Joseph Sonnabend, pioneering AIDS physician, dies at 88
Emily Langer, The Washington Post
Jan. 27, 2021
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A 1993 photo of Dr. Joseph Sonnabend, left, with patients Michael Callen, center, and Richard Berkowitz, who became AIDS activists and co-wrote the manual How to Have Sex in an Epidemic: One Approach. Photo courtesy of Richard Dworkin
Joseph Sonnabend opened his medical practice in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City in 1977, on the cusp of what would become one of the most consequential battles of modern medicine. At the time, what is now known as AIDS - acquired immunodeficiency syndrome - had not yet been identified, and scientists were years away from isolating HIV as its cause.
As a doctor treating gay men in New York City, he became one of the first physicians to recognize the emergence of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the early 1980s.