The two sides battling over the return of a portion of the AIDS Memorial Quilt to San Francisco have settled on an agreement after a contentious two-year court battle, attorneys for each side said Tuesday. Settlement talks between the parties -- Cleve Jones, the founder of the quilt project, and the Names Project Found
Some of the nation s oldest, sickest and poorest people could wind up being hurt instead of helped by Medicare s new prescription drug benefit, health advocates warn. They fear that some people -- including patients in assisted-living homes, the mentally ill and those with chronic conditions such as AIDS -- could face
San Francisco Chronicle - Saturday, December 10, 2005
Sabin Russell, Chronicle Medical Writer
Federal health authorities plan to issue new guidelines on the use of an oral HIV test after testing centers in New York and San Francisco began reporting an unusual number of false positives in recent months. Approved by the Food and Drug Administration in March 2004, the OraQuick Advance test shows results within 20
Wyatt Buchanan, wbuchanan@sfchronicle.com & Steven Winn, swinn@sfchronicle.com.
The movie Brokeback Mountain opens in San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles today and already is being hailed as one of the most important gay films ever made by Hollywood because it explores the challenges -- both personal and societal -- of a same-sex relationship. Two major straight actors star in the movie and ar
A promising new oral HIV test being considered for home use has produced at least 47 false positives at San Francisco public health clinics, throwing a scare into those who received the results and raising questions about the test s suitability for widespread use in the United States and abroad. The OraQuick Advanc
Tala, Kenya - When Muani and Kamene, 9-year-old cousins, lost their mothers to AIDS within a month of each other, the orphaned girls moved in with their grandparents, sharing a rough-hewn bed with a single worn blanket in the family s mud-brick hut. The girls, showing the reddish hair that signals malnutrition, had no
It s a hard thing to be HIV-positive, disabled, and to live in a hotel crowded with drug users and drunks. Troy Brunet wanted out. With the help of the AIDS Housing Alliance/SF and The Chronicle s Season of Sharing, he made it. He has an apartment of his own and a future ahead of him. I needed to find a place that was
President Bush said Thursday that his 2-year-old overseas AIDS initiative had brought antiviral drugs to 400,000 HIV-infected people in Africa and was on track to treat 2 million by early 2009. If the numbers are accurate -- and there is skepticism about their accuracy among Bush administration critics -- the program i
A small but vocal group of activists marched in the rain in Oakland on Thursday to call attention to the need for more HIV testing and prevention efforts for African Americans in Alameda County, a group that has been disproportionately infected with the virus. The 40 participants in the Oakland AIDS Walk joined World A
Today s World AIDS Day observances, including displays of parts of the AIDS Memorial Quilt, come 20 years after that largest and most enduring symbol of the global struggle against the disease was started in San Francisco. Activist Cleve Jones thought up the quilt on Nov. 27, 1985, at an annual march commemorating the
Sabin Russell, Sabin Russell at srussell@sfchronicle.com.
Forty percent more California residents are living with HIV than just seven years ago, according to a University of California estimate released Wednesday on the eve of World AIDS Day. The study calculated that 151,000 California residents were infected with the virus that causes AIDS, compared with 108,000 in 1998. It
WHILE MUCH progress has been made against the HIV/AIDS pandemic in the United States , the disease is still taking a truly depressing toll worldwide. An estimated 40.3 million people are living with HIV/AIDS around the globe. That s twice the number of a decade ago. This year alone, 4.9 million people became infected,
Baghdad - Kadhumya Shanin contracted HIV from her husband, Esam, after their marriage. Shanin said she and Esam had never discussed the disease, which he had contracted from a blood transfusion, until he became visibly ill before his death from AIDS in 2000. Today, Shanin is 31 and living on the outskirts of Baghdad, i
Ruthe Stein, rstein@sfchronicle.com., Chronicle Senior Movie Writer
Rent: Musical. Starring Rosario Dawson, Anthony Rapp, Adam Pascal, Idina Menzel, Wilson Jermaine Heredia, Taye Diggs and Sarah Silverman. Directed by Chris Columbus. (PG-13. 128 minutes. At Bay Area theaters.) *** In the glory era of the Hollywood musical, audiences didn t question how Gene Kelly could blithely sing an
A court settlement that would have brought a portion of the AIDS Memorial Quilt back to San Francisco has unraveled, attorneys working on the case said Monday. The Names Project Foundation, the Atlanta organization that houses the quilt, and Cleve Jones, who started the quilt, had agreed verbally in September on a sett
A United Nations count of HIV infections around the world topped 40.3 million this year, but there are signs that rates may be starting to decline in a few hard-hit regions -- a small, hopeful sign in the 25-year battle against the disease. On Monday, for the first time in a decade, the U.N. affiliate that tracks the e
A man who allegedly used a blood-filled syringe to commit robberies was arrested after he returned to the same store near Union Square that he hit three days before, police said Monday. Jonathan Black, 24, a transient, was caught last week when security guards at Banana Republic recognized him from Nov. 13, when he all
WHILE THE world braces for a possible avian flu pandemic, it shouldn t forget one that s already here -- AIDS. The global disease has lost none of its power, and despite prevention plans and new medicine, it continues to spread. A United Nations report this week tries to highlight the positives in the AIDS fight, such
San Francisco Chronicle - Friday, November 18, 2005
Sabin Russell, Chronicle Medical Writer
A new snapshot of the AIDS epidemic in the United States is showing a possible decline in HIV diagnoses among African Americans over a three-year period but also indicates a more recent jump in positive tests among gay men of all races. African Americans account for just over half of the new HIV cases reported each yea
David Slocombe was a relentless fundraiser in the battle against AIDS, and the penny jars that can be found in businesses all over San Francisco are part of his legacy. The 72-year-old Englishman -- a gardener, singer, gambler and bon vivant -- died of lung cancer on Oct. 29. A memorial will be held today in his favori
If there s one thing Irish rocker and citizen of the world Bono knows, it s how to open a show. He proved that earlier this week when he sat down to talk about his efforts to fight disease and poverty in Third World countries: He launched into the topic with The Chronicle s editorial board by praising the Bush administ
New syphilis cases rose nationwide for the fourth consecutive year in 2004, and for the first time in a decade among blacks, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday in a report on three sexually transmitted diseases. The syphilis increase was especially significant among gay men. The report
San Francisco s new Crystal Methamphetamine Task Force plans to tell the mayor Wednesday how the city should tackle the highly destructive drug, which is more prevalent in the gay community than the city as a whole. The biggest need, according to a draft of the task force s recommendations, is for more rehabilitation a
San Francisco Chronicle - Sunday, November 6, 2005
Christopher Heredia, Chronicle Staff Writer
As a ragtag band of activists from around the nation marched Saturday through a predominantly black Washington, D.C., neighborhood in an effort to reinvigorate a flagging AIDS movement, notably absent from the crowd of demonstrators were representatives from Bay Area organizations. Well-known groups from San Francisco
Gay and bisexual men in San Francisco are using crystal methamphetamine at about half the rate they were two years ago, according to data collected by the Stop AIDS Project and analyzed by the city s Department of Public Health. The data were collected through interviews, not a scientific survey, and methamphetamine ex
San Francisco Chronicle - Tuesday, November 1, 2005
Sabin Russell, Chronicle Medical Writer
Two U.S. drugmakers agreed Monday to allow their promising experimental AIDS treatments to be formulated and tested as microbicides, topical creams or gels that might prevent HIV infection after unprotected sex. Four different compounds under study as AIDS drugs were licensed to the International Partnership for Microb
Seven years ago, as state dollars were dwindling and costs were soaring for medical research and patient care at UCSF, the institution s leaders started a campaign to raise an unprecedented $1.4 billion in private money to expand their pathbreaking work and launch their new campus at Mission Bay. The effort beat its go
Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche loosened its grip on Tamiflu on Tuesday, declaring that it was willing to license the drug to nations or private companies that want to build stockpiles of it as a hedge against avian influenza. Tamiflu, also known as oseltamivir, is considered the first line of defense against a global
Washington -- Harriet Miers is finding friends, or at least sympathy, in strange places. Gay and lesbian advocates are providing some of the rare positive response to President Bush s new Supreme Court nominee, who finds herself under a barrage of hostile fire from nearly the entire conservative establishment in Washin
An experimental vaccine to prevent cervical cancer protected virtually all the women who took it during a large international trial, boosting chances that future generations of girls throughout the world might live their lives free of risk of the disease. Results of the two-year study, involving more than 12,000 women,
An unusual scientific summit began to draw the outlines Saturday of a daunting to-do list for the California stem cell program. Leaders of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine hope to end the meeting today with a consensus on grant-making priorities to guide the implementation of Proposition 71, the $3 bi
The roots of today s gay and lesbian community in the Bay Area can largely be traced by looking at which groups received grants from one organization, the Horizons Foundation of San Francisco. The Gay Games, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, Project Open Hand and numerous HIV/AIDS-related service agencies credit
For an event that cost at least $75 a head, there was an oddly democratic feel to the opening night of Passport, Macy s annual AIDS fundraising fashion blowout. People of all ages in many styles grazed the Fort Mason Festival Pavilion at the reception before the fashion show Wednesday, downing free wine and cocktails w
The Rotary Club of Half Moon Bay recently donated money to six students in Kenya to help them attend high school. Natasha Martin of Half Moon Bay, the founder of Grassroots Alliance for Community Education, accepted the donation totaling $3,900 annually for the next four years. She said the children will apply their ed
Three decades after the nearly mythic flowering of gay liberation and sexual freedom in San Francisco, the South of Market neighborhood that was a symbol for those times has transformed. It still exists physically, in the alleyways and in the buildings where bars and bath houses that nurtured a nascent leather scene in
When it comes to celebrity, the Bay Area just isn t all that starstruck, which may be a good thing for the 23rd annual Macy s Passport fashion show and AIDS fundraiser, Live 05, at Fort Mason this week. At Macy s Passport show in Los Angeles, Jennifer Lopez, Sharon Stone and Pete Sampras will share the limelight. But t
An HIV-positive man will stand trial for allegedly raping his young stepdaughter three times while knowing he was infected with the virus that causes AIDS, authorities said Friday. Frederick Torralva, 53, faces charges of statutory rape, committing lewd acts with a child under 14 and committing continuous lewd acts wit
A court battle between the foundation that houses the AIDS Memorial Quilt and Cleve Jones, the man who started the quilt in 1986, has been settled, an attorney for the foundation says. As part of the settlement, 35 blocks of the panel -- each 12 feet square -- will be permanently housed in San Francisco and available f
Jason Dallman has plans for when he moves here from Chicago: Find a part-time job, apply for nursing school and meet new friends. But there is a problem. I was in San Francisco for three weeks meeting with people to find an apartment but nobody was returning my calls, said Dallman, 36, from his home in Chicago. I ve e-
Scientists have compared the genetic blueprints of humans and chimpanzees for the first time and discovered thousands of genes that are virtually identical in both species -- confirming the long-held belief that chimps are humanity s closest living relatives. But more than that, the scientists said, the landmark findin
San Francisco Chronicle - Saturday, August 20, 2005
Jim Herron Zamora, Chronicle Staff Writer
Chance Martin spent 72 hours in jail after his arrest at a high school party -- enough time for six inmates to sodomize him. Kendall Spruce was raped by 27 men during the nine months he served for writing bad checks. Hope Hernandez was raped by a corrections officer while she suffered through heroin withdrawal. Tho
By the time President Reagan first publicly spoke the word AIDS in September 1985, more than 1,400 cases had been reported in this city. More than 500 San Franciscans -- nearly all of them gay men -- had died, and hundreds of volunteers were fighting to save friends, lovers, relatives and, frequently, total strangers.
San Francisco Chronicle - Tuesday, August 16, 2005
Rachel Gordon, Chronicle Staff Writer
People who use crystal methamphetamine are at least three times more likely to be infected with HIV than those who don t use the drug, according to a new government-sponsored study. Crystal meth use is the newest and most important threat to the HIV epidemic in the United States , Dr. James Dilley, director of the UC S
An AIDS-afflicted gay man from Mexico , who fled to San Francisco after a local policeman forced him into sexual acts under threat of being outed or killed, is eligible for political asylum, a federal appeals court ruled Friday. Reversing rulings by immigration courts that ordered Jose Boer-Sedano deported to Mexico, t
Dr. Richard Olney, a San Francisco ALS specialist who was diagnosed last year with the same brain disease he s watched kill scores of patients, plans to go out dancing Wednesday night. His 24-year-old daughter, Amy, booked a rock band at the City Club in San Francisco, a benefit for the UCSF ALS Treatment and Research
Bay Area Jefferson Award winner: Linda Lazzareschi, co-founder of the Women s Daytime Drop-In Center in Berkeley, a nonprofit program that provides support, meals and access to community resources for homeless women and children. How she started: Lazzareschi, a trained social worker, was staying at home to take care of
San Francisco s public health system has long had the reputation of providing the Cadillac of care, offering specialized treatment for substance abusers, the mentally ill, the homeless, immigrants, people with HIV and AIDS and those in need of nursing home care. The city also provides health care for children and young
Some might dispute his management style. Others will criticize him for his business decisions. But one thing everyone seems to agree on when it comes to Robert Haas, former CEO and current board chairman of Levi Strauss & Co., is that he is simply a nice guy. On a personal level, I think he s one of the finest huma
Bay Area Jefferson Award winner: Ruth Brinker, founder of San Francisco s Project Open Hand, the first meal-delivery service for people with AIDS. How she started: Brinker was a retired grandmother in 1985, helping out at a meals-on-wheels program, when a friend died of AIDS. She soon realized that the ravages of the l
San Francisco s voter-approved plan to rebuild Laguna Honda Hospital with 1,200 beds should be pared back considerably, and instead more patients should be cared for in their homes and in smaller community-based centers, a city controller s report says. The report, released Thursday by Controller Ed Harrington, calls f
Sabin Russell, srussell@sfchronicle.com and Ilene Lelchuk, and ilelchuk@sfchronicle.com.
In a rare piece of good news on AIDS, San Francisco health officials may revise downward their estimates of the number of new HIV infections each year after three new analyses suggested that the spread of the virus in the city s gay community has slowed substantially. Since 2001, the city s highly regarded epidemiology
Last-minute budget negotiations at San Francisco City Hall may mean more money for AIDS and youth programs, a workers compensation clinic at San Francisco General Hospital that was set for closure and an hourly 25-cent pay increase for the lowest-paid city workers. Other services facing funding cuts, including a popula
French and South African AIDS researchers have called an early halt to a study of adult male circumcision to reduce HIV infection after initial results reportedly showed that men who had the procedure dramatically lowered their risk of contracting the virus. The study s preliminary results, disclosed Tuesday by the Wal
Rachel Gordon, Charlie Goodyear, cgoodyear@sfchronicle.com and rgordon@sfchronicle.com.
A powerful San Francisco Board of Supervisors committee approved a budget late Thursday night that restores more than $16 million in cuts that Mayor Gavin Newsom targeted in his proposal for the new fiscal year. The revised budget restores money for AIDS care, substance abuse treatment, services for seniors and foster
Nearly 1 million people in poor and middle-income countries are now receiving AIDS drugs through a variety of international relief programs, but those efforts will fall far short of the goal set four years ago of treating three times that number by the end of 2005. With six months to go in the so-called 3-by-5 program,
After Boutros Boutros-Ghali became secretary-general of the United Nations in 1992, a pattern emerged: U.S. officials would tell him (either in person or on the phone) what policies to pursue, what people to meet, even what to say and when. One day in 1993, for example, Boutros-Ghali was about to leave from New York to
The future of medicinal marijuana is floating in a plastic, 2-foot- long turkey roasting bag, being sucked into the lungs of grandmas and AIDS patients at cannabis dispensaries and homes across the country. The allure to the sick -- and the health-conscious looking for a cleaner high -- is that the toke is nearly smoke
Mayor Gavin Newsom has restored $1.5 million in proposed cuts to the Department of Public Health s HIV/AIDS budget for the 2005-06 fiscal year after discussions with Board of Supervisors Budget Committee chairman Tom Ammiano. The money will be available to 20 organizations that provide a variety of nonclinical services
AIDS cases in the United States now total more than a million. It s a statistical milestone and a seven-figure warning light that blinks failure. We re not winning this war. The number is tempered by the fact that more people with AIDS or the virus that causes it are living longer, thanks to new drugs. But there s a fl
Shanghai - Government-sanctioned restrictions, discrimination and harassment of AIDS activists in China threaten to worsen the epidemic and force further suffering on its victims, a human rights group says in a report released today. Such barriers, coupled with systemic ignorance about AIDS and HIV, have made it diffic
Ohio is such a fun place these days. I can t even begin to explain Coingate, although, if you re curious, google that word and prepare for a quite bizarre and nasty political scandal. Cheating pensioners -- it s such a grand political tradition. Ohio, it will be remembered, was the state that had those teeny election i
Franz Humer is the chief executive officer of Roche, the huge drug company based in Basel, Switzerland , that owns a majority stake in Genentech Inc. of South San Francisco. Roche is widely praised for allowing Genentech to maintain its independence. The result: partnership in the commercialization of fast-growing new
In the genre-hopping tunes on his recent 26-song release Soul Sex, Bay Area singer-songwriter Mark Weigle tells stories about gay life -- and boy, are some of them dirrr-ty. Weigle is an activist in entertainer s clothing who plainly delights in upending expectations about gay sexuality and feels as comfortable critiqu
Inside a lecture room at California Pacific Medical Center on a recent morning, Donald Torres asked 15 students from Galileo High whether they d heard of nuclear medicine. Just one boy tentatively raised his hand, but by the end of the hourlong session, Torres, chief technologist in nuclear medicine at the hospital, ha
San Francisco Supervisor Chris Daly thinks city voters will approve a quarter-of-a-cent sales tax increase to support public health services in November. Mayor Gavin Newsom, who tried to raise taxes and failed at the ballot a year ago, isn t so sure. In a political role reversal, Chris Daly, who opposed Newsom s previo
IF ANYONE can twist President Bush s arm, it s Tony Blair. But the British prime minister, an ally to the point of ridicule, isn t having much luck. Blair wants to direct a reluctant White House to a new challenge: reclaiming Africa via a major relief effort. It s a deserving goal put before a decidedly cool administra
Firing up 2,000 people at 5:30 a.m. seems like a tough gig. With a little help from the Black Eyed Peas Let s Get It Started, San Francisco AIDS Foundation board Chairman Mark McCormick made it look easy Sunday. McCormick promised the 1,600 bicyclists and 400 roadies setting out on the 585-mile, weeklong AIDS/LifeCycle
Bay Area Jefferson Award winner: Daniel Wlodarczyk, a San Francisco physician who provides weekly on-site medical assistance to homeless people from a van sponsored by the San Francisco Community Clinic Consortium. Attending physician in the Department of Medicine at San Francisco General Hospital, Wlodarczyk is also a
The United Nations wants to convince Bay Area companies that being good global corporate citizens also means good business. As part of the U.N. World Environment Day in San Francisco, more than 100 local companies are expected to attend a symposium today on corporate responsibility and to be asked to sign the Global Co
A judge has dismissed charges by the creator of the AIDS Memorial Quilt that he was wrongly fired by the organization now in charge of the renowned symbol but preserved his claim that he was muzzled from speaking and thwarted from promoting his life s work. Tuesday s ruling by San Francisco Superior Court Judge James W
Rachel Gordon and Charlie Goodyear, rgordon@schronicle.com and cgoodyear@sfchronicle.com.
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom on Tuesday proposed a record $5.3 billion municipal budget for the new fiscal year, a plan that would put more police officers on the streets, send more money from City Hall to the schools, stop hemorrhaging in the ranks of park gardeners, create more housing for the homeless -- and cha
Mayor Gavin Newsom has picked a park in San Francisco s Richmond District as the place to announce his budget Tuesday, a decision both symbolic and political. Symbolic because Newsom wants to showcase his proposal to make a one-time expenditure of more than $20 million in the new fiscal year to renovate and freshen up
If the phrase abstinence teacher conjures up a vision of the priggishly unctuous Church Lady, think again. Today the reality is a 23-year- old mountain biker with slightly scruffy good looks that might be labeled sex appeal. I m totally excited about having sex but I m glad I ve waited, Jared Ives told a recent assembl
HAVING the talk now has a whole new meaning for Asians and Pacific Islanders in America. The San Francisco Asian and Pacific Islander Wellness Center launched the first National Asian and Pacific Islander HIV/AIDS Awareness Day on Wednesday as part of its ongoing initiative to fight HIV and AIDS discrimination and stig
It s been a little over 10 years now since the bomb dropped. Bill T. Jones has moved on. And then again he hasn t. Nothing -- whether it s a thought or a sentence, a piece of choreography or a dancer s gesture, a prominent battle in the 1990s culture wars and its long aftermath, a pinpoint memory or an abstract meditat
The Asian and Pacific Islander Wellness Center in San Francisco is launching a national initiative today to foster acceptance of people in those communities with HIV and AIDS. The awareness day kicks off at 5 p.m. with a free one-hour display of quilts honoring Asian Americans who have died of AIDS. The quilts will be
New Delhi, India - In a country where homosexuality is routinely met with both scorn and pity and talking about AIDS is still often taboo, the release of a film that deals with both would be expected to stir anger and controversy. But My Brother Nikhil, the story of a gay swimming star who develops AIDS and is incarce
In the deeply rural and desperately poor reaches of interior Haiti that Dr. Paul Farmer has made his home away from Harvard, people sickened with HIV are regularly brought back from the brink of death when they visit his clinic and begin taking antiviral drugs. It s a Lazarus effect. That s what the people call it, s
Los Angeles - Black preachers and AIDS activists from San Diego to Sacramento agreed Friday to encourage black clergy throughout the state to use their churches in the fight against the rapid spread of HIV among African Americans. During a daylong conference at the Los Angeles Forum, participants called on houses of wo
Some of California s most prominent African American religious leaders are gathering today to find ways of fighting the alarming spread of AIDS in the black community. At least 60 representatives of several dozen churches, including three Bay Area congregations, are meeting at Faithful Central Bible Church in Los Angel
Alameda County could become the first public entity in the nation to run a medical marijuana clinic at a government hospital if a majority of county supervisors agrees to a proposal that Sheriff Charles Plummer -- an opponent of medicinal pot -- called a brilliant idea. Supervisor Nate Miley proposed at a committee hea
So. I ve just returned from a screening of the latest Star Wars movie, Revenge of the Sith, and not surprisingly I ve got vengeance on my mind. That, and Mother s Day. First, the festive. Happy Mother s Day to my Lithuanian mama, who survived Hitler, Stalin, my father and me. She now lives in a swanky Washington state
Food and Drug Administration guidelines barring gay men from donating their sperm anonymously have raised the ire of gay rights groups who say that the recommendations are without scientific merit. An FDA rule that goes into effect late this month says that all sperm banks must screen out anonymous donors who are at in
Four Mission District nonprofits that work to prevent the spread of HIV infection among Latinos are facing city funding cuts totaling almost $1 million, which they say could lead more people to contract AIDS. It s devastating. It creates a scenario for more death, said Concepcion Saucedo, executive director of the Inst
Like all Navy recruits, Blue Buddha s boot camp experience was filled with marches, drills and classes designed to transform him from civilian to sailor. To ease tension, he and his friends would often pull pranks on each other. One day in class, a friend took Buddha s pen, stuck it down his pants and dared him to take
Ava Gardner-Shipp thought she had found the perfect man: a handsome respected minister who could cook and quote Scripture from memory and adored her and her daughter. I met him in Bible study, she recalled. We used to go to Sunday school services together. All the things I was looking for, he had. He was perfect.
Concerned that methamphetamine is increasingly being used as a party drug, especially among gays, and fosters the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, Mayor Gavin Newsom and Supervisor Bevan Dufty announced the creation of a citywide task force to address the problem. Dr. Steven Tierney, director of HIV prevention
Health officials have worried for years about the high rate of HIV among African Americans. Now the federal Centers for Disease Control is examining how one group, known as men on the down low, could be spreading the disease among black women. Men on the down low have sex with other men while keeping a heterosexual pub
One in an occasional series. Rick Crone was the rock in his family. The Marine veteran -- and father of two -- handled much of the care of his disabled wife, Nicolette, for the more than two decades they were together. But in 2001, Rick s spirits plummeted, an ominous change Nicolette said she first noticed after he st
Eat at one of more than 120 participating restaurants in the East Bay and San Francisco today and 25 percent of the food bill will be donated to HIV prevention and services programs. Proceeds will benefit the Stop AIDS Project in San Francisco and the Center for AIDS Services in Oakland. For more information on the fun
When Rudy Galindo was diagnosed as HIV positive in 2000, but reassured by doctors he still could lead a long and prosperous life, he was able to accept the news. When a couple of years later, he was told again by a medical professional his skating career was over because of a degenerative bone disease affecting both hi
Thom Gunn, the British-born San Francisco poet who died a year ago this week, is remembered by friends, colleagues and intimates who recall the polarities, the ghosts, the charms, the legacy of the man. Monday we learned about his childhood in England and the trauma of his mother s suicide. In today s conclusion, we le
Happy child, shattered teen. Revered poet, reluctant celebrity. Teacher and sage, aging Peter Pan with a growling libido. Thom Gunn, the San Francisco poet who died a year ago today at age 74, wore many skins in his lifetime and embodied wild contradictions. His poetry had a chaste reserve that reflected his Englishnes
At Alternative Herbal Health Services, a marijuana club on lower Haight Street in San Francisco, a high-quality joint costs $5. Pot brownies are for sale, along with chocolate bars, suckers and peanut butter and jelly infused with marijuana. Different varieties of pot ranging in taste, price and quality are stored behi
April 28 marks the fourth annual Dining Out for Life fund-raiser. Eat at one of more than 60 participating San Francisco restaurants that day, and 25 percent of the food bill will be donated to STOP AIDS, benefiting HIV prevention programs. More than 60 East Bay restaurants will participate as well. Proceeds will benef
Washington - Sen. Barbara Boxer of California, citing reports that pharmacists have turned away women seeking birth control pills, has introduced legislation that she says would protect American women s access to contraception. Boxer s proposal would require all pharmacies to fill all prescriptions or refer customers t
Preventing AIDS transmission has been a major goal of most governmental agencies for many years. For the most part, however, the administrators of jails and prisons have been missing in action. Assembly Bill 1677, now being heard in the California Legislature, would permit condom distribution by health professionals in
Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi is calling for a hearing to consider whether the city should start using retractable syringes in its needle exchange program and in its new effort to make clean needles available without a prescription at city pharmacies. There s been an increase in concerns by neighbors in my district that th
Sacramento -- In a startling admission of failure, corrections officials said yesterday that they have all but abandoned hope of providing adequate health care in state prisons on their own and conceded that they will either have to rely on private managed care companies or allow a federal court to take over the vast s
Scientists in San Francisco have apparently cracked a 20-year-old mystery surrounding the complex relationship between the AIDS virus and the immune system. In a paper released Wednesday in the online edition of the British journal Nature, UCSF researchers at the Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology have expl
A new law that allows pharmacists to sell syringes to adults without a prescription goes into effect today in San Francisco. The ordinance is part of a state program called the Local Disease Prevention Demonstration Project, which is intended to slow the spread of HIV and hepatitis. Participating pharmacies must be lic
Brendan O Rourke was born three months premature and weighed only 1 pound 13 ounces at birth. He fought with the energy of 10 little boys to live. In the days before he died seven years later, he gave his mother gifts she can still feel: hugs filled with a strength that belied his debilitating condition and that seemed
Karol Wojtyla delivered his inaugural homily as Pope John Paul II in 1978 when I was a sophomore in college. Be not afraid, he said. I didn t pay much attention. I stopped going to church when I left my parents home, though I still would answer Catholic whenever asked my religion. Being a Catholic was who I was, even i
A state appeals court has added $100,000 to the $191,000 in damages awarded to a San Francisco man in a suit against a doctor whose office disclosed his HIV-positive status to his employer, a restaurant that promptly fired him. The Court of Appeal in San Francisco on Wednesday upheld a judge s ruling that Dr. William K
San Francisco Health Department officials proposed Friday that the city cut as much as $25 million in services for substance abusers, the mentally ill, people with AIDS and shut-ins to help eliminate its budget deficit. This is very difficult for us, said Dr. Mitch Katz, San Francisco s public health chief. We understa
The design for a new art installment in the National AIDS Memorial Grove in Golden Gate Park may not be conventionally pretty, but if it gets built, supporters say it will be powerful, provocative and even beautiful -- in a solemn, stark way. It conveys the magnitude of the pandemic without resorting to statistics and
After a nationwide search, the San Francisco AIDS Foundation has found a new executive director a few blocks from its headquarters. Mark Cloutier, executive director of Continuum, a highly regarded nonprofit program in the city s Tenderloin district, will move into the top position at the AIDS Foundation on June 1, rep
Award-winning filmmaker and journalist Charlotte Kempner Beyers, whose work explored the crucial social issues of poverty, disability and fear of AIDS, has died at age 73. She died at home in Palo Alto on March 10, succumbing to complications from the lymphoma that she battled for a dozen years, according to her family
Aggressive community outreach helped reduce the number of tuberculosis cases in some areas of Richmond and San Pablo last year, but the number of new cases has risen in other parts of Contra Costa County, according to a recent report from the county s health department. The report, released as part of World TB Day next
Before Harvey Milk became a San Francisco supervisor in 1977, he helped produce a public access television show in the 1970s called Coming Out. One of the first such shows in the country to focus exclusively on gay and lesbian issues, it ran about a dozen times before heading to the public access graveyard. If Milk wer
A gay man with AIDS who fled Lebanon in 1987 is eligible for political asylum because he could face persecution, and even death, from an Islamic militia, a federal appeals court ruled Monday. The Lebanese government s hostility toward homosexuality, and attacks on gay men by Hezbollah paramilitary forces, justified Nas
One of the main stumbling blocks in the American health care system, many experts say, is the inefficient use of computer technology to manage medical records. Now, in Santa Barbara County, a network of hospitals, laboratories, pharmacies and doctors is pioneering new technology that will allow medical professionals wi
Three Bay Area men whose job offers as flight attendants were withdrawn because they concealed their HIV-positive status can sue American Airlines for disability discrimination, a federal appeals court ruled Friday. The airline is entitled to request relevant medical information but, under state and federal laws, must
When a presidential election leaves you smarting, create a think tank. That s the strategy of hundreds of Stanford University students, who are assembling what they call the nation s first student think tank, the Roosevelt Institution, which offers analyses and suggestions on public policy issues. We wanted to see new
Boston - Two weeks after New York City health officials warned that a potent new strain of HIV highly resistant to available drugs may have been detected there, experts at the nation s leading scientific conference on AIDS were in disagreement whether the presumed new strain represents a scientific oddity or a public h
Boston - Abstinence and fidelity - cornerstones of the Bush administration s overseas AIDS prevention programs -- may be playing less of a role than previously thought in driving down HIV infection rates in Uganda , where the idea first gained credence, according to new findings presented here Wednesday. Research f
Injection drug users soon will be able to buy hypodermic needles without a prescription at Walgreens and Rite Aid pharmacies in San Francisco, under an ordinance that the Board of Supervisors passed Tuesday. Safe access to needles has been essential to preventing the spread of HIV, said Supervisor Bevan Dufty, who spon
Boston - With his ambitious goal of treating 3 million patients in poor countries with AIDS drugs by year s end looking increasingly out of reach, Dr. Jim Yong Kim of the World Health Organization called for a renewed push by world leaders and top scientists to get the medicines to as many poor people as possible.
Anyone who thinks creating housing for the homeless means slapping paint on the cheapest building in town and handing door keys to the destitute would find the latest book from UC Berkeley architecture Professor Sam Davis an eye-opener. Don t cheap it out, he writes in Designing for the Homeless: Architecture That Work
SCIENTISTS grudgingly call AIDS a smart disease because the virus evolves unpredictably into new shapes. Such fears could turn lethal if first- blush reports of a super-virus in New York prove true. A man in his 40s tested positive for AIDS last October, but after doses of generally effective drugs, his condition worse
Reports of a new and deadlier strain of the AIDS virus were beginning to circulate through the Castro district Saturday, bringing reactions ranging from indifference to fear. East Coast health officials announced Friday that they had detected a form of HIV in a New York man that appears to be resistant to drug treatmen
Jefferson Award Winner: Martha Ryan, founder and executive director of the Homeless Prenatal Program in San Francisco. How she started: After spending time in Ethiopia with the Peace Corps and returning to Africa several times on medical trips, Ryan began volunteering at the Hamilton Family Shelter in 1988. At that tim
A new strain of the AIDS virus that swiftly causes disease and resists virtually all anti-HIV drugs has been detected in New York City, causing health officials there to issue a nationwide alert through the federal Centers for Disease Control. AIDS clinics and health departments throughout California already have been
Ruthe Stein, Peter Hartlaub, G. Allen Johnson, Jonathan Curiel
Conspiracy of Silence Drama. Starring Jonathan Forbes, Jason Barry and Brenda Fricker. Written and directed by John Deery. (Not rated. 85 minutes. At Bay Area theaters.). As Mel Gibson proved, passion for a subject will carry a filmmaker far. But writer-director John Deery s obviously strong feeling that the hierarchy
With a series of public lectures by prominent world health leaders, UCSF today is formally launching its Global Health Sciences program, an ambitious effort to train medical personnel from here and abroad to combat diseases in poor countries. As envisioned by onetime UCSF chancellor and former medical school dean, Dr.
Project Open Hand, the award-winning Bay Area service that provides meals for HIV patients and other home-bound people, will benefit from Dessert First on the evening before Valentine s Day. The annual fund-raiser is 5-9 p.m. Sunday at One Market restaurant and the adjoining pavilion, and will feature hors d oeuvres, w
Robert McMullin, a longtime fund-raiser, has been hired as executive director of the STOP AIDS Project in San Francisco. The 20-year-old AIDS organization, which has a $1.5 million annual budget, focuses on preventing the spread of HIV among bisexual and gay men in San Francisco. Its 16 employees and 250 volunteers con
President Bush s call in his State of the Union speech to fight the spread of HIV-AIDS among African Americans was greeted with praise, surprise and some skepticism by health advocates and black political leaders. Because HIV-AIDS brings suffering and fear into so many lives, I ask you to reauthorize the Ryan White Act
OVER THE LAST 20 years, this country has witnessed a success story with AIDS. The infection rate has dropped to 40,000 per year, down from the plague level of 150,000 in the 1980s. A new wave of drugs allows those infected to stave off full-blown AIDS and live independent lives. Once a quick death sentence, AIDS can be
Midway through his State of the Union speech Wednesday night -- between Social Security and the war on terrorism -- President Bush surprised many in Congress by laying out an agenda aimed not at middle America, but at the nation s inner cities. An initiative to help ease gang violence. A pledge to combat the problem of
They ve got Frank Jordan s shoe. Tucked away in an archive that some refer to as the queer Smithsonian, among boxes labeled Matthew Shepard Memorial, plaques and trophies and sex toys and safe sex barriers is a slightly scuffed, black leather size 10 shoe with tassels. The lonely loafer gained historical status during
San Francisco photographer Karen Ande points to a color photograph that she took in August 2003 in Kibera, a slum neighborhood in Nairobi, Kenya . It shows a 10-year-old girl in a white blouse, her hair done up in braids. She is carrying her toddler brother. A tear dangles from his cheek. There s a starter for why
WHY DO WEALTHY countries pay so little attention to AIDS, though nearly 38 million worldwide are infected? Maybe because the epidemic seems far away, hopeless -- and impossible to handle. A report by the world s biggest AIDS-fighting agencies should jolt this prejudice. With the right drugs and programs, more people in
Keep hope alive. Don t give up the fight. Be true to your school. All of these tasks can now be accomplished with a single action: Buy a silicone wristband -- of the appropriate color, of course. Since the yellow LiveStrong wristbands produced to show support for Tour de France cycling champion and cancer survivor
Two hundred architects, designers, artists, landscape architects and students from 21 states and 24 countries had ideas for an addition to the National AIDS Memorial in Golden Gate Park that would somehow educate the public, honor the dead, promote hope -- and aesthetically enrich the 7-acre grove. From a glass house t
Angst about drug safety still shadows the market for biomedical firms, but biotechnology is starting to yield products that may open the door to a new era of safer medicine. One strong sign of that emerging trend is a newly approved gene chip test that can unravel part of a long-standing mystery -- why do some people s
San Francisco s grim budget problems will start to hit home tonight when 115 city workers, among them recreation directors, litter cops and public health nurses, will lose their city jobs. The midyear budget reductions enacted by Mayor Gavin Newsom cut across almost every city department, and their effects will be evid
Ask Tommy Funanish to describe the difference between the West Hotel of today and yesteryear, and he sums it up in three words -- the whole building. It doesn t look anything like the old building, and that s good, he said. Funanish lives in the once-dilapidated, now-handsome residential hotel, which last week celebrat
Sacramento -- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed a $85.7 billion budget Monday that would cut assistance to the elderly, poor and disabled and once again relies on borrowing to help close what he now describes as a $9.1 billion deficit In a plan that does not raise taxes, Schwarzenegger said he had no choice but to ma
Despite concerns that the rush of donations to relief efforts in southern Asia would reduce money available for other needy causes, several Bay Area charities say their own fund-raising efforts have remained unaffected so far. We re not seeing any downturn at all, said Robert Brenneman, director of development for Proj
Battered by government budget cuts, and strained by declines in private giving, San Francisco s acclaimed network of AIDS services is about to undergo its biggest overhaul since it was assembled in the desperate early years of the epidemic more than two decades ago. Annual allotments of federal Ryan White Care Act doll
Rita Grant has a new life. A year ago, the former homecoming queen and gymnastics whiz was shivering through foggy nights on San Francisco sidewalks, panhandling streams of traffic and shooting up with dirty heroin needles on a downtown median dubbed Homeless Island for the dozen or so down-and-outers -- like Rita -- w
FERNANDEZ-LOPEZ, Anna - In San Francisco, December 15, 2004. Anna was an active member of the Latina transgender community of San Francisco for 17 years; a native of Mexico , DF; age 46. Anna worked for the TRANS project at the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies, University of California San Francisco for more than thr
Women who have easier access to the Plan B emergency contraception pills through pharmacies or personal stockpiles do not have riskier sex as a result, according to a study by UCSF researchers published today. The researchers also found that increased access to the morning-after pills did not lower pregnancy rates, bec
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