most people the same perception. But to me it was clear: The epidemic was changing. In the future the virus would be targeting the people I’d come to know at the clinic—the street people, the drug users, the prostitutes, the poor would become its preferred victims. Tim was, for me, the last great egalitarian death, the last person in the danse macabre line. That’s probably because he died so out in the open. A physician dying of AIDS carries a special poignancy. I knew of other physicians who had died of AIDS, but they died secretly. With the first symptoms, they would quietly resign and move back with their families. Other physicians worked for years knowing they carried the disease but told no one. The truth came out only in their obituaries. Tim was different. He went public.