HIV/AIDS

AIDS activist Martin Delaney died from liver cancer Jan. 23 at the age of 63. Delaney was a former Jesuit seminarian and the founder of Project Inform, an organization that speeds access to AIDS treatments.

The actor plays Muddy Waters in the new film Cadillac Records, which tells the story of Chicago's Chess Records, where Waters launched his career alongside Etta James, Chuck Berry and others.

In her new book, The Wisdom of Whores, epidemiologist Elizabeth Pisani interviews sex workers, drug users, health officials and bureaucrats in an effort to determine why 40 million people are living with HIV — and what can be done to curb the epidemic.

Dr. Mark Kline is president of the Baylor International Pediatric AIDS Initiative and chief of retrovirology at Texas Children's Hospital. Kline discusses his efforts and the advances that have been made in treating HIV-infected children.

Last summer, Kline launched the Pediatric AIDS Corps, which sends doctors to six African countries to treat HIV-infected children and train medical professionals. Recently, BIPAI signed an agreement with UNICEF to get first-rate drugs to infected children throughout the world.

Edmund White has been writing about gay culture in fiction and nonfiction since the 1970s. He has a new autobiography, My Lives. White is director of the creative writing program at Princeton University.

The novel Veronica by Mary Gaitskill.

With Desmond Tutu leaving as the Anglican Bishop of Capetown, South Africa, Njongonkulu Ndugane will replace him. He is an outspoken leader against poverty, third-world debt, and HIV/AIDS.

Writer Susan Sontag died Wednesday at age 71 of leukemia. We listen back to two interviews with her: a 1989 conversation about her book AIDS and Its Metaphors; and 1993 interview conducted shortly after Sontag returned from Sarajevo, where she directed a performance of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot in Serbo-Croatian.

Journalist Jon Cohen recently finished a four-part series on HIV and AIDS in Asia for the Science Magazine. In researching the series, he traveled to six countries and talked to doctors, patients, public health officials, sex workers and drug users. Cohen has been writing about the AIDS epidemic for 15 years. His book on the search for a vaccine is called Shots in the Dark.

Goemaere is head of Doctors Without Borders ( Medecins Sans Frontieres) in South Africa and a leading AIDS activist for South Africa's Treatment Action Campaign. He was recently featured on a Frontline report, "AIDS Treatment for Africa: The South African Struggle," that appeared on PBS.

Kushner adapted his epic Tony-award winning play Angels in America into a screenplay for HBO (broadcast this month in two three-hour parts). The play is set in New York in the mid-1980s during the midst of the AIDS epidemic. The HBO film is directed by Mike Nichols and stars Al Pacino, Meryl Streep and Emma Thompson. Kushner also has a new semi-autobiographical musical Caroline, or Change at the Public Theater in New York.

TV critic David Bianculli reviews the HBO production of Angels in America.

The United Nations Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa talks about the current state of the AIDS crisis there. He recently returned from a tour of Lesotho, Zimbabwe, Malawi and Zambia, where he was investigating links between hunger and AIDS. He is the former Deputy Executive Director of UNICEF and was the Canadian ambassador to the U.N. from 1984-1988.

Doctor Elaine Abrams and Doctor Stephen Nicholas are pediatricians who work with babies born with HIV. While many children have died, some have survived into adolescence. Abrams is the director of the Family Care Center at Harlem Hospital Center, and Dr. Nicholas is the director of pediatrics there. They treated the first wave of babies infected with HIV at the height of the epidemic in Harlem in the 1980s. They have studied the effects of the virus on the children's physical and mental health as well as the toll on the community. Some of the children spent years in the hospital.

Journalist Jon Cohen writes for Science Magazine. He just got back from the 14th International AIDS conference where he reported on the AIDS vaccine and anti-HIV drug therapies. His article "Designer Bugs" in the July/August edition of The Atlantic Monthly is about how scientists have the ability to create synthetic viruses in the lab, like mousepox and polio, and the controversies and dangers this presents.

Ugandan Aids activist Noerine Kaleeba. She works with UNAids, a United Nations organization in Geneva. Shes also on the Ugandan committee on Aids, and founded The Aids Support Organization in Uganda. Kaleeba lost her husband to the disease; four of her siblings are HIV positive as are a number of their children. Kaleeba is also author of the book, We Miss You All: Noerine Kaleeba - Aids in the Family (Women & Aids Support Network).

Since 1994, Dr. Peter Piot been the director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS and the executive director of U.N. AIDS, the U.N. agency coordinating the fight against the disease. He also co-discovered the Ebola virus. He's considered the U.N.'s top AIDS official. He says Asian countries need to take AIDS prevention and treatment more seriously, as they are only at the beginning of the epidemic. Countries most affected are Thailand, Myanmar and Cambodia. Piot says the HIV/AIDS epidemic has hit India very hard.

Journalist Jon Cohen has just written a book called Shots in the Dark: The Wayward Search for an AIDS Vaccine. (Norton) He is a leading AIDS reporter who covers science and medicine for Science Magazine. Hell talk about the work that is being done to develop the AIDS vaccine, trials, funding issues, and when the future of AIDS prevention.

South African journalist Charlene Smith writes about the spread of AIDS in Southern Africa. In 1999, she was raped, and feared the man who raped her could have given her HIV/AIDS. Smith had a hard time obtaining the drugs that could lessen the potential of her getting HIV. Smith then wrote about her experience and helped spread awareness about rape and HIV in South Africa. Statistics say every 26 seconds, a woman is raped in South Africa— the country with the fastest growing HIV rate.

We talk more about HIV and AIDS in South Africa with journalist Phillip Van Niekerk (fawn-KNEE-kirk). Recently, the president of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki (TAH-boh mm-BEK-eh) has become very involved in the AIDs policy in his country. Mr. Mbeki is focusing on a medical theory that states that the human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, does not cause AIDS. Many leading scientists have criticized MR. Mbeki for wasting his time on what they see as a discredited theory about AIDS. The International AIDS conference is scheduled to be held in South Africa this summer.