HOW IT ALL BEGAN

The Motive Force Behind the Endowment

Dr. Arnold Klein talks about amfAR, AIDS advocacy, and his long, productive friendship with Dame Elizabeth Taylor

Dr. Arnold Klein and Elizabeth Taylor go way back—so far back that it is hard for either of them to remember when their lives weren’t intertwined. Indeed, their extraordinary friendship may have been fated: they were born under the same sign, and on the same day, February 27th. Klein and Taylor were good friends long before they helped bring amfAR, the American Foundation for AIDS Research, into existence, twenty years ago, in the living room of Klein’s Hancock Park home. Over the next two decades they would both found other, allied organizations—the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation, and Klein’s Art for AIDS in Orange County—but their commitment to amfAR never wavered, and to this day both sit on its board.

Klein, who is an internationally respected dermatologist, saw some of the first cases of AIDS-related Kaposi’s sarcoma in Los Angeles, the early 1980s, and ever since he has been dedicated to seeking out the best possible care for his patients. He long ago lost track of how many patients he has referred to the CARE Center, which he regards as one of the best HIV facilities west of the Mississippi. He has always been impressed by the intense dedication—and the exceptional clinical skills—of Drs. Mitsuyasu, Currier, Carlson, Moe, and other members of the staff of the UCLA AIDS Institute’s HIV clinic, and when Klein heard that reallocation of space at the UCLA Medical Center had housed the CARE Center in the oncology clinic, he called Dr. Mitsuyasu and offered to help find funding for an off-campus facility.

Naturally enough, given their history, Klein immediately thought of enlisting Elizabeth Taylor in this fund-raising effort—and of using the campaign as a way of honoring her role in changing public perceptions about AIDS. “I remember when Elizabeth and I went to Washington, and Ronald Reagan was finally persuaded to make his first official reference to the AIDS epidemic. Elizabeth was there, for that important moment—but then, she was always there.” As Klein points out, many of Dame Elizabeth’s appearances on behalf of amfAR and other AIDS organizations were covered by the press… but many were not. Only Klein was with her, for example when she paid a visit to a small AIDS hospice in Los Angeles. The press did not record that outing, but the staff of the hospice remembers, and so does Klein.

The honorary committee that Dr. Klein has assembled to help him raise funds to support the CARE Center is indicative of the sort of individuals who support Elizabeth Taylor in her ongoing efforts to ensure that everyone living with HIV receives the best possible care. Like Dame Elizabeth, the members of the honorary committee recognize that AIDS remains a public health crisis in the United States—where African-American women are 23 times more likely to be HIV-positive than non-Hispanic white women of the same age, and where an explosive epidemic is emerging among teenage girls of color. The same is true of the gay community, which is experiencing yet another wave of infections among its younger members. As Dr. Klein pointedly observes, “The battle continues.”