San Francisco Chronicle - Wednesday, December 27, 1989
Lori Olszewsli, David Tuller, Chronicle Staff Writers
For the first time, lawyers representing people infected with the AIDS virus through blood transfusions will be allowed to question HIV-infected blood donors to determine whether they were properly screened by San Francisco s Irwin Memorial Blood Bank before 1985. Superior Court Judge Daniel Hanlon ruled in San Francis
San Francisco Chronicle - Monday December 25, 1989
Randy Shilts
When the final history of AIDS is written, 1989 could well go down as the year in which America turned the corner in the fight against the HIV epidemic. Key battles on both the scientific and social fronts of the epidemic were waged and won this year. Advances in the treatment of HIV-related diseases renewed hope that
San Francisco Chronicle - Friday, December 22, 1989
Charles Petit, Chronicle Science Writer
Private laboratories that test blood for infection by the HIV virus often interpret results with outdated methods and load their reports with such confusing language it could delay treatment or cause patients undue fear, a California-based study concludes. While the 13 laboratories studied apparently did the tests corr
San Francisco Chronicle - Monday December 18, 1989
Randy Shilts
If I didn t know better, I d swear that the AIDS protesters who have been disrupting services and vandalizing Catholic churches in San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles were being paid by some diabolical reactionary group dedicated to discrediting the gay community. To say the least, these protesters are embracing a
San Francisco Chronicle - Sunday December 17, 1989
John Stanley, Chronicle Staff Writer
CORRECTION PUBLISHED DECEMBER 31, 1989 FOLLOWS: In a December 17 article entitled A Look at Ethical Challenges of Epidemic, the protest that shut down the Golden Gate Bridge in 1988, the disruption of this fall s opening of the opera season at the Opera House, and vandalizing of Catholic churches in Los Angeles and San
San Francisco Chronicle - Friday, December 15, 1989
Lori Olszewski, Chronicle Staff Writer
The state will allow some prisoners infected with the AIDS virus to work and attend class with other inmates in a pilot program that may settle a lawsuit challenging the California policy of segregating all prisoners with the virus. California is one of only six states that automatically isolate prisoners known to be i
San Francisco Chronicle - Wednesday, December 13, 1989
Gerald S. Cohen, Special to The Chronicle
Washington - The National Commission on AIDS, in a move hailed by legal and human rights organizations, urged the federal government yesterday to stop restricting the visitor and immigration rights of people with the AIDS virus. The government now marks the passports of people infected with the AIDS-causing HIV virus a
San Francisco Chronicle - Monday December 11, 1989
Randy Shilts
A helpful glossary of politically correct terms was handed out to reporters at the most recent international AIDS conference. An AIDS patient is not to be called a victim or a sufferer, according to the lexicon approved by a World Health Organization conference. Instead, he is a person with AIDS. Also taboo is th
San Francisco Chronicle - Saturday December 9, 1989
Elaine Herscher, Chronicle Staff Writer
St. Mary s Hospital has been found negligent in the death of a woman who succumbed to AIDS after receiving a tainted blood transfusion. A San Francisco Superior Court jury this week found that the hospital did not inform Cambodian refugee Chan Tou Phen of the AIDS risk when she received a blood transfusion in November
San Francisco Chronicle - Friday, December 8, 1989
THERE WERE SOME strong -- and valuable -- words in the first report to the president to be issued by the National Commission on AIDS. The report, which was eight months ahead of schedule, reflects both the sense of urgency that the commission has brought to its task, and heartening evidence of compassionate realism.
San Francisco Chronicle - Thursday December 7, 1989
Randy Shilts
The National Commission on AIDS called yesterday for the creation of a comprehensive health care system for AIDS patients and more aggressive efforts to combat HIV among intravenous drug users. In sending its first report to President Bush eight months before it was due, the commission said the issues are so compelling
San Francisco Chronicle - TUESDAY December 5, 1989
Randy Shilts
Keith Hoots cringes whenever he learns that one of his hemophilia patients is about to check into the hospital, even for a minor procedure. I just get so worried that one of these times the hospital is going to say, We won t admit him -- it costs too much, said Hoots, an associate professor of pediatrics at the Univers
San Francisco Chronicle - Tuesday, December 5, 1989
Randy Shilts, Chronicle National Correspondent
Americans afflicted with hemophilia have the highest HIV infection rate of any population in the world and face serious problems ranging from health care costs as high as $100,000 a year to the largely unabated spread of the AIDS virus to their wives and children. An estimated 60 percent of the nation s 20,000 hemophil
San Francisco Chronicle - Tuesday, December 5, 1989
Randy Shilts
Portland, Ore. - Barry Kurath was ecstatic when he learned that researchers had devised a pure new version of the clotting factor he needs to treat his hemophilia. The new Factor VIII product, he knew, would drastically reduce his exposure to hepatitis viruses -- a major development, given that liver disease is the sec
A comforting Official Truth has evolved in recent years concerning the discovery of the AIDS virus. The French AIDS researchers at the Pasteur Institute and their American counterparts at the National Cancer Institute searched for the virus with a spirit of scientific cooperation and a free exchange of ideas, according
San Francisco Chronicle - Friday, December 1, 1989
Mark MacNamara, Chronicle Staff Writer
A cottage behind a house on the Great Highway. White door, brass knocker engraved with the name Olsen. Inside, a 5-year-old boy named Shelby has a chemically induced, AIDS-like illness. In the past nine months, a bright, imaginative boy s condition has brought his family to emotional and financial ruin. His mother is d
San Francisco Chronicle - Tuesday, November 21, 1989
David Tuller, Chronicle Staff Writer
The San Francisco AIDS Foundation yesterday unveiled a new instructional package to help companies cope with the problem of AIDS in the workplace. The program -- called The Next Step: HIV in the 90s -- includes a manual and a 24-minute videotape and discusses issues such as confidentiality, employment benefits, reasona
San Francisco Chronicle - Monday November 20, 1989
Randy Shilts
Death, an issue once so comfortably distant, suddenly becomes an imminent threat. You can t get away from news of the people who have died, people who seem to be just like you. You re overwhelmed by the knowledge that it could have been you. Death becomes a preoccupation. Sleeping is difficult; nightmares are frequent.
San Francisco Chronicle - Monday November 13, 1989
Jerry Carroll, Chronicle Staff Writer
Imagine that working conditions put you in a fine red mist of human blood. So much blood it forms a film on your face and neck, soaks through a gown to your underwear. Imagine so much blood in the air that you breathe in its finest particles through your mask. This is the medium in which orthopedic surgeons often funct
San Francisco Chronicle - Monday November 13, 1989
Randy Shilts
June Osborn always sees two or three of them, standing in the back of the crowded halls when she speaks about AIDS. At the end of the talk, when everyone else has left, they approach Osborn, grasp her hand and tell of a son or daughter who has died. Frequently, the exchange marks the first time the parent has ever told
San Francisco Chronicle - Tuesday, November 7, 1989
Don Lattin, Chronicle Religion Writer
Baltimore - Exactly 200 years after Father John Carroll was elected the first Roman Catholic bishop of the United States , nearly 300 of the nation s Catholic bishops gathered here yesterday to debate some of the most volatile matters confronting the church. At first glance, the agenda for the four-day bishops meeting
San Francisco Chronicle - Thursday October 26, 1989
David Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor
After more than a year of political and medical pressure, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is about to allow the use of the anti-viral drug AZT to treat AIDS in infants and children under the age of 13, government sources disclosed yesterday. The announcement is expected to be made today by Dr.
San Francisco Chronicle - Tuesday, October 17, 1989
Early human tests of a potential AIDS vaccine suggest that people already infected by the HIV virus may benefit if they are vaccinated before disease symptoms appear, according to a U.S. Army medical research team. Dr. Robert Redfield of the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Washington said that trials with a s
When Dr. Mark Smith talks about the future of AIDS policy in the 1990s, he recalls two patients he tended during his residency at San Francisco General Hospital. One was an 80-year-old man who had lived his entire life in San Francisco and was dying of a brutally disfiguring cancer. The man fell through the cracks of a
San Francisco Chronicle - Saturday October 14, 1989
Randy Shilts, National Correspondent
The federal government may try to force down the prices of expensive AIDS drugs and has already moved to ensure that manufacturers do not profit excessively from the next major AIDS treatment, a top Washington health official said yesterday. Saying that some drug manufacturers appear not to be socially responsible abou
San Francisco Chronicle - Friday, October 13, 1989
Randy Shilts, David Tuller, Chronicle Staff Writers
A dawning age of early intervention with AIDS will reduce the number of cases that can be expected in the early 1990s, the federal government s top AIDS researcher told a scientific conference in San Francisco yesterday. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the associate director for AIDS research of the National Institutes of Health, s
San Francisco Chronicle - Friday, October 13, 1989
Charles Petit, Chronicle Science Writer
Public education efforts have failed to curb public fear of being near people infected by the AIDS virus, particularly infected doctors, a nationwide survey by San Francisco researchers says. Most patients would not let themselves be treated by a doctor infected by the AIDS virus, and of people surveyed, nearly half sa
Remember when AIDS was about to become a heterosexual pandemic, the new Black Death that would sweep the straight singles bars of America? AIDS is everybody s problem, according to the operative AIDS cliche of 1985. That became loosely translated to mean: You re all gonna get it, too. Today, in chic Los Angeles night c
San Francisco Chronicle - Tuesday, October 3, 1989
Thomas G. Keane, Chronicle Staff Writer
San Francisco Mayor Art Agnos, delivering his second state-of-the city address, yesterday hailed the Fire Department s internal efforts against racism, proposed an extension of new business taxes and promised to consider a lawsuit to lower the cost of AIDS treatment drugs. In his address to the Board of Supervisors, Ag
San Francisco Chronicle - Wednesday, September 27, 1989
David Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor
A widely prescribed drug used to treat bronchitis and other lung ailments appears to block the reproduction of the AIDS virus in laboratory experiments, Stanford University scientists reported yesterday. The drug s effect on the virus has not been tested yet in either humans or animals, but plans are now being accelera
San Francisco Chronicle - Monday September 25, 1989
Randy Shilts
MEMO: AIDS/THE INSIDE STORY The young men joined hands in a circle, inhaling deeply. With eyes closed, they strained to imagine white light falling around them. White light engulfing them, cleansing away the virus, saving their lives. Five years ago, such meetings, with white-light meditations conducted by solemn leade
San Francisco Chronicle - Saturday September 23, 1989
Chuck Ross, Chronicle TV Writer
Heyyy, It s Connie. That s what David Letterman says Saturday Night With Connie Chung should really be called. Well, it s worth thinking about, Chung said earlier this week in a phone interview from New York. I don t want to reject anything out of hand, she added with a laugh. Chung has been criticized because her new
San Francisco Chronicle - Wednesday, September 20, 1989
Randy Shilts, National Correspondent
Organizers of a clandestine trial of the AIDS drug Compound Q made their first public announcement of the study s results yesterday as renewed controversy swirled around the unorthodox research. Leaders of Project Inform, the San Francisco-based AIDS information group that organized the study, and doctors involved with
San Francisco Chronicle - Wednesday, September 20, 1989
Elaine Herscher, David Tuller, Chronicle Staff Writer
It will cost San Francisco $60 million more a year than is now available to treat the 23,000 people in the city who are infected with the AIDS virus, according to a health department study released yesterday. In San Francisco, where experts say the model of AIDS treatment is already crumbling for lack of funds, the com
San Francisco Chronicle - Monday September 18, 1989
Marc Sandalow, Chronicle Staff Writer
The Bush administration s top health official said yesterday that he cannot endorse a needle-exchange program, such as the one approved by San Francisco s Health Commission last week, without evidence showing it would slow the spread of AIDS. In an interview with The Chronicle, Secretary of Health and Human Services Lo
San Francisco Chronicle - Friday, September 15, 1989
Elaine Herscher, Chronicle Staff Writer
In the most far-reaching study to date, researchers warn that it will cost a staggering $5 billion a year to treat everyone infected with the AIDS virus who can benefit from early care. Unless policymakers, public health and medical leaders plan now, early intervention will only invite further chaos and disarray in the
San Francisco Chronicle - Wednesday, September 13, 1989
Lori Olszewski, Chronicle Staff Writer
The San Francisco Health Commission yesterday approved the concept of giving drug addicts clean needles in exchange for dirty ones to fight AIDS, but the plan will stay only on paper unless state law changes. The 4-to-1 vote of support was seen as largely symbolic by many at the meeting, although needle exchange suppor
San Francisco Chronicle - Tuesday, September 12, 1989
Lori Olszewski, Chronicle Staff Writer
Jimmy Camarillo watches television and stares at the walls of his cell while other inmates in the California state prison system receive college educations and job training. The reason is AIDS. I feel like they just have me in storage, said Camarillo, 34, a prisoner in the AIDS isolation unit at the California Medical
San Francisco Chronicle - Monday September 11, 1989
Nanette Asimov, Chronicle Staff Writer
A jubilant Peter Pender has received word that Australian immigration authorities have changed their mind and will grant him a visa today despite his ARC diagnosis, which means he can join the World Champion Bridge Tournament going on there now. I was elated beyond belief, Pender said yesterday after authorities in Aus
San Francisco Chronicle - Monday September 11, 1989
Randy Shilts
A year ago, Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health was being derided in AIDS treatment circles as the very personification of a timid government bureaucrat, more concerned with protecting scientific orthodoxy than speeding the development of AIDS drugs. Protesters called him a Nazi, and playwright Larry
San Francisco Chronicle - Saturday September 9, 1989
J.L. Pimsleur, Tony Bizjak, Chronicle Staff Writers
CORRECTION PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 13, 1989 FOLLOWS: An article in Saturday s Chronicle describing the disruption of the San Francisco Opera opening contained several errors. Due to a reporting mistake, the article incorrectly asserted that police herded demonstrators from the hall and issued citations. In fact, police arr
San Francisco Chronicle - Friday, September 8, 1989
Sacramento - Final results from a survey among California mothers and their newborn babies showed that one in every 1,344 mothers was infected with HIV, the AIDS virus, and passed it on to their babies, state health officials reported yesterday. The anonymous survey tested blood samples from all the live infants born t
San Francisco Chronicle - Friday, September 8, 1989
Elaine Herscher, Chronicle Staff Writer
A world-class bridge player from San Francisco said yesterday that he is being denied entry into Australia for an international tournament because he has AIDS-related complex. Peter Pender, a member of the U.S. team that will be competing in Perth on September 19 for a world championship, said he received word yesterda
San Francisco Chronicle - Friday, September 8, 1989
Randy Shilts, National Correspondent
Preliminary results from the underground trial of Compound Q have found that the drug may prove to be a significant weapon against the AIDS virus but that it is not the cure some had hoped it would be, according to a San Francisco doctor working on the study. Dr. Larry Waites, one of the key physicians conducting the C
San Francisco Chronicle - Tuesday, September 5, 1989
Torri Minton, Chronicle Staff Writer
Six days a week, sometimes seven, Careth Reid gets up before dawn to work a 16-hour double-day. She is constantly surrounded by clients, conferring with consultants, meeting late into the night, traveling. In her spare time, she runs, walks, swims, bicycles, kayaks. She has been to law school and earned a master s degr
San Francisco Chronicle - Friday, September 1, 1989
David Tuller, Chronicle Staff Writer
Dr. Lorraine Day, who enraged AIDS groups and many public health officials by saying that all patients undergoing surgery should be tested for exposure to the AIDS virus, is planning to resign from her position as chief of orthopedic surgery at San Francisco General Hospital. In a letter of resignation submitted early
Sauntering in darkened doorways in the sleaziest parts of town, prostitutes have long represented the worst nightmare of an AIDS-anxious society. News that a streetwalker with early symptoms of AIDS was working San Francisco s Tenderloin a few years back prompted one local television station to talk about a walking AID
The manufacturer of the drug AZT , shown to be effective in delaying the onset of AIDS, should reduce the drug s prohibitive price, one of the top federal experts on the disease said yesterday. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, conducted a study released last week
Incredulity greeted Dr. Samuel Broder when he argued five years ago that the federal government needed to launch aggressive research to find AIDS treatments. Eminent experts patiently explained why treatments for AIDS would never be found. No viral disease, after all, had ever been cured; the cause was hopeless. Broder
San Francisco Chronicle - Saturday August 19, 1989
Steve Massey, Elaine Herscher, Chronicle Staff Writers
Euphoria over a new study that showed that the drug AZT is effective in delaying the onset of AIDS gave way yesterday to questions about how to pay for the huge expected demand for the drug. A significant portion of the estimated 1 million to 1.5 million Americans who are infected with the AIDS virus could benefit from
In Denver, the state health department has received reports that scores of men named Nancy Reagan are infected with the human immunodeficiency virus. Colorado, one of 28 states requiring the names of anyone testing positive on the HIV antibody test be reported to the state, is discovering that many gay men are edgy abo
In the fiercest war zone of the AIDS epidemic, a desperate Harlem Hospital cares for 700 full-blown AIDS cases, 800 more with AIDS-related complex and hundreds more HIV-infected patients who need continuing medical attention. The staff for this awesome task: two doctors. The financing and staff needs of such AIDS battl
In a major scientific breakthrough, the National Institutes of Health announced yesterday that new studies have found that the drug AZT is effective in slowing the development of AIDS in people who have not yet contracted the disease but who exhibit its earliest signs. The studies also found that people with early
Washington - President Bush endorsed legislation yesterday that would ban discrimination against disabled people, including those with AIDS or those who are infected with the human immunodeficiency virus. The Americans with Disabilities Act would extend civil rights laws to 37 million Americans with some form of disabi
San Francisco Chronicle - Wednesday, August 2, 1989
Randy Shilts, National Correspondent
Washington - A top Bush administration health official, rebuffing pleas from AIDS experts from San Francisco and other major cities, said yesterday that the federal government will not take a central role in financing care for AIDS patients. Although an array of doctors and local officials said cities hit hard by AIDS
On February 12, 1982, in his attic room in the Castro District, Dan Turner was afraid to sleep. All through the night I would bolt upright and clutch the pillow, he says, as if I were clutching onto life. Earlier that day, he learned he had cancer. It wasn t until a few months later that they began calling his strange
The fastest-growing AIDS organization in San Francisco is spearheaded not by angry radicals but by a buttoned-down real estate broker, and its target is not a governmental institution but one group of hospitals. The Kaiser Patient Advocacy Union - or KPAU - is raising a serious challenge to the business-as-usual, docto
DDI, the promising anti-viral AIDS drug whose early test results were reported yesterday, was incorrectly identified in The Chronicle as dideoxycytidine , which is known as DDC. The correct name of DDI is dideoxyinosine. Volunteer patients undergoing an important human trial of the experimental AIDS drug known as DDI
San Francisco Chronicle - Wednesday, July 26, 1989
Gwen Robinson, Chronicle Foreign Service
Bangkok - Three thousand prostitutes now carry the AIDS virus in Thailand and will spread the disease rapidly through this country s sex industry unless urgent measures are taken, Thai health authorities say. The Public Health Ministry urges Thai men to stop going to prostitutes because there has been an alarming incre
Official commissions often end up being a lot like Sunday school teachers: They patiently counsel people on the right thing to do, are warmly applauded for their sound advice - and then wholly ignored. This disheartening prospect undoubtedly was on the minds of many of the 15 appointees to the new National AIDS Commiss
President Bush yesterday appointed a prominent medical school professor and an Indiana housewife with AIDS to serve on the National AIDS Commission. Public health officials and AIDS patient advocacy groups immediately praised the two appointments and welcomed them as an indication that Bush intends to follow a more mod
San Francisco Chronicle - Wednesday, July 19, 1989
David Tuller, Chronicle Staff Writer
Three San Franscisco AIDS groups are urging the producers of Midnight Caller, the NBC series that touched off a nationwide controversy last fall over an AIDS-related episode, to focus on the difficulty of obtaining experimental AIDS treatments in a script currently being written. The episode that caused the controversy
San Francisco Chronicle - Wednesday, July 19, 1989
Randy Shilts
Some day this week, in a quiet office park in suburban Atlanta, the AIDS Program of the federal Centers for Disease Control will receive a phone call from a state health department providing its latest statistics on the disease. The calls come in every day of every week, but this one will mark a watershed in the histor
The future of the AIDS epidemic arrived last week in the full glare of the media spotlight and fraught with as much danger as opportunity for the future course of AIDS policy-making. The occasion of this future shock was the revelation that Project Inform, a local AIDS treatment information and lobbying group, has orga
For months, Gery Anderson spent his work days worrying about his sick lover alone at home with AIDS. I got told to cut down on the personal phone calls on the job because I was checking on him so much, said Anderson, who was an accountant with the San Francisco Opera at the time. I felt so guilty to leave him because h
Researchers administered the last round of injections to San Francisco AIDS patients as part of the controversial underground study of Compound Q, saying that initial results of the drug have been encouraging. The last five of 14 local AIDS patients participating in the study sat for two hours in a medical suite in dow
San Francisco Chronicle - Wednesday, June 28, 1989
Randy Shilts, National Correspondent
The Food and Drug Administration announced yesterday that it is opening an investigation into the underground San Francisco-based tests of the experimental AIDS drug Compound Q. FDA spokesman Brad Stone, noting that the secret studies are being conducted without FDA approval or sanction, said, We re looking at the op
San Francisco Chronicle - Wednesday, June 28, 1989
Randy Shilts, National Correspondent
Two months ago, when he started organizing the unprecedented secret trials of the promising AIDS drug Compound Q, Martin Delaney called it Renegade Research. He was convinced that eventually it would make a terrific movie, with smugglers rushing Chinese vials from a country locked in political turmoil, doctors putting
The union representing 1,600 San Francisco nurses reached a tentative contract settlement with the city yesterday, making a strike unlikely when the current contract expires Saturday. If they approve the three-year pact in voting tomorrow and Thursday, nurses at San Francisco General and Laguna Honda Hospitals will be
A San Francisco-based network of physicians, AIDS organizers and people with AIDS have secretly begun an underground clinical trial of the promising AIDS drug, Compound Q. Though apparently conducted within laws concerning the use of experimental drugs on human subjects, the unprecedented four-city study is being done
The federal government s top AIDS researcher yesterday called for opening up a parallel track of drug testing that would greatly expand the availability of new treatments for AIDS sufferers. The announcement by Dr. Anthony Fauci, the AIDS coordinator for the National Institutes of Health, marked a major philosophical s
The rate of infection by the AIDS virus among mothers of newborns appears to be twice as high in the Bay Area as it is in Los Angeles, the state Department of Health Services reported yesterday. It is possible that the apparent difference is because of chance and not truly significant, according to San Francisco s expe
The deadly AIDS virus can cause the human immune system to mobilize antibodies that actually increase the organism s virulence rather than fight it, researchers at the University of California at San Francisco have discovered. And to add still more bad news about the virus, the scientists also have found evidence that
Washington - Federal health officials have decided to take a lesson from actress Mae West, who once said, It s better to beg forgiveness than to ask permission. Top officials from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services undoubtedly will be offering many acts of contrition to Bush administration budget official
Federal spending to combat AIDS since the epidemic began will reach a total of more than $5.5 billion by the end of this year, and exceeds $2 billion this year alone, according to a team of health experts. Current federal outlays for AIDS account for a third of all spending on the disease, the analysis shows, and are r
The federal government, believing new studies may show that AZT holds off the onset of AIDS in healthy HIV-infected people, is preparing estimates of how much a large-scale distribution of the drug would cost, according to health officials. At the request of researchers at the National Institutes of Health, officials a
Montreal - Western scientists and journalists ended their days at the international AIDS conference last week by sipping chardonnay at classy French restaurants before returning to their comfortable four-star hotels. Journalists and scientists from the Third World, meanwhile, returned to the student dormitories of the
Montreal - Randy Shilts, the San Francisco Chronicle s national correspondent, closed the international AIDS conference yesterday by calling on researchers to drastically step up the pace of AIDS treatment research. Having compassion for people with AIDS is like having compassion for starving people. Starving people do
Montreal - Bay Area researchers disclosed a controversial but potentially useful discovery this week that could explain the origin of a devastating cancer that preys on the weakened immune systems of AIDS patients. Their report, presented at a closing scientific session of the fifth International AIDS Conference, envis
David Perlman, Randy Shilts, Chronicle Science Editor National Correspondent
Montreal - The largest gathering ever to focus on the problems of a single disease closed here yesterday, a few small steps closer to the still-distant goal of ending the AIDS epidemic. The delegates heard promising reports from researchers on new drugs to attack the AIDS virus and to prolong the lives of those who suf
Montreal - Dr. Jonas Salk, developer of the polio vaccine, claimed yesterday that he and his colleagues have taken the first tentative steps toward creating a vaccine that may one day prevent infection by the AIDS virus. Salk made no claim that his research group is close to a true vaccine. But his unique approach is h
In the first case of its kind, a San Francisco General Hospital nurse who contracted the AIDS virus on the job has reached a settlement with the city that paves the way for her to receive compensation. The agreement essentially gives the nurse key confidentiality protections she had been requesting since she accidental
Montreal - Delegates to the fifth International AIDS Conference will vote today on a resolution calling on the U.S. government to guarantee that it will not stop AIDS-infected foreigners from entering the United States to participate in next year s conference in San Francisco. Last Friday, U.S. immigration authorities
Montreal - Promising new approaches to the development of vaccines against the virus that causes AIDS were described here yesterday by scientists who have been seeking that elusive goal for more than five years. One of the experimental vaccines has already shown that it can stimulate the production of antibodies to the
Montreal - In what has become a somber ritual at international AIDS conferences, San Francisco researchers released their latest depressing reports about the high numbers of AIDS-infected people who go on to contract the fatal disease. Dr. George Rutherford, director of AIDS activities for the San Francisco Department
Montreal - New combinations of drugs designed to disrupt the virus that causes AIDS are showing great promise both in laboratory tests and in early human trials, the director of the U.S. National Cancer Institute reported here yesterday. Although progress is slow and the basic science to understand how the virus attack
A fast, vitally needed test for AIDS infection in babies whose mothers carry the deadly virus may be near, researchers reported at a Montreal AIDS conference. It will take more time and work, perhaps a year or more, to increase the test s accuracy, but it holds promise of determining within two days whether a newborn i
Montreal - The federal government will soon propose a stepped-up effort to encourage AIDS testing and the use of preventive treatments for AIDS-infected people, the nation s top health official said yesterday. The recommendations may require public expenditures well into the billions of dollars, said Dr. James Mason, t
Montreal - With thousands of AIDS patients trying countless new therapies on their own, confusion is sweeping through America s traditional, scientific system for testing powerful new drugs. For the first time in the history of modern medicine, organized, militant and sophisticated patients and their supporters are tak
Montreal - Nowhere in the world is the AIDS epidemic more devastating than it is in New York City. With more than 20,000 cases - 10,700 of them already resulting in death - New York now accounts for more incidences of AIDS than San Francisco, Los Angeles, Houston and Washington, D.C., combined. That grim total was repo
Montreal - New studies have found that startling numbers of homeless people are infected with the AIDS virus in a number of major American cities. The soaring infection rates are largely the result of high numbers of intravenous drug abusers and young gay runaway men among the homeless population, according to data rel
A fourth of Americans would stop seeing a doctor who treats people with AIDS, and well over half would drop any physician who was infected with the AIDS virus. The results from a nationwide survey revealed yesterday seem to confirm fears of doctors in many parts of the country that if they treat people with AIDS they r
Montreal - Despite worries that transfusion patients may risk infection from AIDS-contaminated blood, powerful new evidence in America and Europe shows the risk is extremely low and growing lower, experts said yesterday. Researchers at the national Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, at the Irwin Memorial Blood Ban
Montreal - Facing an ominous forecast that AIDS will have stricken at least 6 million people by the year 2000, more than 10,000 scientists and health workers from 130 nations opened the world s fifth annual International Conference on AIDS last night. The forecast came from Dr. Jonathan Mann, chief of the World Health
Montreal - With the AIDS epidemic now engulfing nearly a half-million people in 149 nations, 10,000 researchers, physicians and community health workers began gathering in Montreal yesterday for an international conference on combatting the lethal disease. Although the life spans of many AIDS-infected men and women are
The AIDS virus may lurk undetected for as long as three years in the blood cells of some infected men, even though standard antibody tests indicate that the men are still uninfected, Los Angeles researchers are reporting today. The new findings contradict earlier reports that the active AIDS virus stimulates production
At the San Francisco headquarters of Project Inform, an AIDS information service, Larry Tate has done little for the past month other than answer anxious phone calls about a letter of the alphabet that suddenly has taken on a magical aura: Q. People want to know where they can find Q, how to take it, says Tate, who coo
Bethesda, Md. - A common clot-preventing drug widely used after heart surgery has shown a powerful ability to increase the effectiveness of the virus-killing anti-AIDS compound AZT . Test-tube experiments applying the drug in combination with AZT indicate that in relatively large doses the heart drug can boost AZT s ab
Sacramento - A memo prepared for Republican members of the Assembly has raised eyebrows in the Capitol for its unconventional analysis of how AIDS is transmitted. The memo was written by Jim Bald of the Assembly Republican Caucus, advising GOP legislators to oppose a bill by Assemblyman Tom Hayden, D-Santa Monica, that
Doctors who said they work without sleep at University of California hospitals and are in danger of being stuck with AIDS-tainted needles criticized the university yesterday for not taking precautions to protect them. Representatives of the San Francisco Interns and Residents Association said house staff members who wo
Supervisors in Marin and Contra Costa counties approved ordinances yesterday that prohibit discrimination against people with AIDS. The ordinances, which affect unincorporated areas of the counties, bar discrimination against people with AIDS and people infected by the HIV virus in employment, education, housing and ot
Negotiations for benefits have broken down between the city and a San Francisco General Hospital nurse who became infected with the AIDS virus on the job. The nurse, known in city records as Jane Doe, said yesterday that she will take her case to a workers compensation judge. She has been petitioning the city for worke
From the palatial Swiss headquarters of the World Health Organization to angry gatherings of gay radicals in San Francisco and the United Nations, a once-obscure immigration policy has become the center of intense, behind-the-scenes maneuvering in recent weeks. At stake is the 1990 International Conference on AIDS plan
In the clutter and quiet of his San Francisco apartment, Stuart McDonald is slowly fading from existence. His thin, frail body is wasting away as he continues a 4-month-old hunger strike that is beginning to attract widespread attention. The 33-year-old budding attorney has lost more than 80 pounds since his fast began
The deadline for renewing the federal AZT subsidy to AIDS sufferers was nearing. Congress was in recess, unable to act. It looked as though the program that gave AZT to people who would otherwise die was about to expire. At the AIDS Clinic of San Francisco General Hospital, that scenario two weeks ago meant nervous pho
A new center to care for pregnant women and their unborn children who are at high risk for developing AIDS has been established by researchers with the University of California at San Francisco. The center s physicians will provide the care as soon as the women have tested positive for infection by HIV, the human immun
San Francisco Chronicle - Wednesday, April 12, 1989
Martin F. Heyworth, M.D.
To cutthrough the mass of conflicting claims about the difficult issues in AIDS treatment and prevention, The Chronicle is publishing a series of clear, concise and authoritative columns by some of the foremost medical and scientific experts who have been devoting their lives to the AIDS problem since its emergence nea
San Francisco Chronicle - Wednesday, April 12, 1989
Randy Shilts, National Correspondent
San Juan, Puerto Rico - In the shadows of the charming, 400-year-old walls of Old San Juan, under turrets where white-shoed tourists cheerfully take vacation snapshots, people are dying in the streets from AIDS. Several weeks ago, one man was found dead, sprawled in a public park. His skin was splattered with the tell-
Juanita Quintero sits at a cafe in San Francisco s Mission District. It is late afternoon. Dozens of women with children walk by as she looks out the window. Many of these passing Latinas remind her of women she has worked with in recent months. Quintero is an AIDS education worker at the Instituto Familiar de la Raza,
The district director of the Immigration and Naturalization Service in Minnesota approved a waiver yesterday that could allow Hans Paul Verhoef, a Dutch citizen with AIDS, to be freed from jail to travel to San Francisco. But Thomas J. Schiltgen decision will not become binding unless his boss, Richard Norton, associat
A Dutch man with AIDS remained jailed in Minnesota under a federal immigration law that has been cited to bar up to 15 travelers infected with AIDS virus from entering the United States in the last 16 months. Hans Paul Verhoef, 31, of Rotterdam has become a symbol for critics of an immigration law that lists infection
More than 200 AIDS-related lawsuits filed against blood banks nationwide are causing serious concern about the future of the industry, blood bank officials say. Many legal and medical observers agree that if charges of negligence against the blood banks can be proved, the lawsuits could result in millions of dollars in
San Francisco Chronicle - Wednesday, April 5, 1989
Charles Petit, Chronicle Science Writer
Competition for scarce AIDS research funds in San Francisco may be brewing between an established organization and a new group that both aim to speed up tests of novel or unconventional treatments. The new entrant is the Community Research Alliance, which is to announce its formation today in San Francisco. Organizers
San Francisco Chronicle - Wednesday, April 5, 1989
Donald I. Abrams, M.D.
To cut through the mass of conflicting claims about the difficult issues in AIDS treatment and prevention, The Chronicle is publishing a series of clear, concise and authoritative columns by some of the foremost medical and scientific experts who have been devoting their lives to the AIDS problem since its emergence ne
A Dutch delegate on his way to the national Lesbian and Gay Health Conference, which begins tomorrow in San Francisco, is being held in a Minnesota jail by federal immigration officials because he has AIDS. Hans Paul Verhoef, 31, of Rotterdam, the Netherlands , is being detained by the Immigration and Naturalization Se
In a key test of Proposition 96, a state appellate court yesterday upheld mandatory AIDS testing for a woman who bit a bailiff. In ordering the test for Johnetta Johnson, however, the state Court of Appeal in San Francisco said that the results of the blood tests must be kept in the strictest confidence. In the one-pag
The AIDS epidemic is spreading more swiftly among California s black population than any other ethnic group in the state, and prospects are even grimmer for the future, state health department analysts reported yesterday. In a detailed statistical report, Dr. Kenneth Kizer, California s health director, warned that the
San Francisco Chronicle - Wednesday, March 29, 1989
Paul A. Volberding, M.D.
With the AIDS epidemic spreading into every nation on earth and AIDS deaths sparing no single class or population group, no simple cure for the disease is even on the horizon. A vaccine may be even further away. Fundamental research into the nature of HIV, the AIDS virus, engages more and more basic researchers. Clinic
Many heroin addicts who used to share needles and syringes have changed their habits and no longer pass the dangerous equipment around, AIDS researchers reported yesterday. Needles and the syringes attached to them can become contaminated with blood from people infected by HIV, the AIDS virus. In some major cities, add
San Francisco Chronicle - Wednesday, March 22, 1989
Elaine Herscher, Chronicle Staff Writer
A San Francisco General Hospital nurse who became infected with the AIDS virus on the job reached a tentative agreement yesterday with the city that could allow her to get health benefits. Patricia Hastings, attorney for the nurse, said an agreement was reached in principle for her client, known to the city only as Jan
If there is any city to which San Francisco can look for lessons concerning the controversy over providing free needles to drug addicts, it would be far across the Atlantic beneath the brooding bluffs of Scotland s Edinburgh Castle. The tragedy of AIDS in Edinburgh offers a chilling warning of what San Francisco can ex
The AIDS virus can be secreted in saliva, but only rarely and in very small amounts with no evidence that the fluid by itself poses a serious risk of infecting other people, researchers told a dental research gathering yesterday. The report, from a group at the medical center at the University of California at San Fran
New AIDS cases among homosexual men in San Francisco will decline significantly over the next three years, according to a new report on the epidemic s trend. The study also found that the time between exposure to the virus and the first signs of disease now averages nearly 10 years, up from the seven to eight years cit
San Francisco Chronicle - Wednesday, March 15, 1989
David Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor
Strains of the AIDS virus isolated from patients undergoing long-term treatment with AZT are showing resistance to the medication, drug company officials notified physicians yesterday. The confirmed reports of drug-resistance involve only a few patients so far, and doctors who are prescribing AZT to fight the infection
When a San Francisco General Hospital nurse became the first health worker in the city to contract the AIDS virus on the job 19 months ago, a chill raced through the local health care community. Co-workers who knew the nurse s identity rallied around her, and the hospital rushed to her aid with sympathy and support.
Frustrated by the government response to the AIDS epidemic among drug users, a clandestine band of Bay Area residents is illegally giving addicts clean needles in exchange for dirty ones. The 20-member group, which calls itself Prevention Point, has been risking arrest since November to check the spread of AIDS among i
The resurgence of potentially risky sex in private clubs is just a small part of a larger problem of gay men occasionally slipping back into unsafe sex practices, leaders of San Francisco s health care community say. I don t think the biggest problem is what s going on in the back rooms of a couple of bookstores, said
The vast majority of gay men do not want to be tested for AIDS virus infection unless the results are completely confidential, a new San Francisco survey shows. Unless the men could be assured that results would not be reported by name to public health authorities, two-thirds of those surveyed said they would not take
San Francisco Chronicle - Wednesday, March 1, 1989
Maitland Zane, Chronicle Staff Writer
In the state s first ruling on Proposition 96, a San Francisco judge yesterday tentatively upheld mandatory AIDS testing for a woman who bit a court bailiff during a child custody dispute. But Municipal Court Judge Perker L. Meeks, Jr. delayed his order until March 23 to allow an appeal after his ruling drew heated con
San Francisco Chronicle - Monday February 27, 1989
Don Lattin
MEMO: RELATED STORY, SPECIAL REPORT: AIDS AND FAITH West Hollywood - Jim took the cordless microphone and turned toward Louise Hay, who sat cross-legged on a table before a small auditorium overflowing with 350 people, most of them with AIDS-related illnesses. Why do some people who work so hard with your books and tap
San Francisco Chronicle - Monday February 27, 1989
Don Lattin, Chronicle Religion Writer
MEMO: RELATED STORY, SPECIAL REPORT: AIDS AND FAITH In the darkening shadow of AIDS, a new spirituality is rising from San Francisco s gay community. Its sacraments are long hugs and slow, sensuous massage. Its altars are votive candles burning wherever people with AIDS gather. Its great totem is a sprawling quilt imbu
San Francisco Chronicle - Thursday February 16, 1989
Jack Viets,Chronicle Staff Writer
Surgeons face such high risk of contracting the AIDS virus in the operating room that they should be tested for the deadly virus, a San Francisco doctor said yesterday. Otherwise, surgeons could unknowingly transmit the virus to patients, Dr. Lorraine Day, chief of orthopedic surgery at San Francisco General Hospital,
San Francisco Chronicle - Tuesday, February 7, 1989
Charles Petit, Chronicle Science Writer
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, impressed by a San Francisco study and hard-pressed by AIDS patient advocates, allowed wider use yesterday of an aerosol drug that fights pneumonia common among people infected by the human immunodeficiency virus. The decision loosens controls over pentamidine, a drug that is effe
WHAT IS NEEDED in the search for effective treatments of AIDS is a greater sense of urgency. In his disturbing reports on the agony endured by AIDS patients waiting for treatment, Chronicle National Correspondent Randy Shilts described how bureaucratic delays result in postponing the approval of new, and effective, med
San Francisco Chronicle - Thursday February 2, 1989
Randy Shilts
MEMO: RELATED STORY, SERIES: SEARCH FOR AN AIDS TREATMENT A number of panels have advanced proposals to speed the development of drugs to treat AIDS, and more recommendations will be forthcoming in the near future. The most sweeping analysis of possible reforms came last year from former President Reagan s Commission o
San Francisco Chronicle - Wednesday, February 1, 1989
Randy Shilts, Chronicle National Correspondent
MEMO: SERIES: SEARCH FOR AN AIDS TREATMENT, RELATED STORY Due to an editing error, a story in Wednesday s Chronicle on AIDS treatments incorrectly reported that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases took longer than 12 months to announce the centers that would participate in the government s clinica
San Francisco Chronicle - Wednesday, February 1, 1989
Diane Curtis, Chronicle Staff Writer
A rush-hour human blockade protesting the slow pace of AIDS research and lack of support for AIDS patients froze morning traffic on the Golden Gate Bridge yesterday and set commuter tempers on fire. They won t make friends like this, said an angry Fran Soniat, a San Rafael resident who was 35 minutes late for her job a
San Francisco Chronicle - Tuesday, January 31, 1989
Randy Shilts, Chronicle National Correspondent
MEMO: SERIES: SEARCH FOR AN AIDS TREATMENT, RELATED STORY TEXT: Atlanta - Second in a series -------------------------------- Atlanta Electrons spin through his imagination as Raymond Schinazi thinks of what would happen if he tilted the molecule a little one way or the other. Could this molecule he is now designing be
San Francisco Chronicle - Tuesday, January 31, 1989
Randy Shilts, Chronicle National Correspondent
MEMO: SERIES: SEARCH FOR AN AIDS TREATMENT, RELATED STORY In a small darkened room at the University of California at San Francisco, Renee DesJarlais is deep in conversation with a viral protein. The pharmaceutical chemist tilts the joy stick controlling her computer-graphics screen and spins the protein s three-dimens
San Francisco Chronicle - Tuesday, January 31, 1989
MEMO: SERIES: SEARCH FOR AN AIDS TREATMENT, RELATED STORY For all of the attention on the federal government s role in AIDS research, it is the private sector that has always played the most crucial role in developing new medicines. Yet except for a handful of companies, such as Burroughs-Wellcome, G
SERIES: SEARCH FOR AN AIDS TREATMENT, RELATED STORY - First in a series. Eight years into the AIDS epidemic, a time of cruel and bitter irony has arrived in the search for life-saving treatments. Some of the most brilliant research in the history of science has been mobilized to battle the deadly disease - reaching int
FULLY AWARE that the AIDS epidemic is a modern scourge that will touch every aspect of the city s life, Mayor Art Agnos has appointed a broad-based task force reflecting San Francisco business and community groups to make plans for a public-private assault on the deadly disease. Although a mayoral AIDS advisory committ
To fight his illness, longtime AIDS survivor Dan Turner of San Francisco imagines he is an Indian warrior and dances around three actors who symbolize the virus. I have stomped about until my feet hurt. It feels good to bring the virus to its knees, Turner humorously told a group gathered last fall in the Eureka Valley
San Francisco Chronicle - Saturday January 14, 1989
Lori Olszewski, Chronicle Staff Writer
MEMO: In a story in The Chronicle on Saturday, it was reported that paperwork to approve a new drug trial for people with AIDS had been delayed in the Food & Drug Administration. Dr. Mark Jacobson, a physician at San Francisco General Hospital and an investigator on the drug trial, said the delay was actually encou
San Francisco Chronicle - Saturday January 14, 1989
SAN FRANCISCO - Dignity, an organization of gay and lesbian Catholics, is protesting Mayor Agnos appointment of San Francisco Archbishop John Quinn to the city s Task Force on the HIV Epidemic. It is crucial that those who advise you have our confidence and trust, Dignity said in a letter to Agnos dated January 12. Ar
San Francisco Chronicle - Thursday January 12, 1989
Elaine Herscher, Chronicle Staff Writer
San Francisco s medical community responded angrily yesterday to Governor Deukmejian s proposed budget cuts in health services, saying the reductions are foolhardy measures that will cost the state more in the long run. The governor submitted a budget on Tuesday that cuts $337 million from health and welfare programs.
San Francisco Chronicle - Thursday January 5, 1989
Randy Shilts, National Correspondent
Mayor Art Agnos has formed a task force of business, religious, political and community leaders to draft a strategy for public-private partnership to combat the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco. The group is the first such city task force in the United States to draw largely from civic leaders outside the medical and pub
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