Many “AIDS deaths” are in fact unnecessary. For example, even in San Francisco many people known to be at risk for pneumocystis die of it without having had any preventive treatment—despite an editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine
(October 15, 1987) that persons at risk should receive such treatment. And an article in the same issue of the Journal showed that a “salvage” therapy with two experimental drugs (trimetrexate and leucovorin) saved the lives of over two thirds of the patients for whom the standard drugs had failed. This new treatment has almost no side effects. Yet how many persons with pneumocystis have access to it?
Apparently two thirds or more of the deaths from pneumocystis could now be prevented if safe, effective (though officially experimental) treatments were used when appropriate. The basic problem is the lack of uniform standards of care. And there has been almost no advocacy from gay political organizations (or AIDS service groups or even gay physicians’ organizations) on such matters.
