BUREAU OF LOST CULTURE – The Angel of Haight Ashbury (08/06/2024)
‘Health care is a right, not a privilege,’ and ‘Free doesn’t just mean no charge – it’s a state of mind’ he said.
Whilst many of his fellow physicians became business entrepreneurs – rather than healers – he opened the Haight Ashbury Free Clinic in 1966, ministering to the thousands of young people flocking to San Francisco during the Summer of Love. He was arrested, prosecuted and vilified but he helped a lot of people and still does.
Over the years, patients using the Clinic shifted from idealistic hippies with STDs and bad trip experiences to those caught up with serious drug addiction, Vietnam veterans with heroin habits and early AIDS patients – the dispossessed and marginalised, cast adrift by mainstream culture and health services.
Dr Dave joined us at the Bureau to tell us all about it and how and why he turned his back on academic fame and fortune to pursue the countercultural life. We hear about Charles Manson, the CIA, mind control and the darkening of the hippie dream.
