AIDS Doctors: Voices from the Epidemic: An Oral History

Longtime collaborators Bayer (of Columbia University's School of Public Health) and Oppenheimer (of Brooklyn College) team up again to deliver a solid, largely anecdotal account of the AIDS epidemic through the eyes of the doctors who have witnessed it. Organized into a chronological narrative, this collective oral history--based on interviews with 75 gay and straight physicians--surveys the central medical and social issues of each era of the epidemic. From the early 1980s, when gay males with suppressed immune systems suddenly began dying of Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, to the more recent years marked by treatment breakthroughs, Bayer and Oppenheimer (who together coedited Confronting Drug Policy: Illicit Drugs in a Free Society) showcase the physicians' words. Interviewees describe how frustrated they were initially at not being able to help their relatively young patients, and how anxious they were before they knew how the disease was transmitted, about their own safety and the safety of the gay community. As the book moves on to consider the years during which the epidemic widened to include drug users, some of the doctor-participants candidly admit that they did not feel the same degree of concern for that population. Interviewees then recall extraordinarily committed medical colleagues who tried to give patients emotional comfort as a palliative treatment and the networks they eventually created to support one another. Through the physician's experiences, Bayer and Oppenheimer trace the emergence of drug therapies and attendant controversies, as well as the treatment ""partnerships"" doctors eventually began creating with patients who demanded the newest drugs, whether or not they were legal or proven effective. Filled with stories, this account will be of interest to medical historians, physicians and AIDS activists. (July)