Physician who alerted the world to the Aids virus
Dr Joel D Weisman, a brilliant and compassionate generalpractitioner and pioneer in HIV/Aids care and research, died at hishome in Los Angeles, California on 18 July. He was 66. He had beensuffering from heart disease and was being looked after by hispartner of 17 years, the singer and actor Bill Hutton.
In 1978 in North Hollywood, Weisman had been noticing some vexingsymptoms in some patients - skin cancers that would normally afflictan older age group, and some patients with swollen lymph glands,often an indication of lymphoma, a cancer that originates in theimmune system. In 1980, after Weisman expanded his practice inSherman Oaks with Dr Eugene Rogolsky, alarm bells started to ringwhen he observed that several gay male patients of his had similarsymptoms of pneumonia, as well as serious ailments ranging frompersistent diarrhoea and fungal infections to low white blood cellcounts.
In 1981 Weisman was put in touch with the immunologist Dr MichaelGottlieb at UCLA Medical Centre, who also had a patient withsimilarly unusual symptoms. The two doctors collated theirobservations and came to the conclusion that something not seenbefore was happening. They wrote the seminal report that signalledthe official start of the Aids epidemic and which sounded an alarmwhich was heard around the world. Aids deaths in the US roseexponentially, from 618 in 1982 to almost 90,000 by the end of thedecade. By 2002, the death toll, still climbing, passed 500,000.
'I had a feeling that what this represented was the tip of theiceberg,' Weisman told the Washington Post two decades later in2001. 'My sense was that these people were sick and we had a lot ofpeople that were potentially right behind them.'
On top of these early referral cases, the journalist and authorRandy Shilts noted in his Aids chronicle And the Band Played On(1987), 'another 20 men had appeared at Weisman's office that yearwith strange abnormalities of their lymph nodes' - the verycondition that had triggered the spiral of ailments besettingWeisman and Rogolsky's original, very sick patients.
Weisman pressed for services for people with HIV and Aids asfounding chairman of Aids Project Los Angeles in 1983. He advocatedfor research dollars as an original board member of amfAR, which wasformed in 1985, and served as its chairman from 1988 to 1992.
Described by Shilts as 'the dean of Southern California gaydoctors', Weisman was loved and respected by patients and colleaguesalike. He continued to see patients, building his partnership withRogolsky at what is now Sherman Oaks Hospital and Health Center, oneof the largest private practices in Southern California for thetreatment of Aids and HIV.
As soon as he became convinced that Aids was sexuallytransmitted, Weisman began to urge patients to change their sexualbehaviour. But during the early years of the crisis, his warningswere too often ignored. 'I couldn't even make some of my friendslisten, and they're dead now and that's disconcerting,' he told TheNew York Times in 1988. Among the casualties was his partner of 10years, Timothy Bogue, who died in 1991.
Battling the epidemic on the front lines 'made me look at issuesof death and dying in a very different way,' he said in 1988. 'Whatmakes somebody a good physician in this situation? Is it justwinning? Keeping people alive? If I looked at every death as adefeat, I would not be able to continue.' In 1997, he stepped awayfrom the front line, just as new drug cocktails were extending thelives of Aids patients.
In 2000, he moved to upstate New York, where he ran an inn withHutton. They returned to Southern California five years ago where heremained an active ambassador for Aids Project Los Angeles untilillness overtook him this year.
My wife and I got to know Joel in 1993 when he walked into TheRedfern Gallery and bought several paintings of mine for his beachhouse in Malibu. He and Bill also made a studio visit to the EastEnd of London, when, much to my dealer's annoyance, I refused topart with a painting they liked which I didn't think was goodenough.
This episode cemented a bond between us and we were asked to stayin their beautiful modernist house in Beverly Hills. For a youngishartist it was an intoxicating experience. Joel became like an uncleand over the next 15 years his passion for the theatre meant that hewould come and visit and regularly take us and our children to playsand musicals in the West End, some of which he had part funded.
In addition to Bill Hutton, Joel Weisman is survived by hisbrother Mark, his daughter Stacey Weisman-Bogue Foster, hisgranddaughter, and two nieces. He was a wonderful man.
Joel Weisman, physician and advocate for Aids research: bornNewark, New Jersey 20 February 1943; died Los Angeles, California 18July 2009.
