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Recent Newspaper & Online Columns by Kate Scannell MD

Back to the AIDS front

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.  Read More