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Photos Sally Rose
Priscilla Laubenstein will auction a gift from one of her daughter’s former patients, a small marble statue, to benefit the AIDS Support Group of Cape Cod. |
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Historic AIDS memento will be auctioned for ASG
Sally Rose
BANNER STAFF
A small but compelling piece of AIDS pandemic history has found its way from New York to Cape Cod, and it is poised to provide great benefit to the local AIDS service organization.
A 6-inch-high by 4-inch-wide green marble statue with an engraved brass plate given by Gaetan Dugas, often referred to as "patient zero," to his doctor, Linda Laubenstein, will be auctioned off by Laubenstein’s mother, Priscilla, on eBay to benefit the AIDS Support Group of Cape Cod.
Dugas was an Air Canada flight attendant originally from the Canadian province of Quebec. In general, the term "patient zero" refers to the central or initial patient in the population sample of an epidemiological study. Earlier on, Dugas was considered by many to be patient zero, and is represented as patient zero in the book "And the Band Played On," the well known scientific, political and human history of the first five years of the AIDS epidemic in the U.S. by Randy Shilts.
However, now many refute that Dugas was patient zero, but he was certainly among the earliest reported cases in the U.S.
Priscilla Laubenstein is hoping to raise more than $200,000 by placing the statue for auction on eBay within the next several weeks.
"I’m not going to sell it unless it does generate that kind of money," says Laubenstein. "It’s one-of-a-kind. It’s historic memorabilia, … given to my daughter by Gaetan."
Linda Laubenstein, who practiced at New York University Medical Center, was raised in Barrington, R.I., and at the age of five contracted polio (just months before the Salk vaccine for polio was heralded). Because of the polio, her legs were paralyzed and she was confined to a wheelchair for the rest of her life. Linda was in and out of hospitals for much of her childhood with a variety of complications from the polio.
Linda Laubenstein practiced medicine for 13 years in New York City, specializing in hematology and oncology. In 1992, at the age of 45, she died of heart failure after struggling with intestinal and respiratory difficulties for a couple of years.
Linda saw her first AIDS cases in 1979, says her mother, Priscilla Laubenstein, who lives in Chatham. Her first patient, a young man, was diagnosed with Kaposi’s sarcoma, a cancer found in patients with compromised immune systems. Dugas first came to see Linda in 1980, says Priscilla Laubenstein.
One of Linda’s colleagues, Dr. Alvin Friedman-Kien, conducted the first basic studies of AIDS-related Kaposi’s sarcoma and reported the first cases to the Centers for Disease Control in 1981.
According to Priscilla, the statue is made of Swiss verdi alpi (green) marble, although she doesn’t know who designed it. Dugas had it made specifically for Linda. The engraving shows a bent arm and syringe in the shape of the Empire State Building, symbolizing, it is said, what many see as the beginning of the worldwide AIDS pandemic. The inscription reads "Linda J. Laubenstein, M.D., Thank You, Gaetan Dugas, 1982."
"She was very supportive of her early AIDS patients because at that time a lot of doctors wouldn’t see them. No one knew how [the disease] was transmitted," says Laubenstein, adding as an aside that her daughter identified somewhat with the doctor in Albert Camus’ book "The Plague." (A friend of Linda’s has her copy of "The Plague," with certain passages underlined, and will be giving it to the Schlesinger Library at Harvard where all of Linda’s personal papers are kept.)
Linda was the inspiration for the character Dr. Emma Brookner in the Larry Kramer play "Normal Heart," says Laubenstein.
Perhaps because of the amount of time Linda herself spent in and out of hospitals, she was very concerned about the whole patient. In fact, she and a colleague founded a company called Multi-Tasking Systems Inc. (MTS) that provided HIV/AIDS patients retraining for job skills so they could go back into the job market on flex time, says her mother. Most of them couldn’t go back into their own profession because of their physical limitations from the disease. MTS also provided work for AIDS patients by offering temporary office services to businesses. The company has since been absorbed by the social service agency Village Care in New York.
"They trained a lot of people for re-entry into employment," says Laubenstein. She says her daughter used to say, "Employment is a treatment that works."
"That’s why she was such a great doctor, because she had been on both sides of the bed," says Laubenstein. "She knew how to relate to her patients. She knew what it meant to be in the hospital. She understood that medicine is both an art and a science."
In addition, if a patient lived part-time in another part of the country or another part of the world, says her mother, Linda would arrange for that patient to receive consistent treatment in that location.
Laubenstein says she recently decided to put the heavy little green statue to work for the HIV/AIDS pandemic after she had what she describes as "almost like a vision."
"Suddenly, a light bulb went off in my head that this concept sculpture is doing nobody any good sitting around my house," she says.
So she called Mark Baker at the AIDS Support Group of Cape Cod. He told her they could use help toward securing a permanent home for their Hyannis office, where they’re currently paying more than $3,200 a month in rent. According to Baker, the building would be named for Linda.
"I thought my daughter would be very pleased. She loved the Cape. This was her vacation home," says Laubenstein, referring to the house she and her son now live in in Chatham. "I thought it would be most appropriate."
Laubenstein says she will turn all proceeds from the eBay auction over to the ASGCC. And, she says, she won’t take less than $200,000 for it.
The person she’s working with to post the eBay auction has never posted anything at that price range before. So they’re going to put a link to a webpage that people can go to to find background information and history about her daughter’s work as a pioneer and how the funds will be used.
She says she’s going to send advance information to a few individuals (including Barbra Streisand, who at one point was going to play her daughter in "Normal Heart"). "These are just people who were connected with my daughter [who might be interested]," she says.
She adds, "Maybe out of the sale of this object, Gaetan Dugas’ memory will not be so negative. It was something he did that turned out to be positive for people with AIDS."
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Oct 21st, 2004