Selma Dritz

She died in 2008, aged 91, at the Claremont House Retirement Center in Oakland, California.

Dr. Dritz was featured in And The Band Played On, a 1987 book by Randy Shilts about the early days of the disease. Dritz's work was featured in the film adaptation of And The Band Played On, where she was portrayed by Lily Tomlin. In the movie she was referred to as "Attila the Hun" for her role in the prevention of spread of AIDS.

Dritz wrote an article for the New England Journal of Medicine called "Medical Aspects of Homosexuality" in 1980. In this journal article, it explains some of the main medical and societal situations that have allowed to disease to be spread so quickly, one of these being the public bath houses that she had shut down, due to the fast spread of the disease.

Paul Volberding, former president of the International AIDS Society who helped found the first AIDS clinic at San Francisco General Hospital in the 1980s said of Dritz:

In 1968, she was hired by the City of San Francisco as assistant director of the Health Department's Bureau of Communicable Disease Control. She worked and followed general public health concerns of the community, such as food poisoning and influenza. Thirteen years later, along with Erwin Braff, the director of the bureau, Dritz took note of a rare form of pneumonia and a rare form of cancer, Kaposi's sarcoma, both of which were afflicting gay men, and had, up to this point, only affected elderly Mediterranean men. She relayed the information to the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta. This data along with that of others was to become the first AIDS epidemic. HIV/AIDS lowers the immune system of the affected person, making them an easier target for viruses and other sicknesses, like the pneumonia and the cancer. She began to establish the etiology and epidemiology of what would be termed Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, more commonly known by its acronym, AIDS.

Dritz studied medicine at the University of Illinois, and earned a medical degree (MD) in pediatrics. She then went on to obtain a master's of public health degree (MPH) at University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health in 1967, to complement her medical degree.

Dritz married Dr. H. Fred Dritz in 1943 and had three children: Ronald, Deborah, and Ariel. Her marriage ended in divorce in 1973.

Selma Kaderman Dritz (June 29, 1917 – September 3, 2008) was an American physician and epidemiologist who worked in San Francisco, California, where she began tracking the first known cases of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) in the early 1980s.

Selma Dritz was born in Chicago, Illinois, on June 29, 1917. Dritz loved music, and began her career as a concert pianist, before deciding that she ultimately wanted to help others through her role in the medical field.