Podcast Jamey Schmidt

Jamie Schmitt, a research dietitian, discusses the HIV epidemic in America. Initially, she had a limited understanding of the disease, believing it only affected promiscuous gay men. Doctors also had biases and focused only on this group. Jamie's perspective changed when she worked with HIV patients in San Francisco, realizing they were just like her. She encountered ignorance from her aunt, who thought she could get HIV from sharing food. This made Jamie realize the importance of being part of the community affected by HIV. Hello, my name is Amanda Schmitt and today I will be discussing the HIV epidemic in America through the experience of Jamie Schmitt. Jamie, in addition to being a mother to one Amanda Schmitt, is a research dietitian and the current director of clinical research at the California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco, California. Before working in San Francisco, Jamie grew up in Minnesota and it was in 1986 when she was a high school student, age 16, that she began to hear about a new disease. During high school, Jamie's understanding of HIV and AIDS was simple. It affected primarily promiscuous gay men and since she didn't belong to this group, Jamie didn't think much else of the disease. Similar to Paola Treichler's paper, HIV was an epidemic of meaning. Cultural biases ingrained in the heads of scientists shifted how HIV was viewed in the public sphere. Since the disease affected homosexuals, doctors focused solely on this aspect of the disease and, as Treichler notes, many doctors avoided studies because they were ignorant to how men could spread a disease through sex and were unwilling to rectify this ignorance for many years. When those accredited to help the sick refused to learn pertinent information due to a cultural taboo, the sick will die before people decide to arm themselves with knowledge. Jamie continued in the same, describing her time in high school stating how, quote, I don't remember any LGBTQ clubs or people who were homosexual, end quote. This surprised me and put me into the context of the mid-1980s more than anything else. The thought of a Minnesota lunch table, students talking about HIV being a curse from King Tut's tomb or God's punishment for homosexuality, while a closeted student nodded along with an image constantly coming to the forefront of my mind. There truly weren't out gay people or support for LGBTQ youth hearing these rumors about HIV. Jamie reflects on this fact, stating how, quote, learning that the people afflicted were just like me with dreams, hopes, and sometimes really shitty parents, that also changed how I viewed the disease, end quote. This shift in view was made even more evident when she moved to San Francisco and began to work in Ward 86 of San Francisco General Hospital. Before SF General, Jamie worked at the Beth Israel Hospital in Boston during 1992 before ARV drugs were used as treatment. Then, five years later, Jamie began working in Ward 86 from 1997 to 2002 when life-saving ARV drugs were first available to patients. Jamie first worked as a receptionist, though within two months she began working in the Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology as a clinical and research dietitian. She conducted research with patients suffering from chronic diarrhea with a focus on those who were not receptive to ARV drugs. Jamie began to get to know her patients, who were primarily gay men coming from a multitude of different backgrounds. The majority of her patients weren't from San Francisco. Instead, she stated how, quote, there were people who moved to the city to find a community who would accept them for who they were, end quote. Jamie had been working with patients with HIV for some time when she decided to have lunch with her aunt. At their lunch, Jamie described how she had shared dessert with a patient. Her aunt responded, voice dripping with concern and ignorance, quote, aren't you worried about getting sick dear, end quote, to which my mother responded, quote, I cannot get HIV by sharing food or drink, end quote. Before she had experiences with the men in her care, Jamie's mindset of HIV was one that Triglav describes as, quote, a separation of self, end quote, the idea of us and them. Prior to her work, Jamie viewed HIV as affecting them, promiscuous gay men, drug users, people removed from her, not her. Exposure to the men in her care, sharing stories, eating together, this changed her thinking. When her aunt expressed separation between those suffering and herself, Jamie realized that in her aunt's world, Jamie was them, and that is where she needed to be.