The Political Subversion of Medicine – A Vital, Qualifying Postscript
By
David Gottfried
In my last post on substack, I noted that Dr. Joseph Sonnabend defended his planned attendance at a conference, regarding the bizarre idea that nuclear power caused AIDS, because the idea was “so left wing.”
It has occurred to me that I left out some material which, while not justifying Sonnabend’s dalliance with politically correct science, demonstrates that Sonnabend was going through a lot, as a consequence of the persecution of AIDS patients and their providers, and his misfortunes may have mangled his judgment.
When I first knew him, he had a beautiful office, between 5th and 6th Avenues in New York City, on either 10 th Street or 12th Street. However in the early years of the AIDS epidemic, when it was first called GRID (gay related immune deficiency disease), he was sued for eviction by his coop board because it feared that because his office treated AIDS patients he might lower property values. The neighborhood was very, very gay. The building, I am sure, was filled to the gills with disgustingly affluent gay people. And these filthy rich faggots wanted to throw him and his patients into the gutter. Maybe now you know why some of us absolutely despise conventional liberalism. Maybe now you have an inkling of why Larry Kramer was such a strident son of a bitch in the course of being a secular savior of sorts. He was a gay prophet and activist who probably used the word “faggot” more than Jesse Helms. Hell, he wrote a prophetic novel, shortly before the epidemic began, entitled “Faggots.”
While Sonnabend’s eviction case was progressing, and for a couple of years after its conclusion, I wasted time attending various liberal Democratic Clubs in New York City. On several occasions, Bob Abrams, the attorney general of New York State, came to speak. He invariably said – and I heard him say this at the Chelsea Reform Democratic Club and the Village Independent Democrats and at reform organizations of West Side Democrats – that he boldly and philanthropically brought the full forces of the State’s legal machinery to bear to help Sonnabend in his eviction action. He knew this would be popular at the aforementioned Democratic Clubs which derived so much support from gay people
There’s just one very big thing that Bob Abrams, wonderful liberal extraordinaire, left out of his self-congratulatory monologues: Sonnabend was thrown out of his office because he lost the eviction action.
In 1985, he was situated in an office a few blocks to the East of his old office. One day, when I was sitting in the waiting room of his new office, he had to give a patient an injection. That new office did not even have running water. He sent me – who was in the office because I was unwell—to Bigelow Pharmacy to get supplies so he could give the patient the shot. Shortly thereafter he got an office in a tenement between 8th and 9th Avenues on 17th or 18th Street.
I asked Dr. Sonnabend why he was compelled to give up the beautiful office where I had initially seen him. After all, Bob Abrams, a crusading knight and social justice warrior of the Democratic Party, was in his corner. Sonnabend told me that although he was compelled to move, he got quite a bit of money.
However, I went to New York State Supreme Court at 60 Centre Street and I examined the rather thin and light file (And where were the reams of brilliant and forbidding paper work produced by Attorney General Abrams and his minions of great liberal lawyers) I did not see a single solitary provision in the papers, setting forth the terms of the discontinuance of the litigation, which gave Sonnabend one red cent. (I should qualify this. There may have been a provision which gave him two or three grand but that’s chump change.) Of course, there may have been a collateral agreement, which was not filed in the Court, which gave Sonnabend a handsome amount of cash. However, such a supposition is not credible. If Sonnabend left with a decent wad of cash, he would not have fled to an office without running water.
A pox on the phony liberal bastards of the Democratic Party.
Do not infer from the immediately preceding sentence that I believe politics is a waste of time. It is very vital. A few political movements and persons gave a fuck: ACT UP was genuine in its desire to fight AIDS; it had to be, its rank and file consisted of people who had the virus or were at risk for the virus. Bernie Sanders cares. Robert Kennedy Cared. But the overwhelming mass of them are filthy bloody lying bastards. They only care about issues insofar as they can get votes for their ostensible positions on the issues.
1n 1992, Bob Abrams ran for the United States Senate from New York. He was defeated by Alphonse D Amato. I am sad that D Amato won, but I am not sad that Abrams lost.