San Francisco Chronicle - Sunday, December 30, 2001
Carol Ness, Chronicle Staff Writer
A headline announcing the death of writer and AIDS activist Larry Kramer last week was sad news to many -- but no shock, since the 66-year-old s liver had been on the brink of failure for months. So the fact that the news service was wrong, and Kramer was actually doing well after a hard-won liver transplant, was even
San Francisco Chronicle - Thursday, December 13, 2001
The Southern California company that has operated the California AIDS Ride for the past eight years is suing the San Francisco AIDS Foundation in an attempt to stop it from having its own cycling event in May. Los Angeles-based Pallotta TeamWorks filed suit Friday in Los Angeles County Superior Court against the AIDS F
San Francisco Chronicle - Friday, December 7, 2001
Lord Martine
San Francisco -- Just for a new spin on things, Bob Rybicki, 50, the former priest who is executive director of Shanti, and I hiked to the second floor of the Phillip Burton Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse at 450 Golden Gate at Larkin Street for squawk and peck at a little-known nest called Cafe 450. Upon entrance
San Francisco Chronicle - Monday, December 3, 2001
Tom Abate
The overlooked secret of success at biotech companies isn t brains or cash, but dogged courage of the sort exemplified by Bay Area researchers who ve spent nearly two decades developing AIDS vaccines. Even now, researchers at VaxGen in Brisbane are in the final stages of testing an AIDS vaccine that originated with a 1
San Francisco Chronicle - Monday, December 3, 2001
Tom Abate
The overlooked secret of success at biotech companies isn t brains or cash, but dogged courage of the sort exemplified by Bay Area researchers who ve spent nearly two decades developing AIDS vaccines. Even now, researchers at VaxGen in Brisbane are in the final stages of testing an AIDS vaccine that originated with a 1
San Francisco Chronicle - Sunday, December 2, 2001
John M. Hubbell, Chronicle Staff Writer
San Francisco -- A former Marine, said Manny Martinez Jr., speaking of himself and choking on the words. And I m crying. The gospel singers were packing up, the gardener who tends the National AIDS Memorial Grove had already taken his bow. The mud grew still worse underfoot. And here, after an hourlong ceremony yesterd
San Francisco Chronicle - Sunday, December 2, 2001
Christopher Heredia, Chronicle Staff Writer
Cable TV networks MTV and VH1 and the Elton John AIDS Foundation began a new public service announcement campaign yesterday aimed at bringing attention to the fact that rates of HIV infection in the United States continue to rise -- despite years of public health messages emphasizing the need to practice safer sex.
San Francisco Chronicle - Thursday, November 29, 2001
Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer
Two AIDS activists were arrested in a San Francisco courthouse yesterday and charged with stalking and making terrorist threats against city health officials and staff members of The Chronicle. David Pasquarelli and Michael Petrelis were held on $500,000 bail each. Both had come to Superior Court for a hearing on civil
San Francisco Chronicle - Sunday, November 25, 2001
Bernadette Tansey, Chronicle Staff Writer
Worried that decades-old public health laws could prevent authorities from battling a 21st century bioterror plague, the Bush administration is urging states to grant health officials sweeping powers in such an epidemic. The administration wants all 50 states to adopt a law allowing public health authorities to take ov
San Francisco Chronicle - Sunday, November 25, 2001
Meredith May, Chronicle Staff Writer
Calling themselves Town Criers, a group of East Bay teenagers is using insider photography to break the silence surrounding AIDS in their neighborhoods. The street-level snapshots under bridges, in living rooms and at the doctor s office have been shown in an Oakland church and are drawing the attention of the Alameda
San Francisco Chronicle - Thursday, November 22, 2001
Tom Abate, Chronicle Staff Writer
Shares in Chiron Corp. slid 9 percent yesterday after the Emeryville biotech company reported than an experimental medicine failed a final stage clinical trial. Before yesterday s announcement, Chiron had spent nearly two years testing the experimental compound on 2,000 patients afflicted with sepsis, a condition in wh
San Francisco Chronicle - Friday, November 16, 2001
Christopher Heredia, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sexually explicit HIV prevention programs offered by a federally funded nonprofit organization in San Francisco may be in violation of U.S. guidelines, according to a government report circulated yesterday. As a result of the examination of two Stop AIDS Project workshops, Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thom
San Francisco Chronicle - Tuesday, November 13, 2001
Chronicle Staff Report
A San Francisco judge yesterday barred two AIDS activists suspected of making threatening telephone calls to several Chronicle staff members from having any contact with the newspaper s employees. Judge James Robertson II s temporary restraining order also forbids Michael Petrelis and David Pasquarelli from coming with
San Francisco Chronicle - Friday, November 9, 2001
Vicky Elliott
When Tahj Thomas of East Oakland first signed up with Project Open Hand a year and a half ago, his weight had fallen to 128 pounds; now, thanks to Shelton Jackson s down-home cooking, it s way up again. I don t know how you say thank you for 35 pounds, he says, describing how the program has offered him, as a person li
San Francisco Chronicle - Thursday, November 8, 2001
Sabin Russell, Chronicle Medical Writer
A new round in the battle over cheap AIDS drugs for poor countries is shaping up as World Trade Organization ministers meet in Qatar tomorrow, with the Bush administration facing charges of rank hypocrisy. Just two weeks after the administration muscled steep price concessions from
San Francisco Chronicle - Wednesday, November 7, 2001
David Steele
FIFTEEN YEARS ago this past summer, I stood in a packed Cole Field House on the University of Maryland campus and heard the Rev. Jesse Jackson eulogize Len Bias. A few days earlier, Bias -- age 22, college basketball star, top draft pick of the then-world champion Boston Celtics -- had died from a cocaine overdose. A
San Francisco Chronicle - Wednesday, November 7, 2001
LAST MONTH, it took only a handful of deaths from anthrax for the Bush administration to put public health before profits. The administration rightly threatened Bayer that unless it slashed the price of the antibiotic Cipro, it would override Bayer s patent and authorize production of a generic version. This month, how
San Francisco Chronicle - Monday, November 5, 2001
Christopher Heredia, Chronicle Staff Writer
Many gay men and lesbians find themselves in a quandary these days: They want to join their fellow Americans in responding to terror and in expressing grief. But they are often unable to: They can t fight, they can t give blood, and some will never receive the survivor benefits guaranteed to others who lost loved ones
San Francisco Chronicle - Monday, November 5, 2001
William Carlsen, Chronicle Staff Writer
One year after President Bill Clinton signed a federal law to protect health care workers from accidental needle sticks, many of the nation s hospitals are not complying with the new regulations or have been slow to buy the safe needle devices and adequately train health care workers in their use. The Needlestick Safet
San Francisco Chronicle - Monday, October 29, 2001
Tom Abate, Chronicle Staff Writer
The Foster City headquarters of Gilead Sciences are busier than usual these days as the company gears up to launch Viread , an AIDS medicine that treats strains of HIV that have mutated to become resistant to other drugs. For HIV patients, Viread offers a potent one-a-day pill.
San Francisco Chronicle - Saturday, October 27, 2001
Tom Abate, Chronicle Staff Writer
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration yesterday approved a new one-a- day pill to treat HIV and gave Foster City s Gilead Sciences broad authority to promote the medicine as a front-line treatment for AIDS. Analysts had expected the FDA to approve Viread
San Francisco Chronicle - Friday, October 26, 2001
Christopher Heredia, Chronicle Staff Writer
San Francisco -- Syphilis is spreading at startling rates in San Francisco, especially among the city s gay and bisexual men, a Department of Public Health official said yesterday. The number of reported cases citywide grew from 39 in 1998 to 47 in 1999 and 71 last year. Through September of this year, the San Francisc
San Francisco Chronicle - Thursday, October 25, 2001
Christopher Heredia, Chronicle Staff Writer
A Board of Supervisors panel has recommended that the San Francisco Department of Public Health and the district attorney s office revive health warnings about amyl nitrate, a chemical inhalant used as a sexual stimulant that has been shown to increase the risk of HIV transmission. It s about having the education mater
San Francisco Chronicle - Monday, October 22, 2001
Christopher Heredia, Chronicle Staff Writer
San Francisco -- Gay men have adopted a don t ask, don t tell policy when it comes to talking about HIV, which might be contributing to a rise in infection rates, a new study by the University of California at San Francisco has shown. The just-released study also showed what experts already knew: Gay men don t find HIV
San Francisco Chronicle - Wednesday, October 17, 2001
To most Americans, public health is like the phone system: we only notice it when it doesn t work. Yet now, as the nation faces actual threats of bioterrorism -- as well as a cascade of hoaxes -- we are discovering how poorly prepared we are to deal with major threats to public health. Once, Americans understood the im
This Sunday, 50 artists from Sonoma County will go out of their gourd for a good cause. Calabash! A Celebration of Gourds, Art and the Garden, benefits Food For Thought, the Sonoma County AIDS food bank. This silent gourd-art auction also features music played on gourds, seasonal food and wine. I had no idea . . . ther
San Francisco Chronicle - Thursday, October 4, 2001
Tom Abate, Chronicle Staff Writer
A U.S. Food and Drug Administration advisory panel recommended approval of a new AIDS drug yesterday, but split on whether it should only be intended for those patients who ve already tried other AIDS drugs, or should also be cleared to treat new cases of HIV. The recommendation, which the FDA will factor into
San Francisco Chronicle - Wednesday, October 3, 2001
IF IT S TRUE that a society is judged by how it cares for the elderly, the sick and the poor, the state s reputation for charity and compassion will be greatly impaired if a health care bill for HIV patients dies on the governor s desk. That s where AB937 has languished since leaving the floor of the Legislature on Sep
San Francisco Chronicle - Wednesday, October 3, 2001
Tom Abate, Chronicle Staff Writer
A U.S. Food & Drug Administration advisory panel will vote today on whether to recommend approval of an experimental AIDS drug designed to treat patients who ve become resistant to other medicines. If, as expected, the vote is favorable, the committee must also recommend whether the new drug should be approved only
San Francisco Chronicle - Monday, September 10, 2001
Gavin du Venage, Chronicle Foreign Service
Johannesburg -- Evette Harrison s maid would often comfort her employer s infant by having the child suck her breast. For some white South Africans, it was simply part of growing up in Africa, where traditional child-raising methods have resisted change. Harrison, who lives in a small farming community in rural KwaZulu
San Francisco Chronicle - Saturday, September 8, 2001
Christopher Heredia, Chronicle Staff Writer
San Francisco -- A top San Francisco health official lashed out yesterday at a congressional inquiry into the sexual practices of an HIV-positive Department of Public Health HIV prevention worker who disclosed in a newspaper interview that he has engaged in unprotected intercourse with anonymous partners. Steven Tierne
San Francisco Chronicle - Friday, September 7, 2001
Carl T. Hall, Chronicle Science Writer
An experimental AIDS vaccine built into a common livestock virus has been shown to work in monkeys and may soon be headed for human safety trials, researchers reported yesterday. Using a weakened form of an animal virus called VSV as the delivery system, scientists at Yale University School of Medicine said the new vac
Researchers at the University of California are forecasting that 42 percent of HIV infections in San Francisco will be resistant to current AIDS drugs by 2005, further complicating efforts to keep the rapidly mutating virus in check. Forty-two percent is a lot of resistance. It will certainly be a challenge if we do no
Simo Neri is a photographer who likes to work big. Or at least tall. Indeed, she has been working with an original technique the past four years that allows her to print multiple images in one continuous photographic print that is hung from a gallery s ceiling. If I combine numerous strips, I can go as high and wide as
San Francisco Chronicle - Thursday, August 30, 2001
CHINESE OFFICIALS finally acknowledge that they face a serious threat of an AIDS epidemic. But a tragic sidelight on their newfound candor is that government secrecy surely worsened the spread of HIV. Silence denied a vulnerable population the preventive education it needs. As the Beijing leadership turned a blind eye
Oakland -- Dilcia Molina, a 37-year-old psychologist from Honduras , was among the lucky ones to obtain a visa to attend a gathering of international gay activists yesterday in Oakland. Organizers of the Global Gay Summit said many would-be delegates were denied clearance from their embassies, either because they aren
Sydney -- THE ENGLISH-speaking world s first injection center for heroin and other users -- as its spokesman Pat Kennedy called it -- lies across Darlinghurst Road from King s Cross Station. It has no sign. A security guard flanks one side of the unadorned storefront nestled in Sydney s notorious red- light district.
Sydney -- THE ENGLISH-speaking world s first injection center for heroin and other users -- as its spokesman Pat Kennedy called it -- lies across Darlinghurst Road from King s Cross Station. It has no sign. A security guard flanks one side of the unadorned storefront nestled in Sydney s notorious red- light district.
San Francisco Chronicle - Tuesday, August 21, 2001
David Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor
Facing a steadily worsening shortage of donated blood for transfusions, the federal government and the nation s community blood banks are creating two separate systems to monitor supplies and steer surpluses -- if any -- where they re needed most. The federal Department of Health and Human Services announced yesterday
It s a balmy night, and moonlight is sparkling off the water. A soft, scented breeze is rustling through the palms. You re away from home, alone. Maybe you re drinking a little more than usual. One of your fellow travelers starts to look pretty good to you. And you begin to think about the lust in wanderlust. Being awa
San Francisco Chronicle - Wednesday, August 15, 2001
The Fight to control and stamp out AIDS is far from won in the United States , much less the rest of the world. Through much of the 1990s, sharp declines in the number of new cases and AIDS-related deaths raised hopes for beating the epidemic with preventive education and improved treatment. Fresh data from the federal
San Francisco Chronicle - Tuesday, August 14, 2001
Christopher Heredia, Chronicle Staff Writer
Warning that further complacency could lead to a resurgence in the AIDS epidemic, federal health officials yesterday reported that AIDS cases and deaths in the United States failed to decline for the second year in a row. The groups at highest risk remain African Americans and gay and bisexual men, researchers at the C
San Francisco -- Tanee McIntosh knew the dope on AIDS. She heard all the stats on its slow devastation of the black community, including those in a recent report issued by the Centers for Disease Control: -- While African Americans only make up 12 percent of the population, they account for half of all new HIV cases.
Bangui, Central African Republic -- Self-assured and beautiful, Nadine Igala stares straight ahead as she describes the fate of her friend at Miskine High School on the outskirts of Bangui, capital of the Central African Republic. At age 15, with hopes of living in Paris, her friend was diagnosed as HIV- positive.
Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau s first movie, Jeanne and the Perfect Guy, was an ode to love and casual sex in AIDS-era France . It was a musical, too -- an ecstatic Technicolorama with a quiet mordant streak. Girl meets boy, boy is HIV-positive. In the scheme of things, the guy in Ducastel and Martineau s new
Shortly after her arrival in Zimbabwe , Caitlin Brune, a public health student at the University of California at Berkeley, heard nurses and midwives lament that they lacked bleach to disinfect the delivery tables at a clinic where the babies can come two an hour. It was extremely sobering, Brune said during a crackli
Eleven-year-old Dillon Scheer has to deal with the knowledge that he s HIV-positive as well as endless amounts of medications - and occasional name- calling from some classmates. But at Camp Arroyo, he s free to be a kid. Camp was fun, Dillon said while playing video games in his home in Forestville in Sonoma County.
Philip Alden thinks it s ironic that after smoking pot for four years to relieve the stabbing pains and appetite loss brought on by AIDS that he s now abstaining from it for six weeks in the name of science. The 37-year-old Redwood Shores writer and AIDS activist is the first volunteer to be chosen to take part in the
Johannesburg -- South Africa s newest video game hero is a Pac-Man-like character who races around a maze and gobbles up political points while being pursued by corrupt and inept members of the ruling party. When she discovers and eats one of the four illegally obtained luxury cars at each corner of the maze, her enemi
More than 25,000 people raised a record-setting $3.8 million during yesterday s AIDS Walk San Francisco in a rousing show of solidarity against the disease two decades after the first cases appeared. The Bay Area consistently steps up to the plate in recognizing that AIDS is still a crisis, said Redge Norton, spokesman
A growing number of medical researchers fear that a monkey virus that contaminated polio vaccine given to tens of millions of Americans in the 1950s and 60s may be causing rare human cancers. For four decades, government officials have insisted that there is no evidence the simian virus called SV40 is harmful to humans
Worldwide, 36 million people are HIV-positive or suffering from AIDS. Every Tuesday morning, Ron Siegel talks to three of those people as part of his volunteer work with the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. Intense, fulfilling and sometimes agonizing, the conversations give Siegel a weekly window into a devastating pande
San Francisco -- Facing alarming rates of chlamydia and gonorrhea in San Francisco s African American neighborhoods and a growing HIV infection rate citywide, health officials announced four new initiatives yesterday to combat the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. San Francisco plans to use a $1 million grant fr
U.S. SURGEON GENERAL David Satcher said recently that more sex education is needed to help prevent AIDS, other sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies. President Bush and most politicians reacted as if Satcher s recommendation were radioactive. Satcher, whose term ends in February, got an icy response fr
SURGING TEEN promiscuity has intensified the need for some straight talk with children about pregnancies and disease. With AIDS the sixth leading cause of death for young people, a report by Surgeon General David Satcher urging parents and schools to teach sex education seems almost overdue. The 30-page report primaril
A frank and controversial report about sex education by the surgeon general sparked strong reaction today in Washington and in the Bay Area. The White House expressed disappointment with Surgeon General David Satcher s report released yesterday, which called on communities to encourage abstinence as well as birth contr
After weeks of behind-the-scenes wrangling, the United Nations General Assembly special session on AIDS adopted a historic resolution last night committing member states to a vast expansion of global efforts to contain the epidemic. A 16-page Declaration of Commitment lays out a plan to meet a five-year goal of boostin
San Francisco Chronicle - Wednesday, June 27, 2001
Sabin Russell, Chronicle Medical Writer
Johannesburg -- Thabo Mbeki admits he is no Nelson Mandela. He joked shortly before coming to power two years ago that Mandela s shoes were too ugly for him to want to fill and that he would walk his own path. Distancing himself was astute. His predecessor was a virtual saint who brought peace and racial reconciliation
San Francisco Chronicle - Wednesday, June 27, 2001
Gavin du Venage, Chronicle Foreign Service
Johannesburg -- Thabo Mbeki admits he is no Nelson Mandela. He joked shortly before coming to power two years ago that Mandela s shoes were too ugly for him to want to fill and that he would walk his own path. Distancing himself was astute. His predecessor was a virtual saint who brought peace and racial reconciliation
United Nations -- With a mix of lofty rhetoric and bare-knuckled parliamentary brawling, an unprecedented United Nations General Assembly special session on AIDS got off to a rocky but historic start yesterday. AIDS can no longer do its deadly work in the dark, said U.N. Secretary- General Kofi Annan of
TWO DECADES after scientists first described HIV/AIDS, the global epidemic has killed 22 million victims, left 13 million orphans and infected an estimated 36 million people. Yet, denial remains the greatest obstacle to containing history s largest pandemic. The truth is, hardly any nation wants to admit that its citiz
World leaders from developing nations are converging on New York City for the opening tomorrow of an unprecedented United Nations General Assembly Special Session on AIDS. For three days at this highly visible forum, diplomats will hammer out a final draft of a declaration that will guide international efforts to bring
As the United Nations prepares for next week s global summit on AIDS, a new study released by the United Nations yesterday estimates that it will cost $9.2 billion a year to turn the tide against the epidemic. Prepared by researchers at UNAIDS in Geneva and a team of experts around the world, the report is the most com
THE DEBATE over the U.S. Senate s two patients rights proposals reflects the most American of attitudes: Folks hate lawyers, until they re in an accident. Or end up in a bad HMO. Having an unresponsive low-level bureaucrat uphold a bonehead decision that is harmful to your health is, well, harmful to your health. U.S.
People trying to get individual health insurance routinely get rejected for conditions as minor as hay fever or an old knee injury, according to a study released yesterday. The study by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, conducted by Georgetown University researchers, sent seven hypothetical health care users with
San Francisco Chronicle - Wednesday, June 20, 2001
Matthew Brunwasser, Chronicle Foreign Service
Sofia, Bulgaria -- In a trial that sounds like a chapter out of a bad Cold War spy novel, a Libyan prosecutor sought the death penalty last weekend for six Bulgarian medical workers charged with intentionally infecting 393 children with the virus that causes AIDS. A Libyan People s Court, which typically hears cases in
Oakland -- Former East Bay Rep. Ron Dellums, now chairman of the President s Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS, urged hundreds of people attending an AIDS conference in Oakland yesterday to attack the epidemic from a global perspective. Dellums called AIDS the greatest threat to the human family, requiring a response from a
Controversial remarks by a top Bush administration official are sowing confusion over the future of international efforts to bring cheap AIDS drugs to Africa and other impoverished regions of the world. U.S. Agency for International Development administrator Andrew Natsios suggested in an interview published yesterday
Since June 5, 1981, when University of California at Los Angeles immunologist Dr. Michael Gottlieb and colleagues described five cases of rare pneumonia among gay men, AIDS has killed nearly 450,000 Americans -- including 18,600 in San Francisco alone. Yet two decades into the epidemic, the outbreak of AIDS in America
BY THE TIME funding for five years of abstinence-only sex education is up for congressional reconsideration next year, U.S. taxpayers will have handed over about a half-billion dollars for it in federal and state money. Too bad we re just now studying whether such a narrow approach actually works to lower the teen preg
Twenty years after HIV first appeared in America, the face of AIDS has changed, and it looks a lot like Tim m West. Through his teen years and early 20s, the smart and angry hip-hop artist living in Oakland kept his sexuality on the down-low - a term some African American gay men use to describe being in the closet.
When Ty Whitehead moved to San Francisco in the 1980s, AIDS was everywhere. Tending bar at the Giraffe on Polk Street, he saw that regulars were dying. Businesses were closing. I realized I was the only one working there who was HIV-negative. He practiced safe sex, religiously then. But after five years behind the bar,
Like so many others from all walks of life, Concord Police Sgt. Keith Whitaker has crossed paths with numerous people afflicted with AIDS and HIV. Yesterday, the police officer joined 3,300 people taking part in a marathon bicycle ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles to raise money for AIDS patients and to help incre
Why is it taking so long to develop an AIDS vaccine? In June 1990, Dr. Wayne Koff was one of the speakers at an AIDS conference in San Francisco. At that time, he ran the AIDS vaccine program at the National Institutes of Health - and he was very excited by recent developments in animal models of AIDS. So excited, in f
Gaborone, Botswana -- An appraiser holds a rough diamond up to the light, studying lines and shape through a magnifier before giving his estimate: The stone is worth $60, 000. That s one stone, from one pile of uncut diamonds sitting in mounds on tables at the Botswana Diamond Valuing Co. In Botswana, this scene sy
In the last two decades, AIDS has pushed immunology - the science of the immune system - to the forefront of medicine. In the process, AIDS has provided important new information on the workings of the immune system, that invisibly small army of molecular soldiers that wars against infections. But many immunological my
In the mid-1980s, when it became clear what a huge impact AIDS was having on the nation s arts communities, a number of publications illustrated the devastation with rows of photographs of felled artists. The Chronicle was the first to address that subject in December 1986 with a series of mini-profiles and related sto
It was on Dr. Paul Volberding s first day on the job at San Francisco General Hospital, 20 years ago, that he saw his first patient with Kaposi s sarcoma. He joined the county hospital on July 1, 1981, as chief of cancer care. But it would not be long before the brilliant young researcher would become the driving force
SAN FRANCISCO 27,484 - The number of AIDS cases reported in San Francisco since 1980. 18,605 - The number of AIDS deaths in San Francisco. 56 - The number of AIDS deaths in San Francisco so far in 2001. 8,879 - The number of people living in San Francisco with AIDS. THE NATION 900,000 - The estimated number of U.S. res
Bob Lawrence remembers the dreadful phone call he got in the early 1980s from a friend telling him that a former roommate had died of what was then being called gay pneumonia. Lawrence, who had a wild sex life in the 1970s but was in a relationship at the time, mourned the loss of his friend. Then he wondered about him
This Tuesday, the world will mark 20 years of AIDS. It is a ghastly anniversary, especially for San Francisco, where the epidemic touched down early and devastated a generation of gay men. Like a disaster in slow motion, AIDS has taken 18,600 San Francisco lives, far more than the city lost in wars and earthquakes and
Insight asked San Francisco journalist Bruce Mirken, who writes frequently about AIDS, and Michelangelo Signorile, New York author and Gay.com columnist to address the question: Has the AIDS epidemic helped or hurt acceptance of gays in America? After agreeing that the question was absurd, the debate morphed into a con
TWO DECADES after AIDS was first recognized, mortality statistics are stunning and prospects for the future are grim. There is no cure, no vaccine is in sight and the disease is spreading like wildfire to every corner of the map, especially in developing countries. And there is alarming new evidence that AIDS is on the
Young gay men in U.S. cities are contracting the AIDS virus at rates rivaling the early days of the epidemic, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned yesterday. The warning is based on preliminary results of a six-city study of gay men between the ages of 23 and 29. Although the results did not in
Young gay men in U.S. cities are contracting the AIDS virus at rates rivaling the early days of the 20-year-old epidemic, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said this morning. The warning is based on preliminary results of a six-city study of gay men using new blood tests that can separate recent in
WHEN I GRADUATED from college in 1976, 25 years ago this week, Americans thought about gay issues in a very different way than they do now. I saw few images of lesbians and gay men on television or in movie theaters. None of my Harvard professors ever discussed homosexuality. When I informed classmates that I was gay,
THERE WAS SOMETHING foreboding about the first paragraph of an article The Chronicle carried on June 6, 1981. The report was just 10 inches long and ran routinely on Page 4 with no byline. It read: A mysterious outbreak of a sometimes fatal pneumonia among gay men has occurred in San Francisco and several other major c
TO IMAGINE what it was like living in San Francisco at the height of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, try this: Invite 30 close friends over for a party. Get happy for a few hours. Then, in the span of 20 minutes, each of your guests should leave -- some without a goodbye, others with a long, sad parting -- until you ar
As an intern at San Francisco General Hospital in 1983, I cared for my first patient with HIV disease. We didn t call it HIV disease back then. It was called GRID, gay-related immunodeficiency, and we didn t know what was making increasing numbers of young gay men succumb to rare infections and strange tumors. My first
Mike Devlin s preparation for a pitch for Agouron Pharmaceuticals advertising account led him to several AIDS clinics in New York so he could put a face on the 20-year-old epidemic. It wasn t pretty. These were not the faces of the pretty boys in all those ads selling drugs for people living with AIDS. The people D
New rules for reporting HIV under review by state health officials are drawing fire from AIDS activists who say the requirements might keep people from getting tested for the virus. The Health Department will hold a public hearing today on a controversial proposal to begin reporting HIV in California using a set of cri
Airy rooms, in a classy Mediterranean-style village, once perched here among forested hills to provide respite for tuberculosis patients. Then the site became a camp for troubled youth. Next, abandoned, it devolved into a clump of bottle-strewn, graffiti-laced hulks, a rendezvous for nocturnal revelers, a target for va
THE INCREASING tendency for pharmaceutical companies to directly market drugs to consumers is a concern in itself. Americans are being bombarded with slick advertisements urging them to ask by name for a remedy for high cholesterol, diabetes, depression, hay fever, toenail fungus, hair loss and impotence. The list goes
Bay Area AIDS activists were elated when a powerful consortium of drug companies earlier this month dropped a lawsuit aimed at halting the use of generic versions of patented AIDS medicines in South Africa . It s an amazing victory, said John Iversen of ACT UP East Bay, who organized local protests of the suit, and has
San Francisco Chronicle - Saturday, April 28, 2001
Sabin Russell, Chronicle Medical Writer
Prompted by complaints from San Francisco, the Food and Drug Administration ordered drugmakers yesterday to tone down their upbeat ads for AIDS medications, calling them misleading. FDA marketing division chief Thomas Abrams told drugmakers in a letter that they must change their ads within 90 days. New ads will ha
There is no evidence to support the controversial theory that the AIDS epidemic sprang from a batch of contaminated vaccine, according to a group of scientific studies released yesterday. The hypothesis that an experimental polio vaccine administered in Africa caused AIDS -- most notably advanced in Edward Hooper s 199
There is no evidence to support the controversial theory that the AIDS epidemic sprang from a batch of contaminated vaccine, according to a group of scientific studies released yesterday. The hypothesis that an experimental polio vaccine administered in Africa caused AIDS -- most notably advanced in Edward Hooper s 199
San Francisco Chronicle - Thursday, April 19, 2001
A judge has ordered six members of the AIDS dissident group ACT UP/San Francisco to stay away from offices of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and five employees after the group staged a noisy protest at the agency Oct. 23. San Francisco Superior Court Judge James McBride s order, which covers a three-year period, say
San Francisco Chronicle - Wednesday, April 18, 2001
Reynolds Holding, Chronicle Staff Writer
Federal workplace regulations requiring medical facilities across the nation to use safer syringes and blood-drawing devices will take effect today, affording doctors, nurses and other health care workers long-sought protections against potentially deadly needle sticks. Mandated by the Needle Stick Safety and Preventio
Scott Evertz, who was appointed this week to be the nation s new AIDS czar, is known by acquaintances in Wisconsin as someone with a knack for producing bipartisan consensus. Evertz, 38, is the first openly gay man to be appointed by a Republican president and the first gay man to be director of the Office of National
WITH HIV/AIDS running rampant through much of the developing world, the U.S. Senate s resolve to double America s spending to combat the global crisis is both heartening and critical. Under the Senate resolution, the United States will commit more than $1 billion during the next two years to help stem the spread of AID
Prisoners-rights advocates accused the state yesterday of systematically ignoring the medical needs of California s 160,000 prisoners. In a suit billed as the largest class-action ever filed over prison conditions, nine inmates and their lawyers claimed the system s health care suffers from poor training, staff shortag
San Francisco Chronicle - Wednesday, April 4, 2001
Chronicle Staff Report
San Mateo County will be the first local government in the nation to prescribe marijuana when it begins doling out medicinal pot to dozens of AIDS patients later this month. Researchers yesterday began recruiting the first 60 people to take part in the two-year, outpatient study of marijuana s medical benefits. Dr. Den
Bombay -- Sitting in his corner office with stacks of medical research papers behind him, the head of India s biggest knockoff-AIDS-drugmaker says he s only doing what his conscience is telling him to do. In the area of AIDS and HIV, there are no borders. There s room for everyone to contribute, Yusuf K. Hamied said.
Johannesburg -- In the worldwide battle against AIDS, the front line is South Africa , where one out of every nine citizens is infected with HIV. After years of inaction and a fumbling response, the government finally seems to be facing its AIDS crisis. But so far, all the attention has done little to benefit the natio
Isabel Almeida was watching television one evening when she saw a report about a government plan to distribute AIDS medicine free to people infected with HIV. Almeida, who contracted the virus from her husband, was ecstatic. Four months later, the government approved her application for treatment, sending a wave of rel
Prodded by activists and pressed by competition, the world s leading pharmaceutical companies have lowered their prices for key AIDS drugs sold in Africa - bringing hope that life-prolonging drugs may be more broadly disseminated. In recent weeks, Bristol-Myers Squibb said it would sell its
San Francisco Chronicle - Saturday, March 17, 2001
Chuck Squatriglia, Chronicle Staff Writer
Three members of a dissident San Francisco AIDS group with a history of antagonizing mainstream AIDS organizations were convicted yesterday of hurling pills at panelists discussing treatment options for the disease. The convictions of ACT UP/San Francisco members Jason (Todd) Swindell, David Pasquarelli and Michael Bel
San Francisco Chronicle - Thursday, March 15, 2001
Sabin Russell, Chronicle Medical Writer
They re young. They re sexy. They re strong and healthy. And they re taking AIDS drugs. What s wrong with this picture? Plenty, according to a band of AIDS activists, the San Francisco Department of Public Health and Board of Supervisors President Tom Ammiano. In a new twist on the ever-controversial topic of costly AI
Whether it was damage control or corporate charity, major drugmakers were wise to announce huge price cuts in costly AIDS drugs badly needed in poor countries. It s an overdue move that offers hope for those infected, especially 25 million Africans living in poverty. Drug combinations, developed by major drug firms, ha
AIDS experts meeting in San Francisco yesterday declared that equal rights for women are crucial to stopping the gruesome onslaught of the disease in African nations and developing countries throughout the world. During an International Women s Day symposium, researchers issued a new AIDS prevention plan aimed at rever
San Francisco Chronicle - Wednesday, March 7, 2001
Zachary Coile, Chronicle Washington Bureau
Washington -- Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California introduced legislation yesterday designed to help poor countries import or produce generic AIDS drugs in defiance of pharmaceutical firms that patent the drugs. The bill, co-sponsored by fellow Democratic Sen. Russell Feingold of Wisconsin, would block the U.S. governme
San Francisco Chronicle - Wednesday, March 7, 2001
Angelica Pence, Chronicle Staff Writer
Alerted that hepatitis C may be killing more San Mateo County residents than AIDS, county supervisors yesterday agreed to spend $85,000 a year to help those most at risk. Up to 17,000 people -- or 10 to 13 times as many as those infected with HIV -- may carry the hepatitis C virus, according to a study by the Hepatitis
I Received a call recently, inviting me to a talk about the treatment of depression by a somewhat well-known psychiatrist. The presentation would be at an upscale restaurant. I could bring a guest and I would be paid $100 just for attending. It s not uncommon for pharmaceutical companies to sponsor such events. A child
San Francisco Chronicle - Sunday, February 25, 2001
Ulysses Torassa, Chronicle Medical Writer
A serious diagnosis like cancer, multiple sclerosis or HIV infection can easily leave patients feeling overwhelmed and at the mercy of white-coated doctors speaking in medical jargon. Often, doctors say, patients will nod numbly as they lay out the prognosis and treatment options, asking few questions. Meanwhile, studi
San Francisco Chronicle - Friday, February 23, 2001
The University of California at San Francisco will conduct one of the first state-funded research projects focusing on marijuana s potential medicinal uses, state and university officials said yesterday. Dr. Donald Abrams, a UCSF professor of medicine, will lead two studies to evaluate the effectiveness of smoked marij
San Francisco Chronicle - Wednesday, February 21, 2001
Tom Abate, Chronicle Staff Writer
A biotech firm in Foster City said yesterday that its experimental, one-a- day pill significantly lowered HIV levels in the bloodstream of AIDS patients who were becoming resistant to current medicines. Mark Perry, executive vice president of Gilead Sciences , said that based on this Phase III, or final stage, clinical
San Francisco Chronicle - Sunday, February 18, 2001
Chris Matthews
SEVENTEEN MILLION dead! Twenty-five million mortally wounded! If Europe were hit with such ghastly casualties, would America be sitting on the sidelines? If the lands of white America s roots - England, Ireland , Germany , Italy ,
San Francisco Chronicle - Friday, February 16, 2001
Gregory Lewis, Chronicle Staff Writer
When Robert C. Scott walked into an East Bay medical clinic in the early 1970s, he was a content Laney College biology instructor who was looking for relief from a simple cold or flu. He was treated, he recalled, but it was so impersonal, so harsh, that it changed his life. No one took time to explain anything, and par
A day after a top administration official announced the National Office of AIDS Policy had become obsolete, President Bush flipflopped and said he was keeping the office open. We re concerned about AIDS, the president said yesterday. Make no mistake about it. The snafu forced the president s handlers to spend quite a b
Health experts yesterday announced a new national HIV prevention strategy aimed at testing people unknowingly infected with HIV, with the goal of reducing the spread of the epidemic by 50 percent by the year 2005. The Serostatus Approach to Fighting the HIV Epidemic -- or SAFE -- will use radio commercials and bus ads
San Francisco Chronicle - Tuesday, February 6, 2001
San Francisco was not one of the six cities included in the study. However, a survey by the same group in 1994-95 found a 13.3 percent rate among gay African American men between 15 and 22 in San Francisco. That compared to a 4.3 percent rate among white gay men in the same age group. We ve seen very similar patterns h
A plan to move the beloved AIDS Memorial Quilt from its pricey San Francisco headquarters to cheaper digs on the East Coast has some local AIDS activists threatening to steal the 50-ton patchwork to keep it here. San Francisco s Names Project Foundation, keeper of the quilt, is losing its lease and plans to move its of
San Francisco Chronicle - Sunday, February 4, 2001
Reviewed by David Perlman
SHOTS IN THE DARK The Wayward Search for an AIDS Vaccine By Jon Cohen W.W. Norton; 440 pages; $27 The very start of Jon Cohen s masterful history of AIDS vaccine research, Shots in the Dark, recalls a shocker: On Oct. 15, 1982, 600 Americans -- almost all of them young gay men -- were sick with a mysterious disorder na
San Francisco Chronicle - Thursday, January 25, 2001
Bruce Mirken
San Francisco -- Dr. Paul A. Volberding, one of the world s foremost AIDS physicians and a pioneering researcher since the epidemic began, is moving on. The director of the AIDS clinic at San Francisco General Hospital since it opened in 1983 and an international leader in combatting the disease, Volberding has been na
San Francisco Chronicle - Thursday, January 25, 2001
David Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor
San Francisco -- Dr. Paul A. Volberding, one of the world s foremost AIDS physicians and a pioneering researcher since the epidemic began, is moving on. The director of the AIDS clinic at San Francisco General Hospital since it opened in 1983 and an international leader in combatting the disease, Volberding has been na
San Francisco Chronicle - Wednesday, January 24, 2001
Ulysses Torassa, Chronicle Medical Writer
In an alarming reversal, the rate of new HIV infections among San Francisco s gay men has more than doubled since 1997 and is climbing steeply, according to a comprehensive analysis released today. A panel of two dozen researchers and AIDS experts estimates in a draft report that the rate of new HIV infections is 2.2 p
When a moving, in-your-face mural about women with AIDS was vandalized and doused with paint last year, muralist Juana Alicia didn t cry or scream in outrage at what had been done to her work. Instead, she made it better and raised the profile of the enormous work of art painted on the side of a market at Scott and Hai
San Francisco Chronicle - Sunday, January 14, 2001
William Carlsen, Chronicle Staff Writer
The two men met purely by chance. On an October 1997 flight from New York City to New Orleans, virologist Preston Marx noticed the passenger in the aisle seat was reading an article about one of his colleagues at an AIDS research center in Manhattan. The passenger, Ernest Drucker, was a professor at New York s Albert E
San Francisco Chronicle - Sunday, January 14, 2001
William Carlsen, Chronicle staff writer
The longer Edward Hooper studied the maps, the more he believed he had solved one of the great mysteries of modern medicine. He had marked the Central African villages that were home to some of the earliest known cases of AIDS. In a striking number of cases, those villages were near the rural clinics where a U.S. compa
Kiyunga, Iganga Province, Uganda -- The small band of villagers wore tattered clothes and expressions of bewilderment as the rickety old ambulance lurched along a remote dirt road. We wish to inform you, said a voice amplified by a megaphone resting on the ambulance s rusted window frame, that anybody who reports tomo
San Francisco Chronicle - Wednesday, January 3, 2001
Henry K. Lee - Chronicle Staff Writer
Oakland -- A New Year s Eve blaze that destroyed the offices of a needle-exchange program in Oakland s Fruitvale district appears to be arson, a fire official said yesterday as the program s director pledged to continue helping those infected with HIV. The three-alarm fire that gutted part of a building at 3229 San Lea
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