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ALTRUSA

  • Corporate body

Untitled

HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) first appeared in the United States during the 1970s, and swept across the country and the rest of the world during the 1980s and 1990s, although the disease originated much earlier. Scientists have traced the origins of HIV back to chimpanzees and an HIV-like virus called simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV). Scientists identified HIV as the cause of AIDS in 1984, and developed a blood test for the disease. HIV/AIDS was originally thought to be a disease that only affected the homosexual community, but scientists soon discovered that the disease could be contracted through exposure to HIV-infected blood, including through blood transfusions and heterosexual sex. In the city of Houston, the Montrose Clinic opened its doors in 1978 as an STD testing center for gay men, with the first case of AIDS (then called Gay Related Immune Deficiency) diagnosed in Houston in 1981. Board members of the Montrose Clinic and Montrose Counseling Center established AIDS Foundation Houston in 1985 to assist individuals with services, such as food and a place to stay. That same year, as the fear of AIDS grew across the country, an initiative to prohibit the city of Houston from disciminating against homosexuals is defeated. In 1989, the Montrose Clinic became one of the American Foundation for AIDS Research’s test sites, which allowed greater access to recently discovered experimental treatments, and the Thomas Street Clinic opened two years later as a publicly funded outpatient clinic for those infected. The Ryan White Care Act was signed by President Bush in 1990, which provided funds to counties around the country, with Harris County receiving $3.7 million the following year. Treatments were developed to treat HIV/AIDS and have progressed through the decades with more than half of those currently infected with HIV receiving antiretroviral treatment, but a cure has not been found.

RITA!

  • Corporate body

Belsky, Joseph Lewis

  • Person

Dr. Joseph Lewis Belsky was born March 14, 1927. He earned his undergraduate degree in chemistry from Drew University in New Jersey in 1949, followed by a master’s in chemistry fro Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, in 1951 and, finally, an M.D. in 1955 from Albany Medical College in Albany, New York. He became board certified in internal medicine in 1963. He worked for a short time in private practice but spent the majority of his career as an endocrinologist in hospitals in Boston and in Connecticut. He was also a lecturer at Yale University School of Medicine.

Dr. Belsky was Chief of Medicine for the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission (ABCC), a committee formed to study the long-term effects of radiation exposure on the residents of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, Japan, from 1969-1972 (the organization is now known as the Radiation Effects Research Foundation or RERF).

In 1999, Dr. Belsky was awarded a Mastership by the American College of Physicians.

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