rent will have played on Broadway when, as the producers said on Tuesday, it closes after its evening performance on June 1, making it the seventh-longest-running Broadway show in history. But the length of its run i
A new, highly drug-resistant strain of the flesh-eating MRSA bacteria is being spread among gay men in San Francisco and Boston, researchers reported on Monday. In a study published online by the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, the bacteria seemed to be spread most easily through anal intercourse but also through
AIDS appears to be making an alarming comeback. The Journal of the American Medical Association reports that the incidence of H.I.V. infection among gay men is shooting up, following an encouraging period of decline. The rise of infections among younger gay men, especially black and Hispanic men, is troubling, and the
Using a new type of genetic screen, researchers at Harvard Medical School have identified 273 proteins that the AIDS virus needs to survive in human cells, opening up new potential targets for drugs. Their work, published online on Thursday by Science magazine, used RNA interference to screen thousands of protein-makin
CHICAGO -- John Holloway received a diagnosis of AIDS nearly two decades ago, when the disease was a speedy death sentence and treatment a distant dream. Yet at 59 he is alive, thanks to a cocktail of drugs that changed the course of an epidemic. But with longevity has come a host of unexpected medical conditions, whic
WASHINGTON - Dr. Jean W. Pape did not know what to expect in early January 2003, when he slipped away from his work treating AIDS patients in Haiti and flew to Washington for a secret meeting with President Bush. Mr. Bush was considering devoting billions to combat global AIDS, a public health initiative unparalleled i
For years he had numbed his pain and fear with drugs, alcohol and anonymous sex. But in a flash of clarity one day, when the crystal meth was wearing off, Javier Arriola dragged himself to a clinic to get an H.I.V. test, years after he stopped using condoms. He knew the answer before he received the results, but it was
Cambridge, Mass. - ALTHOUGH the United Nations recently lowered its global H.I.V. estimates, as many as 33 million people worldwide are still living with the AIDS virus. This pandemic requires continued attention; preventing further deaths and orphans remains imperative. But the well-meaning promises of some presidenti
WASHINGTON - The economy may be slowing down, but Washington s ideas industry is booming. The Center for Strategic and International Studies, a research institution that was effectively broke seven years ago, just bought a $33 million vacant lot downtown as the site for a new home. The Council on Foreign Relations is e
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