Jeff Getty in 1996
Jeff Getty:
Lessons in desperate measures
By Gail Dutton
Steven G. Deeks has been known for gutsy approaches, starting in the dark days of the mid-1990s. "1993 was the low point, the worst, of the epidemic," Deeks remembers. "Everyone was dying." His first day in the clinic coincided with the release of a major clinical study, the Concorde study, which investigated the use of early AZT therapy in 1,749 asymptomatic patients and showed that it didn't work. Little was forthcoming by way of replacements. Hospices and hospitals were full, Deeks says. "So we got very, very desperate."
In 1994 Deeks got involved with the Dobson Project, a West coast immunology think tank that activists had founded. Based on lim-ited evidence, a multicenter group, including Deeks and Dobson Project member Paul Volberding (now at San Francisco Veterans' Administration Medical Center), performed a bone marrow transplant from a ...
