Local News in Brief : Pioneer to Direct Hospital AIDS Unit
Dr. Michael S. Gottlieb, credited with being the first physician to describe AIDS as a new disease in 1981, is joining the Sherman Oaks Community Hospital, which in 1985 became the first hospital in Southern California to establish a unit dedicated exclusively to treating AIDS patients.
Gottlieb, who was Rock Hudson’s physician during the late actor’s battle with the disease, will become medical director of the hospital’s AIDS unit, hospital officials said Friday.
He will also open private medical offices in Sherman Oaks and West Hollywood, a spokesman said.
“His world-renowned reputation in the care of patients with AIDS, as well as his AIDS research . . . will further strengthen the expertise we have there,” said Marc Goldberg, the hospital’s chief executive officer.
Gottlieb joins Drs. Joel Weisman and Gene Rogolsky, the founding directors of the hospital’s 20-bed AIDS unit. It was a series of stubborn infections in patients being treated by those two doctors that led to the description of AIDS as a distinct disease that was written about by Gottlieb and Weisman for a medical journal.
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