San Francisco Health

Christine Geoghegan says her most wrenching interview was with a young mother of two who had recently been diagnosed with AIDS. As the woman was starting to plan for her children's future without her, Geoghegan gently took her back into the past. Geoghegan asked the woman, who has been separated from her husband for several years, for the names, addresses and telephone numbers of the men she had slept with in the previous eight years.

An underground needle exchange program in San Francisco--illegal but operating with the express backing of the mayor and the tacit approval of police--has been found to be highly effective in reducing risky behavior among drug addicts and, contrary to the fears of critics, does not promote drug abuse, a new study shows. The research, published in today's issue of the Journal of the American Medical Assn.

We've gotten used to actors being president, playing with the idea of being president--or at least a politician. But here's a politician with presidential designs who's looking to get into the movie trade. Sen. John McCain, Arizona's first GOP presidential contender since Barry Goldwater, has sold the rights to his memoirs to USA Films for an undisclosed sum reported to be top dollar, which is almost as high in Hollywood as it is on Capitol Hill.

New cases of HIV in San Francisco dipped nearly 10% in the last five years, marking the first drop in infections since the late 1980s, according to preliminary estimates from the city's Department of Public Health. "It looks like we're on the waning side" of this wave in the epidemic, said department epidemiologist Willi McFarland. But, he said, "Certainly, the job is not done."

In a reversal of his own 1998 order, a federal judge ruled on Monday that an Oakland medicinal marijuana club can dispense the drug to seriously ill patients. The ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Charles Breyer came only two days after San Francisco announced it will allow sick people with doctors' notes access to marijuana through an identification card system used in at least two other Northern California counties.

In keeping with his position as executive director of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, John H. Jacobs is by nature an optimist. But ask him about the future of the AIDS epidemic and the professional booster turns somber. About 4% of the city's residents--including a staggering 50% of the estimated 42,500 to 69,100 gay men--are infected with the AIDS-causing human immunodeficiency virus. Barring a cure or effective treatment, all can expect to die, most within 10 years.

The growth of the AIDS epidemic appears to have slowed dramatically in Los Angeles County, San Francisco and New York City, the American metropolitan areas struck earliest and hardest by the acquired immune deficiency syndrome. Since early 1987, there has been an apparent leveling off in the number of new cases being reported among white gay men in the three cities, according to an analysis by The Times of publicly available AIDS statistics.

As he merged into the milling throng at the Castro Street fair in San Francisco last Sunday, Randy Shilts figured his chances were equally good of getting slugged or hugged. An openly gay reporter whose beat includes the most openly gay community in America, Shilts is used to being embroiled in the raucous fray of San Francisco politics. Last weekend, though, he thought that his presence might be particularly volatile.

Police equipped with riot gear arrested 29 people as they tried to give food to the homeless in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, prompting jeers and taunts from the group's supporters. The arrests were made after 100 members of the group called "Food Not Bombs" marched through the Haight-Ashbury district to the park and set up tables with plates of beans and melons.