Gerald Oppenheimer
- Professor Oppenheimer (left)
In 1981, doctors across the country began to take notice of a degenerative disease that was mainly affecting drug users and gay men. Many of them kept their distance from this disease and all who were infected for fear that they may bring in undesirable patients or that they may possibly be infected. For these reasons, early AIDS doctors faced tremendous hositility along with little or no peer interest. All of this further aggravated the obstacles that the AIDS doctors were facing in trying to tame a disease that was growing increasingly wild, physically degenerating nearly all who came into contact with it. The doctors were unable to detect the virus and so they realized they were fighting a disease with an unknown cause. With no apparable cause, a cure was not even a dream for optimists. “Death came to define AIDS,” Oppenheimer said. He is the co-author of the book AIDS Doctors: Voices from the Epidemic, for which he interviewed 75 AIDS doctors.
OUR INTERVIEW WITH PROFESSOR GERALD OPPENHEIMER