San Francisco Chronicle - Saturday, December 12, 1998
Henry K. Lee, Chronicle Staff Writer
An East Bay man with AIDS received his personalized license plate reading HIV POS from the state Department of Motor Vehicles yesterday, capping a two-year federal court battle. But even as Kevin Dimmick, 42, of Kensington hung his plate on his motorcycle outside the DMV office in El Cerrito, a new lawsuit he has filed
San Francisco Chronicle - Friday, December 11, 1998
Sabin Russell, Chronicle Staff Writer
A new federal push for states to begin tracking HIV infections will create an early test of the rapport between Governor-elect Gray Davis and the state s vocal and politically astute gay constituency. At issue will be whether Davis will support a bill, similar to one vetoed last fall by Governor Wilson, that would esta
San Francisco Chronicle - Thursday, December 10, 1998
Jonathan Curiel, Chronicle Staff Writer
In guidelines to be announced today, federal health officials are asking states to begin tracking individuals who have taken HIV tests as a way of monitoring the spread of the infection. The proposal, issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, would let states set up their own system of tracking people g
San Francisco Chronicle, Wednesday, December 2, 1998
Sabin Russell, Chronicle Staff Writer
President Clinton s chief of AIDS research came to San Francisco on World AIDS Day yesterday, stressing the desperate need for a vaccine to stem an out of control global epidemic. Dr. Neal Nathanson, a viral epidemiologist named last May as director of the National Institutes of Health s Office of AIDS Research, acknow
San Francisco Chronicle - Tuesday, November 24, 1998
Carl T. Hall, Chronicle Science Writer
Grim new figures on the global AIDS epidemic show the disease tightening its grip throughout the developing world. In a somber update issued in advance of World AIDS Day next week, health authorities at the United Nations and World Health Organization estimated 33.4 million people worldwide will be living with HIV, the
San Francisco Chronicle - Tuesday, November 3, 1998
Laura Hamburg, Chronicle Staff Writer
AIDS among African Americans in Alameda County has reached epidemic proportions, according to health care officials who have called for a county-wide public health state of emergency -- the first of its kind in the country. Mirroring a national trend, African Americans are five times more likely to be diagnosed with AI
San Francisco Chronicle - Friday, October 30, 1998
NO DOCTOR should have to make the choice that faced Dr. Warura Mogo in Kenya in 1994: immunize 20 children with the 20 disposable needles available or immunize all 120 who wanted vaccinations but risk fatal blood-borne diseases such as HIV and hepatitis because of possibly inadequately sterilized needles. The appal
San Francisco Chronicle - Thursday, October 29, 1998
Louis Freedberg, Chronicle Washington Bureau
Describing it as one of his greatest victories in his recent budget agreement with Congress, President Clinton yesterday announced a $156 million program designed to fight the spread of AIDS among blacks and other minorities. The purpose of the program is to give minorities access to the same level of treatment availab
San Francisco Chronicle - Thursday, October 29, 1998
Reynolds Holding, William Carlsen, Chronicle Staff Writers
By the early 1990s, miscalculations and missed opportunities by health officials, needle manufacturers and relief agencies had exacted a terrible price. Unsafe injections were destroying millions of lives and costing hundreds of millions of dollars every year. (Last Of Three Parts) THIKA DISTRICT HOSPITAL: THIKA, KENYA
San Francisco Chronicle - Wednesday, October 28, 1998
Carl T. Hall, Chronicle Science Writer
People get tested for the AIDS virus sooner if anonymous testing is available, researchers say. In the first major comparison of anonymous testing versus programs that take names along with blood samples, experts found strong evidence in favor of the no-names option. From the public-health standpoint, it s a slam-dunk,
San Francisco Chronicle - Wednesday, October 28, 1998
Reynolds Holding, William Carlsen, Chronicle Staff Writers
Ten years ago, a new generation of syringes promised to end a global epidemic of unsterile injections. It was a golden opportunity, but health officials, needle makers and relief agencies let it slip away. (Second Of Three Parts) PATH OFFICES: SEATTLE For Michael Free, the four years of humbling trial and error finally
San Francisco Chronicle - Tuesday, October 27, 1998
Reynolds Holding, William Carlsen, Chronicle Staff Writers
For decades, researchers warned that contaminated syringes could transmit deadly viruses with cruel efficiency. But efforts to defuse the crisis were failed, and today, it has become an insidious global epidemic, destroying millions of lives every year. (First Of Three Parts) CONFERENCE ROOM A: WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATIO
San Francisco Chronicle - Tuesday, October 27, 1998
William Carlsen, Chronicle Staff Writer
Every day, thousands of health care workers in developing nations are accidentally stuck by needles -- in some countries at rates 10 times greater than their colleagues in the United States . Nurses prick themselves recapping needles in Thailand . Immunization workers get stuck while sterilizing syringes in
San Francisco Chronicle - Friday, October 23, 1998
Reynolds Holding, Chronicle Legal Affairs Writer
Congress has called for a dramatic reduction in accidental needle injuries, urging federal health-care and worker-safety agencies to require safer needles and more accurate reporting at the nation s medical facilities. It is the first time that Congress has publicly acknowledged a nationwide health crisis in which hund
San Francisco Chronicle - Friday, October 23, 1998
Carl T. Hall, Chronicle Science Writer
Pregnant women taking drugs against the AIDS virus may bear an increased risk of premature delivery, government health authorities warned yesterday. A few small studies have shown higher than expected rates of premature births in some HIV-infected women on combination drug therapy, the Centers for Disease Control and P
San Francisco Chronicle - Wednesday, October 14, 1998
Sabin Russell, Chronicle Staff Writer
With a pair of ads guaranteed not to play in Peoria, San Francisco has launched a publicity campaign to encourage gay men to take emergency anti-viral pills if they experience an incident of unsafe sex. In bars, dance clubs and sex clubs that cater to gay men, a poster depicts a broken condom and the words Oh S--! in
San Francisco Chronicle - Wednesday, October 14, 1998
Barbara Lee, Doretha Williams-Flornoy, Gloria Lockett, lvan Quamina
ALAMEDA COUNTY, after Los Angeles County, is home to the largest number of African Americans in the state. The 229,316 African Americans in Alameda County are more likely than other ethnic groups to develop critical and chronic health problems, and less likely to receive care. So it s no surprise that African Americans
San Francisco Chronicle - Tuesday, October 13, 1998
An AIDS patient who returned to the United States to seek disability benefits said yesterday he has been rebuffed again by immigration authorities. Christopher Arnesen said the Immigration and Naturalization Service advised him last week that its staff had concluded that he abandoned his U.S. residence by living in his
THE EXTRAORDINARY drop in the number of AIDS deaths is an inspiring testament to the value of investing in medical research. Considering that only a few years ago AIDS was almost a certain death sentence, the 44 percent reduction between 1996 and 1997 is a remarkable accomplishment. And it is largely due to such new fo
San Francisco Chronicle - Tuesday, October 27, 1998
Reynolds Holding, Chronicle Legal Affairs Writer
They arrived an average of one a week in late 1933, 17 bodies carted into the New York City medical examiner s office, all former heroin addicts, all dead of malaria. It would take Dr. Milton Helpern, assistant medical examiner, until March 1934, but with help from two narcotics detectives he made the connection: The d
San Francisco Chronicle - Thursday, October 8, 1998
David Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor
The death rate from AIDS in America, already declining steadily in recent years, plummeted by nearly 50 percent last year to its lowest in a decade, federal health officials reported yesterday. As a result, the disease no longer ranks among the nation s top 10 causes of death, and is now 14th, compared with 8th in 1996
San Francisco health clinics are detecting a steady increase in gonorrhea cases among gay men, a troubling signal of unsafe sex that may augur a similar rise of AIDS cases in the future. The findings are contained in a report released to city health commissioners this week that suggests the city may be undergoing a rev
San Francisco Chronicle - Friday, September 25, 1998
Sabin Russell, Chronicle Staff Writer
In a deal that critics say swaps cold cash for medical judgment, California s third-largest HMO is proposing to use only Bristol-Myers Squibb drugs for certain illnesses in exchange for multimillion-dollar payments from the New York drug giant. Foundation Health Systems Inc., whose Health Net HMO serves 2.1 million Cal
San Francisco Chronicle; Thursday, September 17, 1998
FOR FAR too long, state proposals to track people with the human immunodeficiency virus have been stymied by an insurmountable conflict. Health officials have insisted that the names of HIV positive people should disclosed, as are the identities of people with other government-tracked diseases. AIDS activists, however,
San Francisco Chronicle - Thursday, September 10, 1998
Carl T. Hall, Chronicle Science Writer
Scientists said yesterday that they may have discovered the deadly molecular trigger that can bring on full-blown AIDS after years of benign infection with HIV. The findings suggest a possible solution to one of the longest-running mysteries of modern medicine -- what makes some people harboring the AIDS virus suddenly
San Francisco Chronicle; Wednesday, August 5, 1998
Elaine Herscher, Chronicle Staff Writer
Defying U.S. immigration policy, a New Zealander with AIDS stepped off a plane at San Francisco International Airport yesterday to fight for disability benefits he says he earned over nearly 30 years as a resident of the United States . A weary Christopher Arnesen greeted a passel of lawyers and reporters at the U.S. C
The slogan for the Contra Costa County Health Department s English-language AIDS education campaign is You have the power to stop AIDS. But yesterday, a Latino student suggested something very different to reach Spanish speakers. Con una sandia es buena la vida, suggested 17-year-old Mayra Flores of Concord. Si tienes
Although Viagra has become a national punch line around the office water cooler these days, there was little to snicker about at a town hall meeting on the little blue pill last night in San Francisco s Castro district. About 80 members of the gay community met at the Metropolitan Community Church to separate fact from
Heartened by news of improvements in AIDS drug therapy and experiments with possible vaccines, the 12th World AIDS Conference ended yesterday with a new determination to focus the energy of scientists and activists on the worst AIDS crisis of all -- the epidemic s unchecked toll throughout the Third World. If one thing
Adding to the desperate poverty and political disruption that are helping spread the AIDS virus across southern Africa, the new economic crisis gripping the nations of Southeast Asia has begun to intensify the epidemic there, delegates from Third World countries say bitterly. The widely proclaimed theme of the 12th Wor
The human immune system, ravaged by the attack of the AIDS virus, may be restored to activity if long-term drug therapy can hold the virus in check at virtually invisible levels in the body, researchers reported yesterday. If early trials in patients prove it can be done, the achievement would free many AIDS patients f
The first known case of a patient being infected with a strain of HIV resistant to the most powerful new anti-viral drugs was reported yesterday by San Francisco AIDS specialists. Scientists at the 12th World AIDS Conference in Geneva said the case could mark an ominous new turn in the global epidemic that has already
High-risk sexual activity among young gay men has increased alarmingly in San Francisco, but there is no sign yet that rates of HIV infection in this group have risen, researchers reported yesterday. For the past five years, a group of scientists from the University of California s Center for AIDS Prevention Studies in
Leaders of the major U.N. health agencies began the most powerful assault ever yesterday on one of the global AIDS epidemic s most devastating problems -- the needless deaths of hundreds of thousands of infants born each year to mothers infected with HIV. The initiative was among the highlights yesterday during the 12t
Most AIDS patients who start multiple-drug therapy by taking all their prescribed anti-viral medicines simultaneously do far better than those who begin therapy by taking the drugs one at a time over several months, a two-year study by researchers at five American universities shows. The study was led by Dr. Roy M. Gul
With costly AIDS drugs now available to prolong life for the fortunate few who can afford them, and new ones emerging from advanced research laboratories, the 12th International AIDS Conference opened yesterday amid restrained optimism coupled with a profound awareness that millions of people face a fate worse than the
In a decision that could benefit millions of Americans with a range of medical problems, the Supreme Court ruled yesterday that people who test positive for the AIDS virus are covered by federal laws that protect the disabled against discrimination even if they display no symptoms of the disease. The narrowly divided c
With AIDS infections and deaths surging more swiftly than ever around the globe, the gap between success and failure is widening ominously between rich and poor countries battling the epidemic, U.N. officials reported yesterday. In the first country-by-country report on the global AIDS epidemic, the U.N. health experts
The state agency that oversees worker safety is considering new measures to force California health care employers to supply their workers with safe needle devices to prevent the spread of HIV and other diseases from accidental needle sticks. At a meeting in San Francisco last week, officials with the California Occupa
Despite the availability of new AIDS drug combinations that are saving thousands of lives, at least one-quarter of HIV-infected patients are not being given the most effective therapy by their doctors, a national survey shows. And it is women and minorities who are faring the worst -- a fact that may well contribute to
The discouraging new Stanford study of patients resistant to combinations of AIDS drugs has put in bold relief the urgency of developing new treatments, say those familiar with the study. There are 11 major AIDS drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration, and combinations of these drugs are credited with a dram
The first federally funded effort to study the effects of marijuana on AIDS patients has begun in San Francisco with a two-year $1 million grant from the National Institutes of Health. Physicians at San Francisco General Hospital are recruiting 63 patients for the clinical trial examining how marijuana smoking may infl
San Franciscans who put their bodies on the line by taking part in clinical research for an AIDS vaccine were honored yesterday by Mayor Willie Brown. In the year since President Clinton called for the development of a vaccine against the disease, Bay Area volunteers and companies have rushed to take up the challenge.
Nevada Senator Harry Reid has joined a Bay Area Congressional representative s push for safer hypodermic needles in most public hospitals across the country. Reid, a Democrat, introduced a bill in the Senate on Friday that would require hospitals serving veterans and Medicare patients to use needles that better protect
San Francisco Chronicle; Wednesday, May 13, 1998, page A6.
David Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor
Early human trials of new AIDS vaccines are showing promise, and even newer concepts are being tested in animals, but truly safe, effective and long-lasting vaccines cheap enough to protect millions around the world against the epidemic are still at least 10 years away, experts said yesterday. In a discussion organized
SAN FRANCISCO S needle exchange program has been an unqualified success: The city has not reported a single case of pediatric AIDS in three years. And there s not exactly a shortage of junkie moms in San Francisco either. HIV infection among women is low. Nationally, 14.9 percent of adults with HIV are women. In San Fr
AIDS specialists from 38 countries joined yesterday to set their highest priorities for prevention strategies to save entire generations from a disease now ravaging the developing world more powerfully than ever before. In virtually every country outside the industrialized West, the experts agreed, the most desperate n
Ending weeks of speculation, the Clinton administration yesterday refused to lift a 10-year ban on using federal funds for needle exchange programs, despite concluding for the first time that such exchanges prevent the spread of HIV and do not encourage drug use. Leaders in the fight against AIDS condemned the unexpect
It could have been a scene out of Evita -- throngs of people standing on the street, shaking their fists in the air and bellowing: PER-ON! PER-ON! But they weren t screaming for Juan Peron, the charismatic Argentine dictator of the 1940s and 50s. They were screaming for Dennis Peron, the elfin, white-haired, pot-huffin
IN A DISPLAY of political timidity the Clinton administration yesterday refused federal funding for needle exchange programs, while conceding exchanges reduce AIDS transmission and don t encourage illegal drug use. A meticulous scientific review has now proven that needle exchange programs can reduce the transmission o
Abandoned a year ago by the nonprofit agency that sponsored them, volunteers helping people with AIDS in Contra Costa are ready to take charge with their own organization. The 150 volunteers have stuck by their clients, helping with chores, shuttling them to medical appointments and offering a friendly ear. Now the fle
Conservatives reacted angrily yesterday to reports that the Clinton administration is on the verge of lifting a 10-year-old ban on using federal funds for needle exchange programs to prevent the spread of AIDS. As one Republican lawmaker said he would introduce legislation on Monday to reimpose a moratorium on the use
William Carlsen, Reynolds Holding, Chronicle Staff Writers
Alarmed by reports of an epidemic of needle stick infections, Senator Barbara Boxer called on the Clinton administration yesterday to issue emergency regulations compelling the nation s hospitals and medical facilities to use safety needles. The California Democrat said she was amazed when she learned from a series of
Reynolds Holding, William Carlsen, Chronicle Staff Writers
Hundreds of health care workers and union activists rallied at San Francisco General Hospital yesterday to demand protection against deadly needle sticks and to denounce the nation s hospitals and medical clinics for failing to provide safer needles. Responding to Chronicle reports that thousands of nurses, laboratory
San Francisco Chronicle; Wednesday, April 15, 1998
Willam Carlsen, Chronicle Staff Writer
A survey of California hospitals shows hit-or-miss compliance with the 6-year-old OSHA standard that requires use of safety needles to reduce injuries. Some hospitals have made great strides in converting to safe needle devices, and others are still trying to catch up. Five years ago, Kaiser Permanente in Southern Cali
There is a moment when Janine Jagger steps to the wall of her office at the University of Virginia and smiles as her hand glides over five embossed, mahogany-framed patents of safe needle devices she helped design in 1985. Her finger finally lands on a copy of a 1917 patent for an anti- submarine detector. My grandfath
The statistics for this series came from a number of sources: The figure of 1 million needle sticks per year is an estimate from the International Health Care Worker Safety Center, based on data from 70 hospitals around the nation. Higher rates have been reported by the Centers for Disease Control and medical journals.
Reynolds Holding, William Carlsen, Chronicle Staff Writers
THE MARRIOTT HOTEL, NEAR FRANKLIN LAKES, N.J., 1988 Russell Kuhlman felt about an inch high. Top sales managers for Becton Dickinson and Company, the world s largest needle maker, had gathered for their quarterly meeting, and listed on the agenda was a new device that could dramatically cut into a deadly epidemic of ne
OSHA PROPOSAL: OSHA announces intention to issue regulations for protecting health care workers from accidental needle sticks. CDC GUIDELINES: The Centers for Disease Control issues Universal Precautions Guidelines advising health care workers to avoid infected blood by wearing gowns and masks and by not recapping need
If you had to have your blood drawn at the University of California drug clinic here at 18th and Folsom streets, you wanted Ellen Dayton to do it. She was that good. Not good enough, though, to avoid an accident that strikes health care workers more than a million times each year. It happened March 20, 1996. Dayton, a
Earlier this year, a medical researcher made an ominous discovery: Female health care workers exposed to incompatible blood through needle sticks could suffer serious pregnancy complications, including miscarriages, or the mental retardation or death of their infants. The exposure risks appear to be very low, but with
Reynolds Holding, William Carlsen, Chronicle Staff Writers
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN HOSPITAL, MADISON, WIS., 1978 Dr. Dennis Maki, chief of infectious diseases, was unnerved. On a winter morning a few weeks earlier, a urology technician was inserting an intravenous needle into a patient s arm when the device slipped, piercing the 55-year-old medical worker s finger. Not long a
Under intense pressure from scientists, public health experts, activists and its own AIDS advisers, the Clinton administration is moving to lift a 10-year- old ban on using federal funds for needle exchange programs, according to key individuals close to the issue. Although the administration s official stand is that i
A former Concord doctor, whose trial on charges of arson, insurance fraud and murder-for- hire starts this week, is claiming AIDS-related dementia makes him legally insane. Authorities believe it is the first California case where a defendant is using HIV status to support an insanity plea. But legal experts are skepti
One of the most insidious plagues in the continuing AIDS epidemic is Kaposi s sarcoma, the cancerlike disorder that disfigures the skin with reddish tumors and painfully attacks the throat, the lymph glands, the body s internal organs and the linings of veins and arteries. Known in the world of AIDS as KS, the tumors o
For the first time, the Supreme Court took up the issue yesterday of whether someone who is infected with the AIDS virus should be regarded as disabled and whether a doctor who denies treatment to a patient with HIV is violating federal civil rights law. The justices are being asked to rule on a Maine woman s claim tha
A national study of AIDS patients is providing the first clear evidence that the epidemic s death and disease rates can be cut dramatically by powerful new combinations of anti-viral drugs. In a detailed study of severely ill AIDS patients who have been treated at nine clinics across the country since 1994, a research
PLACING AIDS & HIV IN REMISSION A Guide to Aggressive Medical Therapy for People With HIV Infection By David Senechek Senyczak Publications, P.O. Box 31576, San Francisco 94131; 202 pages; $39.95 Few authors writing about AIDS have been as effective as Dr. David Senechek in explaining for lay readers the nature of
Amid flush times in Sacramento, the Wilson administration is paring back a watchdog agency that ensures the accuracy of millions of medical lab tests throughout the state. Special-interest politicking and bureaucratic infighting threaten to disarm the Laboratory Field Services branch of the State Department of Health S
San Francisco Chronicle; Tuesday, February 24, 1998
Ken Garcia, San Francisco Chronicle
Ruth Brinker had this funny thought years ago when all the world s doctors and scientists and researchers were running forth to do battle with an deadly killer that came to be known as AIDS. What about the food? A simple, clear idea. A tiny dot in a big picture. A generous leap for mankind. Brinker had a friend dying o
San Francisco Chronicle; Thursday, February 19, 1998
David Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor
An AIDS prevention experiment has proved so remarkably effective that it could end the threat of death for millions of infants born worldwide to mothers infected with HIV, health officials in the United States and Thailand announced yesterday. The experiment -- extremely controversial when it began -- involved giving a
San Francisco Chronicle; Monday, February 16, 1998
Charles Petit, Chronicle Science Writer
Two years after receiving a baboon bone marrow transplant, Oakland resident and AIDS activist Jeff Getty is seeing his health start to deteriorate again -- but not enough to stop him from pinning a new label on himself: Xeno-activist. That s xeno as in xenografts and xenotransplants, the surgical transfer of organs bet
San Francisco Chronicle; Monday, February 16, 1998
Michael Hytha, Chronicle Staff Writer
The East Bay s first high school condom dispensing program is getting more attention from school officials than students so far. In the program s first 10 days, fewer than 20 of Richmond High School s 1,400 students have asked for condoms, which the school clinic gives out in three-condom packs. The lack of interest ha
San Francisco Chronicle; Tuesday, February 10, 1998
AN ALARMING study about the failure of people infected with the AIDS virus to tell their sexual partners about their status should wake up anyone who has become complacent about the potentially fatal virus. The survey, led by Brown University s Dr. Michael Stein, found that four out of every 10 people infected with HIV
San Francisco Chronicle; Thursday, February 5, 1998
Charlie Goodyear, Chronicle Staff Writer
An HIV-positive Bakersfield man has sued Walnut Creek-based Longs Drugs for invasion of privacy because a pharmacist revealed his infection to his ex-wife and two young sons. The plaintiff s former wife is now using her knowledge of his condition to try to limit his custody rights, according to the lawsuit filed late T
San Francisco Chronicle; Tuesday, February 3, 1998
Chip Johnson
Under the watchful eye of a security guard, a few people gathered one day last week outside an Oakland office front that blends in with its surroundings on Broadway. The absence of signage marking the building as the home of the Oakland Cannabis Buyers Cooperative is by design. Still, to some the location is no secret.
San Francisco Chronicle; Wednesday, January 28, 1998
Sabin Russell, Chronicle Staff Writer
With another of his trademark surprise appointments, San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown opened his AIDS Summit yesterday by naming Dr. Mitchell Katz as the city s new health director. Katz has been interim director of the Department of Public Health since July, when the highly regarded Dr. Sandra Hernandez left the post
San Francisco Chronicle; Tuesday, January 27, 1998
Sabin Russell, Chronicle Staff Writer
As Mayor Willie Brown opens his first AIDS Summit in San Francisco this morning, the city is readjusting to an epidemic that has fundamentally changed. Since AIDS first surfaced in San Francisco in 1981, nearly 25,000 city residents have been diagnosed with the disease, and 17,000 have died. But the news is better thes
San Francisco Chronicle; Thursday, January 22, 1998
Marshall Wilson, Chronicle Staff Writer
Belmont officials yesterday were preparing to send out urgent requests for money that is needed to keep San Mateo County s only AIDS hospice from closing next week. About $120,000 is needed to keep the six-bed Belmont House open through June. The San Mateo County AIDS Program has committed $40,000, leaving Belmont offi
San Francisco Chronicle; Friday, January 9, 1998 - Page A1
Sabin Russell, Chronicle Staff Writer
AIDS deaths in California dropped an astonishing 60 percent in the first six months of 1997 -- the strongest evidence to date that available new drugs may be saving thousands of lives. The nearly two-thirds decline in AIDS deaths surprised and delighted researchers, who said yesterday that California s aggressive attem
This information is designed to support, not replace, the relationship that exists between you and your doctor.