Linda Laubenstein

Who is Linda Laubenstein?

Linda Laubenstein was a doctor and early HIV/AIDS researcher. Along with Dr. Alvin Friedman-Kien, she published the first article linking AIDS with Kaposi's sarcoma.

A childhood bout of polio left Laubenstein paraplegic and using a wheelchair. After graduating high school she graduated Barnard College. She then received her M.D. from the New York University Medical School, where she became a clinical professor.

Larry Kramer's play The Normal Heart features a wheelchair-using medical doctor, Emma Brookner, who is based on Laubenstein.

She died at the age of 45 on August 15, 1992 at her family's home in Massachusetts. At the time of her death, newspaper obituaries reported that an autopsy was pending. In 2011, Larry Kramer, the playwright of The Normal Heart, distributed a leaflet after Broadway performances of that play which said that the character of Emma Brookner was based on Dr. Linda Laubenstein, who "died after a return bout of polio and another trip to an iron lung."