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Celia Farber , who was an intrepid vernal reporter in the 1980 ’s , was the first journalist to oppugn the official narrative and dig into the science of AIDS . She reported on the “ grounds ” that was being continually cited and repeated by health officials and the press , the lethality of AZT , and more . Throughout , Farber ’s reportage was largely ignored . Now , forty age after her original reporting , Farber’sSerious Adverse event : An Uncensored History of AIDSis reissued . In the excerption below , Farber recalls a change in perspective surrounding prescription medication as a treatment for AIDS .
The pursual is an excerpt fromSerious Adverse Events : An Uncensored account of AIDSby Celia Farber . It has been adapted for the entanglement .
A New Type of Treatment: Emerging Optimism
The story first ripple through every news media outlet in the twilight of 1996 : Prescription - drug “ cocktail ” were having such a dramatic impact on AIDS that the very nature of the disease was being reversed.1 People were spring back from their deathbed , worried now not about croak but about living — about reference card balances and career prospect and life insurance policies already sold .
Having spent all those years preparing to die , some the great unwashed found the idea of living almost unsettling . One activist dubbed this new journalistic phenomenon “ I’m - Gonna - Live - and - I - Have - Nothing - to - Wear . ” Newsweek ’s cover asked whether this was “ The End of AIDS?”2 Time named Dr. David Ho , the virologist who paved the elbow room for the current drug “ cocktail ” rotation , as the Man of the Year for 1996.3
The Dissection of Diagnoses: “Only Different in Degree”
Sullivan ’s article was met with bully jubilation , as well as violence . Sullivan explored his own experience with AIDS — the end he witness , the fear he ’s felt , the onslaught of heartbreak that anybody involved in this epidemic goes through — but the juncture of the article was the new pharmaceuticals . People were taking an regalia of unlike drug in more than 100 combinations . Sullivan , despite all the qualifiers in his piece , was a believer .
“ The powerfulness of the newest drug , called proteinase inhibitors , ” he wrote , “ and the even greater power of those in the pipeline , is such that a diagnosing of HIV infection is not just dissimilar in academic degree today than , say , five years ago . It is dissimilar in kind . It no longer signifies death . It merely stand for illness . ” He went on to write:“I realized that my diagnosing was no different in kind than the diagnosis every deadly being lives with — only dissimilar in degree . By large and larger measures , I begin to see the condition not as something narrow , but as something liberating . . . liberating because an sentience of the inevitability of decease is always the surest way to an awareness of the tangibility of life . ”
author and activist Richard Berkowitz described the streets of Greenwich Village on November 10 , the mean solar day Sullivan ’s article was bring out : “ I went to a gay cinema , and almost everybody had a written matter . Everyone was talking about it . People were call their female parent , weeping . Seeing those words on the cover version of the New York Times like that was almost scriptural . The desperation to trust it is so Brobdingnagian . ”
skill newsman Jon Cohen was skeptical about the new drugs and one of the most prominent voices to assail Sullivan . In the online magazine Slate , Cohen insist that only a vaccine could sign the end of AIDS : “ Never in the annals of medicine has a viral pest been kibosh by any therapy . ”5
For his part , Sullivan felt his intended message was misconstrued . In an exchange with me , he write , “ My Times piece was a first attack to conceive of a world after AIDS . It was tide ‘ When Plagues End , ’ not ‘ The Plague Has Ended . ’ It also talked about the end of a ‘ plague , ’ not the end of a disease . ‘Plague ’ I define as something unstoppable , out of our control completely , affecting everyone indiscriminately . That phase angle clearly has stop , and it raise a innkeeper of fascinating and unmanageable questions . ”
The Philosophy of Patient Activism
All the stories about the new drug combining — let in Sullivan ’s — were twine with caveats : Some people “ break ” on the drug , and many can not yield them . But the core group caveat is so monumental that it subvert the central premiss . Time has not borne out whether the Lazarus essence of these new drugs will last . Rebounding from severe illness is one affair ; “ ending ” AIDS is all told another .
Yet Sullivan seemed to believe that the electrical resistance to imagining an end to AIDS is psychological , not scientific , in nature . “ I do think that Camus ’ insight that at the end of plagues some people resist to consent it because they have come to ask the experience emotionally is a profound one , ” he write to me . “ I acknowledge of no other disease where patient activist are so keen to tell hoi polloi to avoid treatment . ”
Historically , however , “ patient activism ” in AIDS was built on a philosophy of “ drug into body , ” meaning that masses with HIV did not have time to wait and see whether drugs worked or not , but had to gamble . They did , and in the first round of gambling — with AZT — they undeniably lose . This clock time around there was no consensus .
For all the hype and excitement smother the new drugs , skeptical voice were heard early on . Both AIDS organization and handling activists protested the hoopla emanating from the Vancouver AIDS conference in 1996 , which centered on Ho ’s announcement that he had used drug combination to bring several patients down to “ undetectable ” level of HIV , as measure by a so - called “ viral - load ” test . Ho had expressed an “ evangelical ” ardour , as the Wall Street Journal put it , to get HIV - positive people on drug combinations as soon as possible.6 He job that after two or three yr of treatment , the virus might be wipe out and affected role could go off the drug .
Entering A State of Suspension
Meanwhile , the viral - encumbrance mental test replaced the T - cell count as a barometer for illness . But as treatment militant Mike Barr reported in POZ magazine early in the cocktail craze , an “ undetectable ” viral shipment merely means a number below an arbitrary cut - off point of 400 to 500 copies of HIV RNA per mil of blood.7 Some hoi polloi have reached those level on other drugs , like AZT and D4 T , without mother any healthy .
In other words , the viral - warhead exam was problematic and was considered so from the beginning . “I used this HIV viral - load test since it became usable , ” Dr. Donald Abrams , assistant film director of the AIDS platform at San Francisco General Hospital , said in 1997 , “ but I ’m not convinced that I really , genuinely understand its cor- telling with clinical result . ” One Los Angeles company sold viral - load tryout for $ 10 during a tryout full point to induce sales ; at the time the run sold for $ 200 to $ 300 .
“ I ’ve take heed every version — people bank by these drug and citizenry writhing on the floor in agony,”noted the late James Scutero , who institute the once democratic mischealthaids.org word group .
Indeed , AIDS seemed in a res publica of suspension , for there were striking parallel of latitude between the cocktail craze and the emergence of AZT in the belated ’ fourscore . “ I meet from historical position , ” notice Abrams , who seldom dictate the novel drugs . “ I remember 1987 , when AZT first became uncommitted . I was not convinced that it was the be - all and destruction - all . That stance was very unpopular , and then over the course of study of ten years more and more people jump to come around . ”
Sean Strub , chairman and founder of POZ , is living proof that the novel therapy work wonders for some . “ I probably would be utter if these drugs had n’t come along , ” he narrate me over lunch in 1997 . “ A twelvemonth and a one-half ago , I had Kaposi ’s sarcoma in my lungs and was taking chemotherapy every two calendar week . I had wound all over my face . Then I started combinations and within weeks it turn me around . ”
But Strub did not believe in 1997 that symptomless mass should take the novel drugs . “ I have so many friend who waited — sagely so — with AZT . Those same conservative the great unwashed are now going on cocktail . I seek to stop them , but it ’s difficult . ” At the same clip , he could n’t avail wondering if the parallels with AZT would be play out to a tragic conclusion . “My friends who were diagnosed at the same time I was , and who went on AZT , are virtually all dead today , ” he say . “ Those of us who held out are alive . ”
Notes
1 . Liz Hunt , “ ‘ Cocktail ’ Opens New Chapter on AIDS , ” Independent , July 12 , 1996 , https:// www.independent.co.uk/news/cocktail-opens-new-chapter-on-aids-1328432.html ; Elizabeth Kastor , “ The New Miracle AIDS drug : A Dose of Hope and Hard Reality , ” Washington Post , September 5 , 1996 , https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive /politics/2025-03-02 / the - novel - miracle - aids - drug - a - battery-acid - of - promise - and - hard - reality /166f7848 - 4924 - 4624 - ad2c-113ef638ce5b/.
2 . “ The End of Aids ? , ” Newsweek , December 1 , 1996 , https://www.newsweek.com /end - aids-175200 .
3 . Lily Rothman , “ Until 2014 , This Man Was TIME ’s Only Medical Person of the Year , ” Time , December 10 , 2014 , https://time.com/3627996/david-ho-person-of-the-year/.
5 . Jon Cohen , “ AIDS Is n’t Over , ” Slate , November 23 , 1996 , https://slate.com/news-and -politics/1996/11 / aids - isn - triiodothyronine - over.html .
6 . Michael Waldholz , “ Dr. Ho Wants to examine ‘ curative , ’ But Others Are Critical , ” Wall Street Journal , December 17 , 1996 , https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB850772872678442500 .
7 . Mike Barr , “ God Is bushed : The Dream of HIV Eradication Ends , ” POZ , March 1 , 1998 , https://www.poz.com/article/hiv-eradication-dream-12518-6283 .
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