By Verena Dobnik
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/obituaries/articles/2005/10/15/leroy_whitfield_
36_author_wrote_about_effect_of_aids_on_americas_black_community/

LeRoy Whitfield, 36;
author wrote about effect of AIDS on America's black community

  By Verena Dobnik, Associated Press  |
  October 15, 2005
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/obituaries/articles/2005/10/15/leroy_whitfield_
36_author_wrote_about_effect_of_aids_on_americas_black_community/

  NEW YORK -- LeRoy Whitfield, a writer who focused on
  the battle against AIDS among black Americans, died
  after living 15 years with the HIV virus -- while
  refusing to take medication. He was 36.

  Mr. Whitfield, a contributor to Vibe magazine, died
  Sunday at North General Hospital in Manhattan from
  complications related to AIDS.

  ''He was unusually committed to exposing the truth
  about AIDS in the black community, and he was
  unafraid to challenge conventional wisdom," Keith
  Boykin, a commentator on race and sexual orientation,
  wrote on his website.

  One convention Mr. Whitfield challenged after being
  diagnosed with HIV in 1990 was the use of
  antiretroviral drugs, whose possible side effects
  range from fatigue and nausea to blurred vision.

  But toward the end of his life, he expressed doubts
  about his decision.

  ''My T-cell count has plummeted to 40, a dangerously
  all-time low, and my viral load has spiked to
  230,000. I've argued against taking meds for so many
  years that now, with my numbers stacked against me, I
  find it hard to stop," he wrote in the August issue
  of HIV Plus magazine. ''I keep weighing potential
  side effects against the ill alternative --
  opportunistic infections -- and I can't decide which
  is worse to my mind. I just can't decide."

  Mr. Whitfield used his personal experience --
  including relationships with both men and women -- as
  a prism on the larger issues surrounding the disease.

  He attributed the rise of HIV in the black community
  to, among other factors, poverty and violence;
  however, he debunked the allegation voiced in some
  circles that AIDS was a white conspiracy to spread
  the disease among blacks.

  ''Widespread violence, for example, is not a reality
  in upscale gay communities. Gay white men do not
  overpopulate public housing. Gay communities have no
  shortage of HIV services nearby," he wrote in the
  September 1997 issue of Positively Aware magazine.
  ''AIDS is the gripping issue of the gay community.
  For African-Americans, it's the atrocity du jour."

  According to the 2000 Census, blacks make up 12
  percent of the US population. They have accounted,
  however, for 40 percent of the 929,985 estimated AIDS
  cases diagnosed since the first ones were reported in
  1981 by the federal Centers for Disease Control.

  A Chicago native whom Boykin remembers as a man with
  ''beautiful locks" and ''an infectious smile," Mr.
  Whitfield attended the University of Chicago and the
  city's DePaul University before working as an
  associate editor at the Chicago-based Positively
  Aware and as a community educator for Positive Voice,
  an AIDS awareness organization.

  He moved to New York in 2000, contributing to Vibe
  and becoming a senior editor at POZ, a magazine aimed
  at HIV-positive people.

  Among Mr. Whitfield's projects was a trip to a South
  Dakota prison to interview Nikko Briteramos, a black
  youth who was convicted under that state's HIV
  transmission law.

  But in the end, Mr. Whitfield was forced to focus on
  his own illness.

  He dubbed himself ''Marathon Man" after a Harvard
  Medical School researcher studied him as a rare
  longtime HIV survivor who had ''never popped AIDS
  meds" -- as Mr. Whitfield wrote three years ago in a
  POZ article.

  The doctor ''has stopped short of shakin' a Magic 8
  Ball to understand specimens like me," he wrote.

  Mr. Whitfield's grandmother said the longevity
  without medication was due to his being ''protected
  by the blood of Jesus." Mr. Whitfield attributed his
  survival to ''better nutrition, good exercise, and a
  low stress level."

  Mr. Whitfield leaves his mother, Imogene; a sister,
  LaRonya; and a brother, Crofton .

  Family funeral services will be held Saturday in
  Chicago, and a memorial service is being planned for
  Oct. 20 in New York.

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By Verena Dobnik
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/obituaries/articles/2005/10/15/leroy_whitfield_
36_author_wrote_about_effect_of_aids_on_americas_black_community/