Remember activists who helped make HIV / AIDS research possible

It is worth remembering the tremendous work that it took before progress could be made. During the first decade of the epidemic, when AIDS was still deadly, panic and ignorance even raged among health professionals. Those who are afflicted have been confronted with moral judgment instead of sympathy. Politicians were not in a hurry – or downright hostile to funding for HIV / AIDS research. It has taken years for AIDS activists to struggle to ensure that blind prejudices about people with the disease stop and that progress can be made towards a cure.

When AIDS first appeared in the early 1980s, activists formed organizations such as the Gay Men Health Project, the AIDS Project Los Angeles and Shanti to do what the government, families and even churches would not do: provide food, shelter and AIDS support. The community is helped. But to combat the fanaticism that encouraged the abuse of people with AIDS, as well as to drag their feet in the search for treatment, more militant tactics were needed.

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In 1987, more than 16,000 Americans died of AIDS-related complications. In February, the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta hosted a conference on mandatory HIV / AIDS testing. But there was no effective treatment for the disease. What would you do to those who tested positive?

A group of homosexual activists, the Lavender Hill Mob, descended on Atlanta. The group was led by Marty Robinson, co-founder of Gay Liberation Front, shortly after the Stonewall riots. Activists stormed the Marriott Marquis ballroom, where a pre-conference cocktail was held. Some gangsters wore makeshift concentration camp uniforms. They distributed leaflets to surprised participants with the message, "What does CDC mean? Center for detention camps! During the three days of the conference, the gangsters appeared everywhere with leaflets and noisy songs: "Test the drugs, not the people! "The drugs in the body now! During a plenary session, they blocked the stage with a giant banner "LAVENDER HILL MOB". "Why are you talking about tests instead of saving lives?", They yelled at the auditorium.

More active activists, such as representatives of the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, were also at the conference to protest the mandatory tests – but that's the disruptive drama of the Lavender Hill crowd that won the share of the lion on the cover in the New York Times, CNN Headline News and "Crossfire", a widely watched television talk show. The gangsters have managed to bring the problem of CDC mismanagement about the AIDS crisis into American salons. They also helped convince the conference participants that the mandatory test proposal was a resounding defeat.

ACT UP, an AIDS advocacy organization, was created in New York City after the success of Lavender Hill Mob and spread quickly across the country. Inspired by the tactics of the Lavender Hill crowd, ACT UP's approach was bold and heady – and effective. He challenged ignorance and lobbied the government to invest heavily in the development of HIV / AIDS drugs.

In 1989, Cardinal John O'Connor of New York led a meeting of bishops in which clerics agreed to make a public statement reaffirming that the use of condoms was contrary to Catholic teaching, regardless of what that the New York Health Commission had said about AIDS prevention. O'Connor said, "Good morality is a good remedy."

Soon, hundreds of ACT UP members, dressed in their best of Sunday, went to the celebration of St. Patrick's Cathedral. They distributed to the faithful "church programs" explaining why they would disrupt the service. Many of them then lay on the marble floor of the cathedral's main alley and staged a die-in. Others chained themselves to a bench or shouted, "O, Connor, you kill us!" Or, to the congregation, "we are fighting for your life too!" Outside the cathedral, some 5,000 anti-AIDS activists gathered. among them who carry placards: "Threat to public health: Cardinal O & # 39; Connor", "Condoms save lives", "The papal bull". The event made headlines around the world and ACT UP chapters started in Moscow; Cape Town, South Africa; and cities all over Europe.

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Senator Jesse Helms (RN.C.) was seeking to block anti-AIDS bills since the 1980s, explaining to fellow senators that the government had no reason to spend money on drugs. money for "a disease transmitted by immorality". In 1991, members of ACT UP advertising company that produced giant inflatables. They ordered a beige-beige 35-foot parachute condom. They printed in bold typeface "A CONDOM TO STOP A SAFE POLICY: HELMS IS FATER THAN A VIRUS" – and in the early hours of the morning they covered it with two-story house Helms in Arlington, Virginia. the message: "Unprotected helmets against AIDS protesters," headlined headlines.

But the most important of the AIDS protests – the "zaps", as the ACT UP activists called them – was the National Institutes of Health at the time when Helms was trying to block a relief bill against AIDS of $ 600 million. ACT UP members from across the country visited the NIH campus in Bethesda, Maryland, throwing smoke bombs and shouting that NIH politicians were killing them. Fauci (the leader of the current campaign to defeat AIDS) invited several leaders of ACT UP and listened to them. What he learned was the origin of the accelerated approval process, which introduced "drugs into the body now", as required by the slogan of ########################################>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> ACT UP. "Impolite, reckless, effective: ACT UP modifies policies to fight AIDS," the paper said. This was the beginning of real progress in the fight against AIDS.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, a militant protest against police harassment in a gay bar in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York, which has become, as it is known, "the hairpin fall heard in the whole world". gay rights movement in America since 1950, it took the drama of Stonewall and the militant organization that ensued to make headlines drawing attention to the abuse of homosexuals – and to trigger real progress in reform. Lavender Hill Mob and ACT UP had learned from this recent history the effectiveness of a bold action in response to a disastrous situation.