Joel Weisman
| Joel Weisman | |
|---|---|
| Born | February 20, 1943 |
| Died | July 18, 2009 (aged 66) |
| Occupation | Physician |
Joel D. Weisman D.O. (February 20, 1943 – July 18, 2009) was one of the first to identify a pattern of illnesses that was ultimately diagnosed as AIDS during his work as a general practitioner in the United States. He later became an advocate for the development of treatments and prevention of the disease.
Weisman was born in Newark, New Jersey, on February 20, 1943. He attended the Kansas City College of Osteopathy (later known as the Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences, graduating in 1970 with a Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine (DO). He practiced medicine in his hometown of Carteret, New Jersey, for several years and ended his brief marriage by disclosing that he was gay.
He moved to Los Angeles and was hired by a doctor's office in North Hollywood, where he started to see a number of patients in 1978 who had a series of unusual conditions, including younger men with shingles, a case of Kaposi's sarcoma, and several patients who had symptoms of what appeared to be, but was not, lymphoma. In 1980, a series of patients came to a medical office he had opened in Sherman Oaks, all gay men who had a pattern of what appeared to be immune system disorders exhibited by significant loss of weight and swollen lymph nodes, accompanied by fever and rashes, in addition to two patients with chronic diarrhea, depressed white blood cell counts and fungal infections.
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