Celebrities' diseases grab public spotlight

Stars can raise research money and awareness, reduce stigma and encourage people to be tested and treated.

By Victoria Stagg Elliott, AMNews staff. April 15, 2002.

When Pamela Anderson announced last month that she was being treated for hepatitis C infection and claimed that she contracted the virus by sharing a tattoo needle with her ex-husband Tommy Lee, people around the country were flooded with information about a stigmatized disease that rarely gets media attention.

Calls to the Hepatitis Foundation tripled. Doctors say they received more inquiries about testing. And, patients being treated for the disease felt a little less isolated.

"It's very good because the disease has such a stigma," said Douglas Dieterich, MD, vice-chair of medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. He once had hepatitis C but has since recovered.

"Everyone associates liver disease with either alcohol or drug use, and it's not always that. It's actually quite common among the medical profession because we get needlesticks."

Anderson is not the first star to bring a disease to the fore. She's not even the first to talk about hepatitis C. Naomi Judd beat her to that years ago. But like many celebrities, Anderson's revelations can alter the disease's image.

Rock Hudson died of complications related to AIDS, and the disease went from being a pariah to a fashionable cause. Michael J. Fox, Christopher Reeve, and Mary Tyler Moore have also used their clout to speak before Congress and raise money and awareness regarding their respective causes. Even Pope John Paul II has gotten in on the act, launching the first global campaign about colorectal cancer. [...]