Two Passings & One Rant

Monday, Oct. 16, 2006 - 12:11 a.m.

First, the person:

Jeff Getty, a prominent AIDS activist who in 1995 received the first bone-marrow transplant from a baboon to treat the disease, has died. He was 49.

Getty died Monday of heart failure, following treatment for cancer and a long struggle with AIDS, at the High Desert Medical Center in Joshua Tree, said Ken Klueh, his partner of 26 years.

Before antiviral drug combinations were used successfully by AIDS patients, Getty grabbed national attention in December 1995 for becoming the first person ever to receive a bone marrow cell transfusion from one species to another. His transplant at San Francisco General Hospital used cells taken from a baboon, with the hope that the primate's natural AIDS resistance would take root in his own system.

The procedure, ultimately unsuccessful, sparked furious debate over the moral and medical implications of cross-species transplants.

"That trial reflects the level of desperation at the time," said Dr. Steven Deeks, the University of California, San Francisco, professor who was the experiment's lead investigator. "Jeff was just hanging on to his life. He inspired us that a risky and aggressive intervention was worth trying."

I remember Jeff Getty because Art Bell was livid upon hearing of this form of therapy. Mr. Bell's anger stemmed from the fear of inadvertent transplantation of a deadly virus from the baboon to the human.

HELLO!!!!!! What the fuck did Art think *AIDS* was?????

His ignorant assessment and blind fearmongering regarding Jeff Getty is the reason I eventually stopped listening to him.

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Second, the experience.

THE birthplace of punk, CBGB, where bands such as the Ramones and Talking Heads got their start in New York, threw its own headbanging funeral last night. With rock poet Patti Smith offering the expletive-laden eulogy to the grungy Bowery icon, mohawk-wearing mourners took one final twirl in the mosh pit.

"You know what's sad? Turning New York City into the suburbs," Smith said. "The whole thing's sad. This is just a symptom of the empty prosperity of our times." But the 59-year-old singer tried to be Zen-like about the demise of the graffiti-scarred landmark, where she launched her career in the early 1970s. "CBGB is a state of mind," Smith said. "We can have CBGB in our heart, but the new kids have got to have their own places. What's going to happen to CBGB is young kids all over the world are going to have their own f-----g clubs and they won't care."

As more than 200 people lined the Bowery for the final show, a group calling themselves The Hungry March Band gathered on the sidewalk to play a New Orleans-style funeral dirge. "It's crazy," Brian Alvarez, 18, of Queens, said of CBGB's swan song. It's emotional, and we're in shock." Alvarez, a drummer, said his band played three gigs at CBGB, the last one in April.

"It's a weird feeling because we never thought we would play there. We got more gigs after we played there. Now it's a crazy feeling because we never thought it was going to go." Owner Hilly Kristal, 75, who named the place for country, bluegrass and blues music, said he was resigned to the fact it was closing time. Kristal, who has cancer, had battled in court and in public to keep the doors open, but the landlord exercised his right not to renew the lease. He vowed to resurrect CBGB in Las Vegas next year, and plans to take most of the distressed decor with him.

"We're taking everything," he said. "The urinals, the toilets even."

Obviously I never got a chance to go when it was at the original location. But I wouldn't rule out Las Vegas.

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Worth Noting: I almost never find music videos appealing anymore, but I'm going to break the silence and have you please see if you can find and take a look at the video for the song 'When We We Young' by The Killers. And the song is great, too.

And there we go. Have a good Monday.

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