Friday, June 02, 2006
SAN FRANCISCO - San Franciscan Michael Lynch has been living with HIV for six years and expects to live a lot of more years with the virus that basis AIDS as long as he takes his medication - a obvious contrast to when an HIV diagnosis was a death sentence.
"My doctor told me the toxicity of the drugs will probably kill me before the disease does," Lynch, 46, told on Thursday of how San Francisco has responded to AIDS since doctors identify its first case on June 5, 1981.
AIDS-related illnesses have since killed nearly 17,000 in San Francisco, striking particularly its large gay community. HIV infection has grown into a worldwide epidemic, infecting 60 million, of whom 25 million have died, according to the United Nations.
From the first diagnosis a sector century ago when HIV predominantly affected gay men in North America, San Francisco materialize quickly in the 1980s as the epicenter for AIDS activism.
Over the past two decades, politicians, public health staff and the network of AIDS charities implemented a variety of projects helping contain the number of new infections in the city, which now marks about 350 AIDS-related deaths a year.
The number is small compared to how AIDS sweep across San Francisco after doctors accomplished a new and confounding disease had arrived, said speakers at the retrospective. AIDS-related deaths pointed in the city at somewhat more than 1,800 in 1994.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, a San Franciscan and House Democratic leader, said she recalls twice-a-day funerals for AIDS victims. "It was so sad," she said. "Along the way we lost so many friends."
"My doctor told me the toxicity of the drugs will probably kill me before the disease does," Lynch, 46, told on Thursday of how San Francisco has responded to AIDS since doctors identify its first case on June 5, 1981.
AIDS-related illnesses have since killed nearly 17,000 in San Francisco, striking particularly its large gay community. HIV infection has grown into a worldwide epidemic, infecting 60 million, of whom 25 million have died, according to the United Nations.
From the first diagnosis a sector century ago when HIV predominantly affected gay men in North America, San Francisco materialize quickly in the 1980s as the epicenter for AIDS activism.
Over the past two decades, politicians, public health staff and the network of AIDS charities implemented a variety of projects helping contain the number of new infections in the city, which now marks about 350 AIDS-related deaths a year.
The number is small compared to how AIDS sweep across San Francisco after doctors accomplished a new and confounding disease had arrived, said speakers at the retrospective. AIDS-related deaths pointed in the city at somewhat more than 1,800 in 1994.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, a San Franciscan and House Democratic leader, said she recalls twice-a-day funerals for AIDS victims. "It was so sad," she said. "Along the way we lost so many friends."
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