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"I was at Boston City Hospital when the AIDS epidemic hit. It was a new, horrible disease. It really struck the people who had the least ability to deal with it; the population I was most interested in serving."
When people would come in with AIDS they were much sicker than they are now and would die shortly. "I would personally go in and meet each one of them. I got very personally involved."
"The most important ground that I broke was to develop an AIDS 101 Curriculum to teach the house staff what AIDS was, what it meant, how to care for terminally ill patients, especially the compassion side, which most staff were not prepared for."
"I helped develop the first HIV Testing Protocol. Up until then there were no guidelines." Abby also identified women as being much younger than men when they contracted AIDS. Under the age of 20, her research found AIDS to be a woman's disease. These young women were contracting AIDS via heterosexual contact with older men.
"People often ask me for my opinion regarding nutrition and AIDS. I run a Reading Center that analyzes DEXAscans and CTscans to analyze body composition for national and international research."
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