Being Alive; October 1996
Christopher Griffin

The overall topic of this 100th Update will be "Where Are We Going-In the Next 2 Years? The Next 5?" Dr. Katz will present some reflections on the last 100 months of Medical Updates and address the current state of AIDS therapies. Six guest speakers-Dr. Aaron Aronow, Dr. Jeffrey Galpin, Dr. Michael Gottlieb, Dr. David Hardy, Dr. Scott Hitt, and Dr. Alexandra Levine-will respond to questions about the future course of AIDS research and treatment. For the past eight-plus years, Dr. Katz's monthly Being Alive Medical Update has served as one of the foremost disseminators of current and ongoing hiv/AIDS information in Southern California. Not only has it been possible to attend the Updates in person, but also to read transcriptions of them in the monthly Being Alive Newsletter and to see videotaped recordings of them broadcast on cable television. For thousands of people affected by hiv/AIDS, the Medical Update has served as a vital link between themselves and the scientists, doctors, clinicians and patients doing battle on the front lines, providing up-to-date cutting-edge information in a clear and accessible way that would not otherwise be available.

To look over a list of the various people who have given presentations at the Medical Updates over the years is to see a veritable Who's Who of southern California AIDS practitioners: Drs. Aaron Aronow, Michael Gottlieb, David Hardy, Jeffrey Galpin, Steven Miles, Peter Kraus, Alexandra Levine, Eric Daar, Scott Hitt, Victor Beer, Richard Cooper, and Peter Wolfe, to name but a few.

All eight International AIDS Conferences since 1988-Stockholm, Montreal, San Francisco, Florence, Amsterdam, Berlin, Yokohama, and Vancouver-have been immediately covered at the Update, bringing back to the local AIDS community the latest-breaking news. Virtually every topic imaginable has been covered, from PCP prophylaxis (September '88) to Chinese Medicine (November '93), from Dermatology in hiv Infection (February '90) to Neurological Illnesses (April '95). We have watched as "experimental anti-viral therapies" (February '89 and July '90) have become widely-accepted standards of care, while other "promising" treatments-Peptide-T (April '90), Compound Q (August '90), and Cytolin (November '95), to name a few-have disappointed our expectations. No fewer than six separate Updates have concerned the continuing difficulties of living with and treating Kaposi's sarcoma. Poignantly, the May '90 Update included a presentation entitled "AIDS: Is It Over?"

We invite the entire hiv/AIDS community of southern California to join Dr. Mark Katz and Being Alive for this benchmark event. The 100th Being Alive Medical Update will be held at the Writers Guild Theater, 135 South Doheny Drive (half a block south of Wilshire) in Beverly Hills. Reception will start at 6:30pm; the Update will run from 7:30­9:30pm. Admission is free. On-site parking is available for $1.

Sponsors for this special event include: AltaMed, Asian Pacific AIDS Intervention Team, City of West Hollywood, Gilead Sciences, Glaxo Wellcome, Kaiser Permanente/Southern California Region, L.A. Shanti, North Hollywood Medical Center, Roxanne Laboratories, Wild Oats Community Market, and the Writers Guild Theatre.

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