Department of Pathology Alumni Newsletter, Issue 10

Remembering Another Epidemic by Linda Ferrell, MD, Professor Emerita.

In June 1981, I was the pathologist who received and evaluated the first biopsy at UCSF from a patient dying of AIDS. I was in the last month of my residency, and had spent my third year of AP at UCSF as the first and only Surgical Pathology Fellow, as well as the only Chief Resident, and I was in charge of the cutting room as gross room supervisor all that year. I only remember a few aspects of my first encounter with AIDS in the cutting room. As I recall, a day or two before this occurred, as well as on the day the first specimen arrived in our gross room at Parnassus, I was visited by Dr. Paul Volberding in Infectious Disease and Dr. Don Ganem in Virology, both who were clinicians who throughout this epidemic often visited pathology to keep us updated about these patients.