➤ SONNABEND, from p.22
them readily, though in the absence
of symptoms, he held out for
a time on providing them immediately
after an individual tested
positive for HIV.
In 2014, Dr. Anthony Fauci, who
sometimes tangled with Dr. Sonnabend,
praised him in a POZ
profi le by its founding editor, Sean
Strub.
“Dr. Sonnabend is one of the
true soldiers in the war against
HIV,” Fauci said. “He is a model for
a real translation of care to the patient.
In terms of the controversy
surrounding his work, I think, in
general, at the end of the day, most
would agree that his contributions
have been positive. He is an outstanding
man.”
In that article, Strub offered his
personal experience as a patient of
Dr. Sonnabend.
“I’m one of the dying he has kept
alive,” Strub wrote. “Not through
some magic combination of pills
he urged me to take, but through
an intangible conveyance of hope,
respect, trust and — ironically —
through urging me not to take certain
pills. Since my diagnosis, I’ve
outlived three of the four doctors
I had before Sonnabend, each of
whom, while caring and compassionate,
had sought to prepare me
for my eventual death from AIDS.
Joe was the fi rst to prepare me for
survival.”
In 1987, Dr. Sonnabend, Callen,
and Tom Hannan co-founded
the PWA Health Group — where
I served on its fi rst board — to
get promising treatments to people
living with AIDS that “might help
and couldn’t hurt” and had yet to
be approved by the Food and Drug
Administration (FDA). It was the
among the fi rst “buyer’s clubs,”
much like the Dallas Buyers Club
of Ron Woodroof that sprang up
around the same time. Dallas Buyers
Club led to the 2013 fi lm that
yielded an Oscar for Matthew Mc-
Conaughey’s portrayal as Woodroof
and Jared Leto’s role starring as
Rayon, a fi ctional transgender person
with AIDS. Hannan, an opera
singer and activist, died in 1991.
“One of Joe’s most important
contributions was his belief — that
he conveyed to his patients — that
AIDS would not be 100 precent fatal,
that no matter how bleak the
prognosis, some people would ultimately
Dr. Sonnabend (right) with Richard Berkowitz (left) and Michael Callen.
survive,” Simon Watney, a
writer, activist and close friend of
Dr. Sonnabend’s, said in a release.
“That provided powerful
hope at a time when hope was in
short supply.”
In a 1998 profi le, Strub wrote,
“The environment (in his offi ce)
was such that patients in the waiting
room sometimes rearranged
the order of seeing Joe, based on
our collective assessment of who
needed to see him fi rst, or who had
other doctors’ appointments to get
to. Joe’s patients are protective of
him. Those of us with insurance
remind him to send out bills; those
without often helped in his offi ce,
cooked him dinner or volunteered
with the organizations Joe started.
Over the years, his patients have
redecorated, fi led, cleaned and
helped in the management of his
practice.”
Kirschenbaum, who went on to
co-found the Treatment and Data
committee at ACT UP with Iris
Long, said, “When thinking of all
his accomplishments and contributions
to saving lives during the
AIDS crisis, one cannot separate
Joe the scientist/physician from
Joe the man. His compassion for
humanity was the driving force behind
all that he was able to achieve
in medical research. This is why
he eschewed the spotlight which
he so rightly deserves.”
Dr. Krim said of him in POZ,
“What did Sonnabend contribute?
He contributed me. He was the
one who alerted me to the problem.
I remember the day in the
early ’80s when Joe came to me
and said, ‘I’ve lost my stature as
a physician. I have patients with
big lymph nodes and high fevers,
and they don’t get better. What’s
strange is they’re all young, gay
men.’ He’s the only doctor I know
who goes to every funeral. From
the beginning, Joe said the government
was wrong to give money
to academic clinical research —
people who had no contact with
the disease.”
Dr. Sonnabend received numerous
awards over the course of his
life, including the Award of Courage
from AmFAR in 2000 and the
Red Ribbon Leadership Award
from the National HIV/AIDS Partnership
in 2005 in London. He was
also a composer of classical music
and made his debut at 85 with a
sold-out concert at London’s Fitzrovia
Chapel as part of an AIDS
Histories and Cultural Festival.
The reason Dr. Sonnabend
moved backed to London was to
take care of his sister Yolanda Sonnabend
as she battled dementia.
Their nephew, Thomas Burstyn,
made a documentary about their
RICHARD DWORKIN
time together, “Some Kind of Love.”
The trailer is here.
Activist and long-term HIV survivor
Ivy Arce wrote in an email
that she had been a patient of Dr.
Sonnabend in the 1990s.
“Last year during COVID-19
lockdown I reconnected with him
and he told me that he had archives
in several places — the New York
Public Library, in England, and he
also had some documents that he
gave to the LGBT Center Archive.
In one of his trips back to New
York he found out that the Center
had gotten rid of his archives, that
they were shredded and that they
had wanted Joe to pay them storage
fee. He was very angry about
it. The Center could have reached
out to him and returned them. But
they didn’t and chunks of that history
is gone.”
He was pre-deceased by his sister,
Yolanda Sonnabend, a prominent
theatre designer and artist.
A funeral for Dr. Joseph Sonnabend
in London is Wednesday,
February 17 at 2 PM GMT (9 AM
EST) and will be webcast live and
archived a week later for 28 days.
Go to obitus.com and sign in with
Username: Ralo5642 and Password:
575470. The service will be
archived online from February 24
to March 29 using the same login
information.
GayCityNews.com | February 11 - February 24, 2021 23
/obitus.com
/GayCityNews.com
