Friday September 22, 2023
12:30-1:30 p.m.
Meeting Both In-Person and by Zoom
Dampeer Room, Second Floor of Kelvin Smith Library*
Case Western Reserve University
Dear Colleagues:
I was in graduate school in Berkeley in the early 1980s, occasionally reading the San Francisco Chronicle, as AIDS was slowly being discovered, getting attention from some and ignored by others, receiving full mainstream media coverage only from the Chronicle and its reporter, Randy Shilts, who assembled the story of those early years in his great book, And the Band Played On. That was the heroic and tragic period of AIDS policy, when AIDS was the great public health story of our lifetimes, and Shilts provided a compelling portrait of a few doctors, health care workers, activists, civil servants and even politicians seeking to stem the coming tide of death while so many others focused on other agendas: limiting federal domestic spending, winning medical research prizes, avoiding any restrictions on blood donation, protecting hierarchies within universities (especially the University of California system), promoting conservative anti-gay values, and protecting gay liberation among others. “Don’t offend the gays and don’t inflame the homophobes” provided the twin horns of a political dilemma that led, among other things, to language that masked reality, which Shilts in his book called “AIDSpeak.”
By the end of his book in 1987, however, the world had changed. Fighting AIDS had become mainline, a large federal budget item, academic career path and health care industry. The first somewhat effective (but quite flawed) drug treatment, AZT, was approved by the FDA in 1987 – though the process of its approval was an intense example of AIDS politics. The introduction of Highly Active Anti-Retroviral Therapy (HAART) in 1996 turned HIV infection into a chronic condition with which people could live full lives, where before it had been a death sentence for all but about 5 percent of its victims. But the treatment is expensive and its availability, especially in the “global south,” has itself become a major issue and cause. In its database on AIDS, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that in 2022 about 39 million people were living with HIV and 630,000 people died of HIV-related illness.
Many of the issues about HIV remain fundamentally political and economic: finding the money to pay for the treatment that is possible or finding ways to convince people to take fewer behavioral risks. Yet in the long view, both during and certainly after the period of tragedy and heroism, AIDS is also a story of a long, hard road of research and care, with both successes and failures. When HIV was discovered there were very few medical treatments for viruses, and the major hope was to develop a vaccine. Four decades after AIDS appeared there is still no vaccine. Yet treatments were developed, and we are now seeing new drugs meant to improve on the ART treatment that turned around the battle against AIDS. Ads for those drugs are all over the television airwaves. They are expected to either be much easier to take and best used for patients who brought detectable virus to zero with the traditional 3-part treatment, or effective for the small share of patients for whom traditional ART no longer works.
Dr. Michael Lederman first began AIDS research in 1982, in his long career focusing his research especially on pathogenesis while establishing the Special Immunology Clinic (HIV clinic) at CWRU in 1985 and NIH-funded AIDS Clinical Trial Unit in 1987. He joins us to reflect on his forty years in the field and the successes and failures of the battle with AIDS.
In-Person and Virtual Attendance
In order to make it easy for people to protect themselves and still participate, the meetings can be attended on Zoom. Participants can register for each meeting in the same way they did for the past two years. The link is posted below.
The discussion begins at 12:30 p.m., but the room should be open no later than Noon. We try to have beverages and refreshments set up soon after that. Participants should be able to sign on to Zoom also by Noon. But please remember not much will be happening online until the talk begins at 12:30 pm. Please also be prepared to show identification when entering Kelvin Smith Library.
Zoom participants should speak up when asked for questions or comments, or submit thoughts through Zoom’s chat function. Please keep yourself muted until you are choosing to speak.
Each week we will send out this newsletter with information about the topic. It will also include a link to register (for free) for the discussion. When you register, you will automatically receive from the Zoom system the link to join the meeting. If you do not get the newsletter, you should also be able to get the information each Monday by checking http://fridaylunch.case.edu Then if you choose you can use the contact form on that website to request the registration link.
This week’s Zoom link for registration is:
https://cwru.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJYtceyhqjsvGd0easXUp8Kw98PulmH1dq-d
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
Please also e-mail padg@case.edu if you have questions about arrangements or any suggestions. Or call at 216 368-2426 and we’ll try to get back to you. We are very pleased to be partnering this semester with the Siegal Lifelong Learning Program to share information about the discussions.
Best wishes for safety and security for you and yours,
Joe White
Luxenberg Family Professor of Public Policy and Director, Center for Policy Studies
About Our Guest
Michael Lederman is the Scott R. Inkley Emeritus Professor of Medicine at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and University Hospitals/Cleveland Medical Center having been appointed as Professor of Pathology, Microbiology/Molecular Biology and Biomedical Ethics. Dr. Lederman is the oldest and most forgetful member of the Laboratory of Interesting Immunology. He received his medical degree from the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine and trained in Internal Medicine at Case Western Reserve University, University Hospitals of Cleveland and the VA Medical Center where he served as chief resident in Medicine. He completed fellowship training in Infectious Diseases, received post-doctoral training in cellular immunology in the laboratory of Dr. Jerrold Ellner and joined the faculty at CWRU in 1980.
Dr. Lederman has been engaged in HIV/AIDS research since 1982. He established the Special Immunology Unit (HIV clinic) at CWRU in 1985 and the NIH funded AIDS Clinical Trials Unit at CWRU in 1987. His work focuses on the mechanisms whereby HIV infection induces immune dysfunction and on strategies to correct and prevent it. He is credited as an author of more than 400 peer reviewed research publications and has read every one of them.
* Kelvin Smith Library requires all entrants to show identification when entering the building, unless they have a university i.d. that they can magnetically scan. We are sorry if that seems like a hassle, but it has been Library policy for a while in response to security concerns. Please do not complain to the library staff at the entrance, who are just doing their jobs.
Schedule of Friday Lunch Upcoming Topics and Speakers:
September 29: Why Not to Panic About A.I. With Kalle Lyytinen, Ph.D., Iris S. Wolstein Professor of Management Design. Alternate Room: Mather House 100
October 6: COVID-’23 and Beyond. With David H. Canaday, MD, Professor of Infectious Disease and Associate Director of Research for the Geriatric Research, Education, and Clinical Center, Cleveland VA.
October 13: To Be Determined. Alternate Room: Mather House 100
October 20: One Semester Away from Crisis: Small Colleges and American Higher Education. With Tom Bogart, Ph.D., Visiting Professor and Chair, Department of Economics. Alternate Room: Mather House 100
October 27: Storefronts, Communities, and the Changing World of Retail. With Michael Goldberg, Associate Professor of Design and Innovation; Executive Director and Associate Vice President, Veale Institute for Entrepreneurship.
November 3: Dobbs and Doctors. With David N. Hackney MD, Division Director, Maternal Fetal Medicine, University Hospitals of Cleveland.
November 10: Who’s Legally Responsible When “Self-Driving” Cars Go “Eyes Off?” With Cassandra Burke Robertson, JD, John Deaver Drinko – BakerHostetler Professor of Law.
November 17: Axios Cleveland and the Future of Local Media. With Sam Allard, reporter for Axios Cleveland.
November 24: Thanksgiving Break
December 1: Civil-Military Relations in Egypt. With Dina Rashed, Ph.D., Associate Dean of the College for Academic Affairs, University of Chicago.
December 8: To Be Determined. |
