Pioneer in field of drug treatment

Dr. George “Skip” Gay, 77, who pioneered drug treatment at San Francisco’s Haight Ashbury Free Clinic, died Feb. 13 in Anchorage after a heart attack, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

Gay, an anesthesiologist, worked with concert promoter Bill Graham in 1973 to start Rock Medicine, an aid organization caring for drug- and alcohol-impaired fans at Grateful Dead concerts in Golden Gate Park.

A native of St. Louis, Gay served in the Navy in a unit that rescued downed pilots in the Korean War, the Chronicle reported. He graduated from Amherst College and earned his medical degree at the University of Missouri. He trained in anesthesiology at Children’s Hospital Boston.

Drawn to San Francisco during the “Summer of Love” in 1967, Gay quit his private practice and began practicing at the Haight Ashbury Free Clinic, where he developed techniques for treating heroin addicts, the Chronicle said.

Gay eventually found work as a physician in the California Department of Corrections. He was also an associate professor of anesthesiology at UC Davis Medical Center.

The Chronicle said that his awareness of the need for rural medicine led him to move to Alaska several years ago. He was the only anesthesiologist within a 100-mile radius, the newspaper said. He was working until two weeks before his death.

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Vitaly Fedorchuk, who briefly headed the KGB and served as Soviet interior minister in the 1980s, died Friday in Moscow, according to officials of the Russian Federal Security Service, the main KGB successor agency. He was 89.