How to Survive a Plague Page #8

until we get arrested.

You seem to know nothing about

the actual details of the

development of this drug.

Maybe you're just

not telling us.

Mr. Borsic, have you scheduled

a meeting with the F.D.A.?

Yeah, as soon as we can.

We have helped many companies

through this process.

We can take a drug from your

test tube to the market

in under two years if you work

with us, and we will pave the

way for you with the food

and drug administration.

But, but this total reluctance on

your part is gonna get you nowhere.

...have been used in

people for 30 years.

It'll end up killing

us, all right?

See this dark mark

on my forehead?

That's Kaposi's sarcoma.

It's gonna spread!

It's gonna kill me.

You coming to my funeral?

Because you're the man

f***ing responsible.

You are my murderer in

your shirt and tie.

Do you think that you'll

live to see a cure?

No.

I don't.

Do you think that you'll live?

No.

No.

You expect to die from this?

The anger just mounted and mounted and

mounted the more people who were dying.

Once a week we met...

And at that meeting a lot of

people came who were just

terrified they weren't gonna

be alive even the next week.

What can we do, how

can we get there?

I think ACT UP's anger turned in after

having been directed out so long.

In its first few years,

treatment and data pretty much

got everything it wanted from

the floor of ACT UP, but as

treatment and data was becoming

more and more technical,

there were a lot of people in the

general membership of ACT UP

that saw that as an elite, and

that maybe it would be better if

that elite was pulled in a bit.

There was a fear, I think,

that we were getting too close

to the people in power, that we would

compromise our own principles.

And the people who were more

interested in the social issues

became uncomfortable with that.

I remember this very divisive

moment where, um, you know,

there was a proposal for

moratorium on meeting with

drug companies, and someone...

for six months... and there was

a huge and impassioned debate

over it, and someone said... a

woman who was not HIV-positive

said, "well, it's not like it's

for the rest of your life."

And for a lot of people in the

room, it was the

rest of their life.

ACT UP!

Fight back!

Fight AIDS!

There were inevitable

splits in priorities.

And you know quite well...

I know.

And it was completely

left out of the n.I.H.

Research agenda.

I agree.

I, I...

I remember a lot of dirty tricks that

happened, and a lot of fear within the

organization that the various

factions had done this to each other.

Mark Harrington, Mark Harrington,

there's a video camera here now.

Would you like to take an oath

that you will not write nasty

anonymous letters to people?

I've been getting some hate

letters too, but those are

unsigned. I don't ever, I don't ever...

so you'll keep on

writing nasty letters to people?

There were a lot of charges in the midst

of that, of sabotage and threats.

Our last speaker is,

is Larry Kramer.

Why didn't you

answer the charges?

Bill, you're gonna

have a chance to talk,

all right, everybody's...

don't lecture me,

you stupid, lazy,

incompetent shithead!

Bill, everybody got the flyer...

...you can't just lick

his ass before he talks!

Shut the f*** up and

let him answer!

Look, there are a lot of people

in the audience who want

to ask and talk about treatment,

and I think it's important that

we allow that to happen.

Oh, we're gonna dictate

free speech now?

You're the one who's interfering

with speech right now.

Go back to G.M.H.C.

Or whatever AIDS pimp

operation is paying you.

You're making the same point

George Bush made... - plague!

We are in the middle

of a f***ing plague!

And you behave like this!

Plague!

40 million infected people is a

f***ing plague!

We are in the worst shape we

have ever, ever, ever been in!

All those pills we're shoveling

down our throats, forget it!

ACT UP has been taken over by a

lunatic fringe, they can't get

together, nobody agrees with

anything, all we can do is field

a couple hundred people

in a demonstration!

That's not gonna make

anybody pay attention!

Not until we get

millions out there!

And we can't do that!

All we do is pick at each

other and yell at each other!

And I say to you in year 10

the same thing I said to you in

1981 when there were 41 cases.

Until we get our acts together,

all of us, we are as good as

dead.

In the end, the treatment and data guys...

Peter, Garance, Mark, and some

others... split off and formed

their own separate organization.

Tag was one of the little Mercury balls

that flew off the main body of ACT UP.

A more sort of "think tank"

type project came about.

Mr. Harrington, a tag

member, educated at Harvard

college, and he has worked for

a long time on experimental

treatments for the disease, and

and also the basic science.

And Mr. Gonsalves was born in

long island and attended tufts

university, also a tag member.

Um, I guess I can do nothing

better than to turn this

conference over to my speakers.

I noticed that you're both

sitting up there in suits

and ties. Do you feel that your

approach is better than circling

n.I.H. Buildings and so forth?

I think that we like to keep our

options open, but it's silly

to risk arrest and the hassles

that are intendant upon it if

you can get serious attention

and negotiations going

with other measures.

We just released a report, a critique

of all the n.I.H.'S AIDS programs.

The research is spread out

over 12 agencies, there's no

coordination, there's

a lot of duplication.

There's no leadership.

The budget is shrinking and

shrinking as cases mount,

and the president needs to be

blamed, as well as the congress

who cut the entire n.I.H. Budget

by $150 million two weeks ago.

Our recommendations, I think,

are gonna require some

legislation, um, so we have to

go to our friends on the hill and see

what wonders they can work for us.

We had this one particular

compound that looked like it may

have had the potency and the

physical properties that we wanted,

and it could be a possible drug.

We said, you know, let's put

in HIV-infected individuals

and let's see what happens.

So, we went into HIV-infected

individuals with this drug

called crixivan, and you could

see a very substantial drop just

with the one protease inhibitor, you could

see a very substantial drop in virus load.

So that was the first week.

The second week was very

disappointing, because what we

saw in the second week was in fact, the

virus load coming right back up again.

One exception.

There was one patient that,

um, patient 143, I believe,

was his name... his number...

that the virus went

down and stayed down.

That told us that

it was possible.

If it can happen in one, then

by definition it can happen

in everyone, you just need

to figure out how to do it.

That puts you in a completely

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