In Memoriam: James Palazzolo

James ("Giacomo") Palazzolo, a long-term survivor who became
a leading expert in both conventional and experimental AIDS
treatments, died August 7 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was
37 years old.

Jim helped AIDS TREATMENT NEWS with a number of stories,
often anonymously. Our early article on fluconazole
(published on September 25, 1987, when the drug was available
experimentally but largely unknown to physicians) was made
possible by documents which he obtained and provided to us.
We first met Jim while researching our article on BHT
(published August 15, 1986); he appears in that article under
the name Jim Gulli. In our article on bee propolis as a
treatment for thrush (published July 31, 1987), he was
identified only as "Jim." Recently he appeared under his own
name, Giacomo Palazzolo, to write a two-part series on CMV
experimental treatments, published in AIDS TREATMENT NEWS in
January and February 1993.

Jim was a professional translator of Japanese technical
articles; he had attended Tokyo University, and was very
interested in Japanese life and culture, and in other
Oriental languages. He often used his skills and contacts in
Japan to help AIDS TREATMENT NEWS and other AIDS
organizations.

He was also one of the first to travel to Mexico to get
ribavirin for use as an HIV treatment.

More than anyone we knew, Jim could "work the system" to get
the treatments he needed -- even to the point of enrolling in
multiple trials without telling experimenters, when telling
them would result in his being expelled. In one trial he had
a potentially life-threatening side effect which was likely
due to the study drug, and asked to reduce the dose, but was
refused. Convinced, probably correctly, that the
experimenters wanted him to get sick enough for the problem
to be definitively documented, he reduced his own dose
without telling them. Another time he went to a screening
exam with an eye patch, claiming an injury, so that the eye
would not be examined and the researchers would not know that
he had CMV retinitis, which would have excluded him from his
only access to a drug he wanted. Although we are strongly
committed to the importance of accuracy in clinical trials,
we never preached to Jim, but instead listened as he raised
the question of how it is possible to learn to give good
medical care through trials which, too often, give bad care
by design. A few months before his death, Jim discussed these
matters on videotape; but it was impossible to conceal his
identity -- meaning that release would have threatened his
access to care -- so the tape was never edited.

Jim considered Massachusetts Medicaid the most generous in
the nation, but there are limits to what even he could get.
During the last few weeks of his life he started campaigning
for human growth hormone, a prescription drug which is
plentiful, but very expensive (and also carefully regulated
to prevent unscrupulous families from using it on their
children to produce athletes). Besides building the Medicaid
case, he also considered raising money by going to Harvard
Square with a begging bowl and a sign telling why he needed
the money. He never did, however. And he never got the drug.

A recent picture of Jim, taken at the April 25, 1993, March
on Washington for Lesbian, Gay, & Bi-Sexual Rights, has been
published in A Simple Matter of Justice, (a book of
photographs of the march) by Doug Emerson, page 15. The book
is available through Cricket Publications, 549-A Castro St.,
San Francisco, CA 94114, 415/626-4942.

A memorial service, and possibly a permanent memorial, are
now being planned. For more information, call Maurice Mollan,
617/547-7392, or Stan Butler, 617/524-6210.