By Dr Kate Scannell, Syndicated columnist
First Published in Print: 12/12/2010
LAST WEEK, Lady Gaga, Jennifer Hudson, and Justin Timberlake threatened to "kill " themselves -- that is, on social media like Facebook and Twitter. They vowed to remain "digitally dead" and unavailable for contact until fans resurrected them through a collective million-dollar donation to Alicia Keys' campaign for AIDS relief in Africa and India.
Coming of age as a doctor during the early AIDS epidemic, I was happy to learn about this high-profile effort and its eventual success. But I was particularly gratified because the mainstream news media barely bothered to notice it.
Less than 30 years ago, during the dark pre-digital 1980s, there were no major stars to shine a public light on AIDS and its causative virus, HIV. Celebrities, fearing actual career deaths by association with AIDS, stayed behind the curtain even as the epidemic exacted a devastating human toll on the artistic community.
Most of the known early AIDS patients were young gay men who suffered the social stigma of homosexuality while facing death within months of their diagnoses. Many were contemptuously regarded as plague-bearers, as toxic creatures intent on spreading a frightening and lethal infection throughout decent society. It took 500 HIV deaths before "AIDS" landed on the front page of the New York Times, and 12,000 fatalities before President Ronald Reagan first mentioned "AIDS" in public.
When the epidemic began, we were light years away from compassionate public embrace of people suffering HIV/AIDS.
But now the stars align differently, and famous singers passionately voice support for people afflicted with a once-unspeakable disease. AIDS can command center stage before an attentive and caring public.
This thundering cultural transformation was once completely unimaginable for many socially outcast AIDS patients who were burdened with the hopelessness of the '80s throughout their dying. In my memoir about doctoring during that era, I conclude the book's introduction with the dying wish of a hopeful 22-year-old patient in 1986 -- to live another 10 years, mainly to witness the world arriving at a compassionate understanding of AIDS.
How thunderstruck he would be today to see Lady Gaga "killing herself" on behalf of people with AIDS.
Much has also changed on the medical front since the epidemic's beginning to sustain hope about HIV/AIDS. Most notably, dozens of effective anti-HIV drugs now exist which, while not curative, have helped many people live with HIV for years or decades. They've also played pivotal roles in reducing mother-to-child HIV transmission rates and occupational infections among health care workers after accidental exposure to the virus.
Last month, a remarkable new study suggested that rigorous compliance taking a daily pill could lower the risk of acquiring HIV infection by about 70 percent among men having sex with men.
Still, all this good news is tempered. The high cost of anti-HIV drugs -- usually several thousands of dollars each year -- remains prohibitive for many people. About 30 percent of Americans living with HIV do not even possess insurance coverage, and reliance on government drug subsidy programs can prove hazardous for their health. For example, in July, more than 2,000 Americans in 11 states remained on waiting lists for the AIDS Drug Assistance Program.
Furthermore, sobering data from the CDC indicate that more than 1 million Americans are living with HIV, while fully one-fifth remain unaware of their infection.
From data collected through 2007, more than 576,000 Americans have died since the epidemic began. And each year, still, about 56,000 Americans become newly infected, and 18,000 die with AIDS.
In the early '80s, I cared for a young black man whose white male partner had recently died with AIDS. While also sick with tell-tale signs of HIV infection, he adamantly denied the possibility of having AIDS because -- as was commonly believed back then -- HIV exclusively affected gay white men living in urban America. Today, however, when you examine the human face of AIDS, you see people from every country, men and women, young and old, gay and straight and all the places in-between.
In fact, nearly two-thirds of the world's population living with AIDS now resides in sub-Saharan Africa. On the global front, about 10 million people need treatment they can't access or afford, and each year about 2 million persons die.
Last month, a glimmer of hope was sparked by a report from the United Nation's Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) claiming that the rate of new HIV infections had declined by more than 25 percent in 22 African countries over the prior decade.
Additionally, Pope Benedict XVI happily surprised many of the faithful when he remarked that condoms might be used to prevent HIV transmission during particular sexual encounters.
The AIDS epidemic continues to unfold, confound, surprise and humble us all. But new economic challenges imposed by the global recession will likely threaten support for existing AIDS prevention and treatment programs that currently hover on a brittle brink of success. Hope may be hard to sustain in the near future.
Yet, in paying respect to my 22-year-old patient, it's important to remain open to the possibility for unimaginable change to occur in this troubled world, a world that often seems stuck in reverse or spinning in a wrong direction. And it's important to pay witness to the inspiring social transformations that, against all seeming odds, did actually and ultimately occur to foster a more humane public attitude regarding AIDS.
More than anything, that's the kind of "AIDS breakthrough" that continues to sustain my hope.
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Kate Scannell is a Bay Area physician and author of the memoir, "Death of the Good Doctor — Lessons from the Heart of the AIDS Epidemic."
© Copyright 2010, Kate Scannell
First Published in Print: 12/12/2010
LAST WEEK, Lady Gaga, Jennifer Hudson, and Justin Timberlake threatened to "kill " themselves -- that is, on social media like Facebook and Twitter. They vowed to remain "digitally dead" and unavailable for contact until fans resurrected them through a collective million-dollar donation to Alicia Keys' campaign for AIDS relief in Africa and India.
Coming of age as a doctor during the early AIDS epidemic, I was happy to learn about this high-profile effort and its eventual success. But I was particularly gratified because the mainstream news media barely bothered to notice it.
Less than 30 years ago, during the dark pre-digital 1980s, there were no major stars to shine a public light on AIDS and its causative virus, HIV. Celebrities, fearing actual career deaths by association with AIDS, stayed behind the curtain even as the epidemic exacted a devastating human toll on the artistic community.
Most of the known early AIDS patients were young gay men who suffered the social stigma of homosexuality while facing death within months of their diagnoses. Many were contemptuously regarded as plague-bearers, as toxic creatures intent on spreading a frightening and lethal infection throughout decent society. It took 500 HIV deaths before "AIDS" landed on the front page of the New York Times, and 12,000 fatalities before President Ronald Reagan first mentioned "AIDS" in public.
When the epidemic began, we were light years away from compassionate public embrace of people suffering HIV/AIDS.
But now the stars align differently, and famous singers passionately voice support for people afflicted with a once-unspeakable disease. AIDS can command center stage before an attentive and caring public.
This thundering cultural transformation was once completely unimaginable for many socially outcast AIDS patients who were burdened with the hopelessness of the '80s throughout their dying. In my memoir about doctoring during that era, I conclude the book's introduction with the dying wish of a hopeful 22-year-old patient in 1986 -- to live another 10 years, mainly to witness the world arriving at a compassionate understanding of AIDS.
How thunderstruck he would be today to see Lady Gaga "killing herself" on behalf of people with AIDS.
Much has also changed on the medical front since the epidemic's beginning to sustain hope about HIV/AIDS. Most notably, dozens of effective anti-HIV drugs now exist which, while not curative, have helped many people live with HIV for years or decades. They've also played pivotal roles in reducing mother-to-child HIV transmission rates and occupational infections among health care workers after accidental exposure to the virus.
Last month, a remarkable new study suggested that rigorous compliance taking a daily pill could lower the risk of acquiring HIV infection by about 70 percent among men having sex with men.
Still, all this good news is tempered. The high cost of anti-HIV drugs -- usually several thousands of dollars each year -- remains prohibitive for many people. About 30 percent of Americans living with HIV do not even possess insurance coverage, and reliance on government drug subsidy programs can prove hazardous for their health. For example, in July, more than 2,000 Americans in 11 states remained on waiting lists for the AIDS Drug Assistance Program.
Furthermore, sobering data from the CDC indicate that more than 1 million Americans are living with HIV, while fully one-fifth remain unaware of their infection.
From data collected through 2007, more than 576,000 Americans have died since the epidemic began. And each year, still, about 56,000 Americans become newly infected, and 18,000 die with AIDS.
In the early '80s, I cared for a young black man whose white male partner had recently died with AIDS. While also sick with tell-tale signs of HIV infection, he adamantly denied the possibility of having AIDS because -- as was commonly believed back then -- HIV exclusively affected gay white men living in urban America. Today, however, when you examine the human face of AIDS, you see people from every country, men and women, young and old, gay and straight and all the places in-between.
In fact, nearly two-thirds of the world's population living with AIDS now resides in sub-Saharan Africa. On the global front, about 10 million people need treatment they can't access or afford, and each year about 2 million persons die.
Last month, a glimmer of hope was sparked by a report from the United Nation's Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) claiming that the rate of new HIV infections had declined by more than 25 percent in 22 African countries over the prior decade.
Additionally, Pope Benedict XVI happily surprised many of the faithful when he remarked that condoms might be used to prevent HIV transmission during particular sexual encounters.
The AIDS epidemic continues to unfold, confound, surprise and humble us all. But new economic challenges imposed by the global recession will likely threaten support for existing AIDS prevention and treatment programs that currently hover on a brittle brink of success. Hope may be hard to sustain in the near future.
Yet, in paying respect to my 22-year-old patient, it's important to remain open to the possibility for unimaginable change to occur in this troubled world, a world that often seems stuck in reverse or spinning in a wrong direction. And it's important to pay witness to the inspiring social transformations that, against all seeming odds, did actually and ultimately occur to foster a more humane public attitude regarding AIDS.
More than anything, that's the kind of "AIDS breakthrough" that continues to sustain my hope.
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Kate Scannell is a Bay Area physician and author of the memoir, "Death of the Good Doctor — Lessons from the Heart of the AIDS Epidemic."
© Copyright 2010, Kate Scannell