By Tali Woodward

Daniel Phillips knows how important medical research can be. In the early 1980s he was contacted by researchers from a study he'd participated in years earlier. With his permission, they tested his old blood sample for HIV and found out he was infected with the virus.

More than 20 years later, Phillips is still a willing research subject. And he's able to be one at the Institute for HIV Research and Treatment, located at California Pacific Medical Center's Davies campus, near his home in the Castro.

Phillips is dismayed by a plan to close the institute May 1.

"I'm really bothered that this hospital – where I've seen so many friends die, and where there's an opportunity for so much research – is closing this," he said.

Like roughly 60 percent of HIV patients, Phillips has neurological problems – for which he's treated by a neurologist at the institute. But, he says, he's mostly worried that valuable research opportunities will be lost when it closes.

"I think it's very important for someone like me to be researched because there's something in my medical makeup that's allowed me to live with no opportunistic diseases," he said.

Administrators say they're closing the institute because it's no longer needed. In a letter to another administrator, institute director Dr. David Drennan wrote that the closure is a "happy occurrence" that indicates that "HIV infection has evolved into a medically manageable chronic, largely outpatient condition as a consequence of the development of many new drugs."

But certain patients insist the decision says more about the hospital's priorities than it does about the state of the virus. They say the hospital is robbing the community of a vital resource that could generate groundbreaking AIDS research.

When the Davies campus was taken over by California Pacific in 1998, administrators said they would retain HIV services. Instead, some insist, the hospital (and its parent company, Sutter Health) have gradually whittled them away. "HIV services have been weakened by two years of post-merger passive neglect," reads a flyer being distributed by patients. And one physician who asked not to be named told us, "California Pacific has been consistently hostile to AIDS services – to being seen as having an 'AIDS hospital' or a 'gay hospital.' "

Drennan's office referred us to CPMC spokesperson Ann Mosher, who said, "From Dr. Drennan's perspective, there just wasn't as much usefulness as when the institute was created. HIV patients then didn't have access to drugs now available at the corner [drugstore]."

"It's not like the medical center is ending its work on this major and devastating illness," Mosher added. "The services provided at Davies have never been greater."

Dr. Steve Follansbee, who was the institute's first director and now works for Kaiser Permanente, said that while he thinks there are "still lots of questions to answer" about HIV, there are many other places to participate in clinical trials.

Phillips's neurologist, Dr. Dawn McGuire, has run the NeuroAIDS clinic since 1996, when she moved it from UC San Francisco. She told us she's confident she'll be able to continue her research elsewhere but is concerned she won't be able to see all of her patients at her San Francisco General Hospital clinic, which often has a waiting list for appointments and does not serve those with private insurance. "This is a decision that needs to be taken to the CPMC Board of Directors as well as to the affected community," she said.