James Oleske

James M. Oleske is a pediatrician who pioneered the effort to treat pediatric HIV/AIDS in the 1980s. He was one of the first scientists to recognize that children were getting infected with the disease. 
== Education ==
Oleske graduated in 1967 with a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Detroit. He received his medical degree from the College of Medicine & Dentistry of New Jersey (CMDNJ), now known as the Rutgers School of Biomedical and Health Sciences, in 1971 where he later did an internship and residency in the Department of Pediatrics. He received a master's degree in Public Health from Columbia University in 1974 and completed a fellowship in Pediatric Infectious Diseases & Immunology at Emory University Medical School in 1976.
== Career ==
Oleske was a pediatrician in Newark, New Jersey at the beginning of the HIV/AIDS epidemic when little was known about the disease or how it was transmitted. In the late 1970s, Oleske began noticing an unusual increase in the number of pediatric patients at his hospital with suppressed immune systems and life-threatening infections. In 1981, Oleske was asked to draw blood from an adult male patient at Saint Michael’s Medical Center who was a recovering IV drug user and who was suffering from the new acquired immune deficiency which would later be known as AIDS. Upon entering the room, the patient immediately recognized Oleske and was surprised that the doctor did not know who he was. The patient told Oleske that he was the father of one of the doctor's pediatric patients. His young daughter had a severe immune disorder and died six months prior from Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP). Oleske hadn’t recognized the young girl’s father because he looked robust and healthy only a few months ago and was now severely ill and underweight. It was at this moment that Oleske realized that the dying man, his daughter, and most of the immune deficient pediatric patients at the hospital were suffering from the same illness.
Doctors James Oleske, Anthony Minnefor and Franklin Desposito were among the authors of an article about pediatric AIDS in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) in 1983. The article received criticism from the medical community because at the time the new auto immune deficiency was known to only infect adults through sexual contact, blood transfusion, and IV drug use. Because of the stigma associated with AIDS, it was initially difficult for Oleske to convince his colleagues that the disease could also be transmitted to children and equally challenging to obtain the necessary funding to support pediatric AIDS research and treatment in Newark. Oleske often complained that most of the federal money went to prestigious institutions that didn’t have any patients suffering from the disease.
The Littlest Victims, a docu-drama about Dr. Oleske and his work, was broadcast on national television in 1989. The program helped bring much needed awareness to the suffering of children in Newark, as well as much needed funding and support. After seeing the television program, Albina du Boisrouvray, a French Countess, contacted Oleske and offered him a $1.25 million dollar donation. Throughout the years, she continued supporting AIDS research in Newark by endowing a professor’s chair at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ) and providing funding to support UMDNJ’s clinical pediatric AIDS program at the United Hospitals Medical Center of Newark. Funding from Du Boisrouvrary helped establish the Francois-Xavier Bagnoud (FXB) Clinical Care Center, named in honor of her deceased son, at the UMDNJ campus. FXB pioneered perinatal and pediatric AIDS care and clinical research and established the first international training program for medical professionals who treat HIV-infected pregnant women.
Dr. Oleske is known for always carrying a purple toy rabbit in the pocket of his lab coat. He’s given thousands of purple toy rabbits to his pediatric patients to help comfort them during their medical procedures and hospital stays. He began this practice to honor the memory of a young HIV patient who gifted Oleske with a beloved purple rabbit he carried to comfort him through medical tests and procedures. The young boy passed away on the same day he gave the doctor his purple toy.
A documentary entitled Don Quixote in Newark about Oleske and his struggle to identify and treat pediatric AIDS was broadcast on PBS in 2022.
Category:American people
Category:American pediatricians