This doctor treated HIV/AIDS patients when no one else would. His advocacy continued as he prepared to die | CBC News
This doctor treated HIV/AIDS patients when no one else would. His advocacy continued as he prepared to die | CBC News
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/9035903
A Winnipeg doctor hopes his legacy of providing health care to LGBTQ patients — one of only a few local physicians doing so at the height of the HIV/AIDS crisis — extends beyond his life.
Dr. Dick Smith, who had pancreatic cancer, died with medical assistance on Tuesday. He was 80.
"My biggest thing that I want people to really get a grip on is that no minority of any kind, whether it be religious or sexual or racial, is ever safe," Smith told CBC News in an interview 24 hours before he died.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A Winnipeg doctor hopes his legacy of providing health care to LGBTQ patients — one of only a few local physicians doing so at the height of the HIV/AIDS crisis — extends beyond his life.
"My biggest thing that I want people to really get a grip on is that no minority of any kind, whether it be religious or sexual or racial, is ever safe," Smith told CBC News in an interview 24 hours before he died.
Smith facilitated fundraisers for LGBTQ health care and educated patients on safe sex in the 1980s and '90s, when fears and stigma around HIV/AIDS were heightened.
He held testing clinics for sexually transmitted infections inside a Winnipeg bathhouse, O'Bee's Steam Bath, where gay and bisexual men socialized and hooked up.
Smith is a "gay hero" who saw "the pendulum move back and forth multiple times in his life" in terms of public acceptance of the LGBTQ community, Tam said.
Smith planned to undergo medical assistance in death from the comfort of home in a bedroom that overlooks the yard, with a soothing rendition of Laudate Dominum by Mozart playing in the background.
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