Talk:Kevin Peter Hall

Untitled

The former text was copied and pasted from IMDB, so I rewrote it. Mike H 03:52, Mar 16, 2005 (UTC)

Cause of Death

In the article on Kevin Peter Hall, it says his death was caused by pneumonia. However, the article on his wife says he died of AIDS after an infected blood transfusion. Neither article references anything that explains which is true. One of the articles, at least, needs to be fixed.

In reference to the question above, Hall passed away from HIV induced Pneumonia. Both stated cuase of death are correct partially correct. While technically it was pneumonia that killed him, it was a complication resulting from HIV that progressed into AIDS. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dialn911 (talk • contribs) 10:02, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

HIV attacks the immune system, specifically "Helper T-Cells". These cells locate harmful bacteria so that other cells can get rid of them. When the level of "Helper T-Cells" in a person's bloodstream drops to a certain point, that person has AIDS. This means that a person with AIDS is much more susceptible to disease than an uninfected person. AIDS itself does not kill people, it only weakens their immune system to the point where their body cannot fight off even the slightest hint of a disease such as pneumonia. So it may be true that he died of both AIDS and pneumonia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.218.136.4 (talk) 07:39, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Moving this to Talk, as none of the sources cited mentioned anything about it.

In the fall of 1990, Hall was involved in a serious car accident in Los Angeles. It was widely rumored that during surgery for his critical wounds, he received a blood transfusion that was contaminated with HIV. Soon after his transfusion, the HIV developed into AIDS and he went public with his illness with the full support of his wife.

If he did indeed "go public" with this then there should be sources available. Please add cites before returning this to article. -- 201.37.230.43 (talk) 23:38, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Clarification: one does not contract AIDS from a blood transfusion, they contract HIV. I changed the article accordingly. --173.79.243.177 (talk) 04:18, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Many questionable aspects of his cause of death, all speculative, but his own explanation is in retrospect downright specious itself. In the US, by 1990 blood donor screening programs were already robust and the risk of transfusion-associated HIV exposure was very low. It also is extremely unusual for someone to progress from HIV seroconversion to advanced CD4 depletion and an AIDS diagnosis, as suggested by his own announcement to the public at the time, in a matter of weeks to months. Such cases have been reported, but they are certainly rare.

His story isn’t impossible, but it is far more likely that he had acquired HIV years earlier, and presented with advanced disease and what I presume was a delayed diagnosis of pneumocystis jiroveci pneumonia, due to lack of awareness amongst providers to consider HIV and opportunistic pathogens in a “presumed” monogamous male at the time.

We still deal with these unfortunate obstacles to expeditious diagnosis today, but in the early nineties, prior to the ART-era, it would have been highly unusual even for an informed provider to obtain a reliable sexual history from someone like this. A public figure, a celebrity, a person of color, a wife present—these would all have been barriers to a patient being forthcoming with “risk factors,” or a doctor even feeling safe navigating the discussion—and in 1990 consent and counseling were mandatory to test. It would have taken something like PJP pneumonia or another AID-defining condition to make such a frank and uncompromising discussion mandatory, especially given the possibility that his wife may have been exposed as well.

This is why the CDC, the World Health Organization, and every other rational preventive health entity recommends that HIV testing be a part of routine primary care. Risk factors are far less compelling than denial, and identifying every possible person harboring HIV and offering them effective therapy is the only promising hope we have, after decades of failed vaccine candidates and foolish attempts at preaching abstinence, to eradicate the epidemic.

And I agree with the anonymous poster from 2010 that it is long past time to discuss AIDS as a transmitted infection. HIV is a virus; AIDS is one of its primary complications. And the statement by Dialn911 above is also incorrect—his primary cause of death was presumably respiratory failure caused by pneumocystis, or another respiratory pathogen. AIDS would be a secondary diagnosis contributing to his cause of death. I have signed countless numbers of these certificates throughout my career as an infectious diseased and HIV specialist, although it is an extraordinary relief and a gift that the numbers I’ve had to fill out have dropped exponentially over the past two decades. But I must underscore that one should never leave off that complication from a death certificate out of some attempt to maintain the “dignity” of the patient or to somehow appease the wishes of family members to perpetuate unwarranted shame. Death certificates are an important part of how we track HIV morbidity and mortality statistics, and these numbers directly impact the allocation of resources and funding to fight the epidemic. Alanrobts (talk) 03:40, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

deleted death info?

Any special reason for deleting info on Hall's death? The responsible editor, while anonymous, usually seems to make sensible edits so I'm not assuming spamming / simple content deletion quite yet. Otherwise, I'm leaving this to an administrator of en:wp. --Baba Tabita (talk) 16:50, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

Oh, looking at this IP address's talk page, it looks like s/he's been vandalising before so I guess, someone with more powers than me is going to revert the changes to this article in due course. --Baba Tabita (talk) 16:57, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

File:Kevin Peter Hall.jpeg Nominated for Deletion

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was he black?

There is no photo of him But I heard remours that he was black. And they put him in a full body costume in "Predator" so you cannot see him. Can you show a photo of him please? The racial profile should also be changed then from American to African American to honor his blackground. 93.219.128.115 (talk) 11:09, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

He was indeed black. Here's a puzzle though, Harry's eyes are clearly green, while Kevin Peter Hall has brown eyes like most black people. The mask uses the actor's real eyes, so I'm stumped on that. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.182.130.241 (talk) 05:21, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Sort of makes you wonder if Hall was asked to wear coloured contact lenses and, if so, why? Did some bright exec at Universal/Amblin decide that Sasquatch have green eyes? That's show-business... Bowdenford (talk) 14:59, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

He wore light blue contacts which made them appear green because his natural eye color was so dark, and soft lights have a yellow tint. They did it for the movie because the visual designer for Harry wanted his eyes to be "expressive", so they slapped on the lightest blue contacts they could, knowing they would darken quite a bit. Since it was made for kids, and at the time Hollywood generally used lighter colors to represent friendliness/trustworthiness (blue eyes are seen as innocent and angelic) and something "big and scary" shouldn't have menacing brown eyes or it will never be convincing, everyone went along with it. They often gave the good guys blue eyes and the bad guys brown eyes, unless they were trying to pass the bad guy off as ALSO attractive, in which case you'd see a darker actor with green or blue eyes. I know. It's ridiculous. But that's how it was in that decade. When the series came out though, they kept his eyes brown due to the vision of a different designer. 98.209.228.109 (talk) 20:07, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

I am black...green eyes, red hair and negative rh a. We exist.

Stop. Tamgma (talk) 18:38, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

Same! I even have freckles. Who'd have thought? lmao 98.209.228.109 (talk) 20:08, 23 May 2023 (UTC)