Aids Epidemic

After recently reading the Los Angeles Times' excellent editorial ("AIDS: Cool Reception," Feb. 20) about AIDS prevention programs, I was concerned that some readers may conclude that the AIDS epidemic among males with male partners has peaked and that the worst is over. That is far from the case. While some may take the position that behavioral changes prompted by education have drastically cut the rate of new infections among the gay population, changes in behavior demonstrated in select groups may not be typical of the population as a whole.

WASHINGTON - Dr. C. Everett Koop, who as U.S. surgeon general in the 1980s led high-profile campaigns to highlight the dangers of smoking and to mobilize the nation against an emerging AIDS epidemic, has died. He was 96. Koop died Monday at his home in New Hampshire, Susan Wills, a colleague at Koop's Dartmouth Institute, told the Associated  Press. The cause was not given. Unlike his predecessors and many of his successors, who were largely figureheads, Koop initiated a new era of influence for surgeons general by turning the post into a national bully pulpit.

More than 1,200 Zimbabweans are dying each week from AIDS, President Robert Mugabe said, acknowledging for the first time the enormity of an epidemic whose existence the government previously had underplayed. In a speech marking the 19th anniversary of Zimbabwe's independence, Mugabe said a national AIDS council would be formed to unite all sectors of the nation against the epidemic.

In the mid-1980s, the emerging AIDS epidemic was a high-profile target of vocal conservatives. Politicians and the religious right called for sweeping measures against those diagnosed with AIDS, including quarantine of patients, mandatory screening of homosexuals for the AIDS virus and a host of other measures that would victimize patients and keep the disease and the diseased hidden from public light. But they did not reckon with Dr. C. Everett Koop, the religious and conservative surgeon general of the United States appointed by President Reagan.

By 1991, one million Britons may be afflicted with the killer disease AIDS if precautions are not taken immediately, the Royal College of Nursing said in a report Thursday. The figures are based on the fact that in the United States and Britain, the number of people contracting acquired immune deficiency syndrome doubles every six months, the report said.

NEW YORK - In the 30 years that David France, director of the Oscar-nominated AIDS activism documentary "How to Survive a Plague," has lived at the corner of 7th Street and Avenue C, the neighborhood has transformed dramatically. During the worst years of the epidemic in the 1980s, death pervaded this far corner of the East Village. "It was inescapable. You would see people who were skinny, skinny skeletons trying to catch their breath, wheelchairs with men in their 20s, the KS [Kaposi's sarcoma]

When the 13th International AIDS Conference opens today in Durban, South Africa, delegates will be coming to grips with a startling new U.N. report showing that the illness is exacting a much harder toll on Africa than previously estimated: At least half of all 15-year-olds in many sub-Saharan nations are likely to die of the disease in the next several years. The U.S.

Dr. Michael P. Rosenberg, 55, founder and past president of the national Hemophilia/HIV Peer Assn. A pioneer in investigating the AIDS epidemic among hemophiliacs, Rosenberg had helped produce television documentaries and worked to establish communication among AIDS patients and authorities. He had petitioned President Clinton for a congressional investigation into the problem of hemophiliacs contracting AIDS from contaminated blood products. On Saturday in Nevada City, Calif., of AIDS.

The AIDS epidemic is accelerating and affecting more heterosexuals and black and Latino Americans than ever, the federal Centers for Disease Control said Thursday. In its "Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report," the CDC noted it took eight years for the United States to record its first 100,000 cases of the deadly disease first reported in June, 1981, but only two years for the second 100,000. By the end of 1991 the Atlanta-based federal health agency said it had reports of 206,392 U.S. cases.

NEW YORK - In the 30 years that David France, director of the Oscar-nominated AIDS activism documentary "How to Survive a Plague," has lived at the corner of 7th Street and Avenue C, the neighborhood has transformed dramatically. During the worst years of the epidemic in the 1980s, death pervaded this far corner of the East Village. "It was inescapable. You would see people who were skinny, skinny skeletons trying to catch their breath, wheelchairs with men in their 20s, the KS [Kaposi's sarcoma]

Queen Elizabeth called 1992 her annus horribilis . Bill Clinton defeated President George H.W. Bush and ended the Reagan era. Pope John Paul II lifted the Edict of Inquisition against Galileo, and the Toronto Blue Jays became the first non-American team to win the World Series. In April, a Simi Valley jury found four LAPD officers not guilty in the beating of Rodney King and Los Angeles exploded. In August, Pat Buchanan rocked the Republican convention with his infamous "God's country" speech ("better in the original German," observed columnist Molly Ivins)

Navy Adm. James D. Watkins was considered "an unlikely hero" after he was called out of retirement in 1987 to accomplish what many considered a near-impossible task — taking over the leadership of an embattled and divided presidential commission on AIDS. A former chief of naval operations, Watkins was a deeply religious Roman Catholic father of six who had once called the military's ban on homosexuals "a sound policy. " Yet he was also known as an independent and analytical thinker.

More than 30 years into the AIDS epidemic, a combination of safe-sex education and a new generation of pharmaceuticals has left many Americans convinced that HIV/AIDS is a problem that has been, if not solved, at least addressed. But that's certainly not true in the American South, which accounts for nearly 50% of all new HIV infections in the United States. The South has the highest rate of AIDS deaths of any U.S. region. It also has the largest numbers of adolescents and adults living with HIV and the fewest resources to fight the epidemic.

Treatment drugs can do more than improve the health of people with HIV: If administered early, medications can also reduce the spread of the disease to sexual partners and may help stem the AIDS epidemic. But many logistical hurdles stand in the way of making this strategy feasible, affordable and effective, according to experts writing in Tuesday's edition of the journal PLoS Medicine. The medications in question are antiretroviral therapies, which prevent HIV from multiplying and drastically diminish the amount of virus circulating in the blood.

WASHINGTON - Shortly after his partner died in 1986, Cornelius Baker found out he was HIV-positive. While AIDStook the lives of thousands in the U.S., Baker was fortunate enough to receive steady healthcare. At age 50, he still lives a relatively healthy life. “There was a one-year period where I wasn't employed and I paid $2,000 a month for my meds,” said Baker, a policy advisor for the National Black and Gay Men's Advocacy Coalition. “I had the luxury of being able to do that.

Jeffrey Chandler, an influential member of the family that built the Los Angeles Times and the last person with the Chandler name to play a significant role in the newspaper's ownership, has died. He was 70. Chandler, who had been a radio station owner and real estate developer in the San Diego area, died Sunday at his home in Rancho Santa Fe after a lengthy battle with prostate cancer, his family announced. Long a maverick who sought to return The Times to its conservative roots, Chandler was one of three representatives of his family on the Tribune Co. board of directors who forced a sale of the company to a group headed by Chicago real estate investor Sam Zell in 2007.

Tinderbox: How the West Sparked the AIDS Epidemic and the How the World Can Finally Overcome It By Craig Timberg and Daniel Halperin Penguin Press, 421 pp., $29.95 Few diseases have been the subject of more books than the HIV/AIDS pandemic, with such notable works as Randy Shilts' 1987 volume "And the Band Played On: People, Politics and the AIDS Epidemic" and Laurie Garrett's 1995 "The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Disease in a World Out...