OutCasting; Pandemics - Covid 19 and AIDS - part 2 of 4

said there are many heroes but they're the bidding wars villain during the aids epidemic who viewed the epidemic for their all to back the agenda should the divide really really nice this is outcasts public radio's lgbt q youth program you don't have to be clear to be here are testing is produced in your idea for the public online an outcast immediate dot org hi i'm lucas it's truly to tell about the long term impact coven it will have on the world though of course in the short term we've already experience illness and death and social economic and political disruption on a massive scale covert could become something unimaginable but the social distancing and other preventive measures were taking have kept a disease spiraling completely out of control and there's hope that will have affected vaccines within the next year to in contrast the aids pandemic which began in nineteen eighty one was allowed to spell out of control and i was

about fifteen years from the beginning of the outbreak and to the development of effective treatments in the mid nineties even out nearly forty years later there is no vaccine una's reports that as of the end of twenty eighteen nearly seventy five million people have been infected with a jersey and thirty two million had died some people have been suggesting so we're feeling now in the early days of the covert outbreak must be similar to how it felt at the beginning of the aids crisis but there are crucial differences in a commentary in the april twenty twenty edition of passing over time adjusts or chris said imagine how much lower the number of people lost aides might have been if people had hated game and not instead recognize faces a worldwide health crisis right from the beginning and imagine how you today dealing with this new corona virus would be panicking of coverage in your community but there's no effect of public response imagine the sickness and death becoming pervasive among her own friends and family and asking pleading screaming for help but no

one listens no one really cares about the infected and the government sits on money that should be released for developing a vaccine or cure for caring for those who are sick imagine the rage and grief you'd feel as your friends were getting sick and dying and the rest of the world was ignoring the whole thing joining us now to help us understand and not just imagine is tape watcher jay is a veteran journalist and activist he arrived in new york city in nineteen eighty two he began writing for the new york native the leading to a newspaper at the time and then became associate producer of our time a weekly tv show about lgbt life in york city oh smelly activist and historian vito russo jay joined act up newark and eighty seven the year the group was founded he departed key demonstrations at the fda protest in nineteen eighty eight stop the church in nineteen eighty nine and the demonstration at the national institutes of health in nineteen ninety he served as the head of act up to media committee taking the helm for michael angelo sr rally most

recently she was the editor of rainbow warrior my life in color and their more of gilbert baker creator of the rainbow flag joey's also a member of the cobra baker foundation and co founder public impact media consultants a pr firm for progressive groups and individuals this is part two of the series what about outcast nj when we left off on the last edition about casting we're talking about the panic in the gay community cause by aides as the public continued to be relatively unconcerned a big contrast with how things are with over ninety we also talked about her all this affected how gay people were growing to see themselves how many people what internalize society's hatred of gay people now at an illness that appeared to come from their sexuality and how society was discriminating against people with an illness so gay men and other people with a charity were facing discrimination from all angles what was the response like the medical establishment wasn't enough given the

circumstances it became clear early on that the inherent problems of the medical establishment over taxed too expensive pharmaceutical drugs that were ridiculous we price all these problems only became exacerbated with the epidemic we have a system that could not handle the every day illnesses that were coming in and suddenly you have an epidemic and there weren't enough hospital beds for these people people with aids were being put in bed for your own gurney's in the hallways you know take it gave to put them into a bed and then the issues of our kathleen for new drugs there was some farmed food companies who thought wow it we could find something that took care of age we could make a lot of money because pharmaceutical companies are not about

helping people they are about making money and so an organization or company called bar of welcome at the time took a draw but that the national cancer institute had developed years ago called azt hadn't because it'd been too toxic and then sort of abandoned and both welcomed somehow co opted this drug and began touting it as a drug for each it and at the time around making a fixer so eighty seven it was really the only drugs available because there is no incentive for a lot of companies even explore the drugs because there was some of stigma around charged and unfathomable amount i think of like ten thousand dollars a year with the highest price for any drug ever and it was a drug that was very toxic and in some cases it only accelerated the death of people of

aden from cave roof people were able to get for momentary relief from their of the opportunistic infections that age really grow into relief the dire problems that were already developing in are overtaxed too expensive medical system in america and then do a clinical trial being done on that people hoped would show some promise them they could use these drugs to address agents other a clinical trial at various hospitals and at the national institutes of health and other federal medical groups but the people who are being involved in these clinical trials there wasn't a lot of diversity there were a lot of gay men there were a lot of people of color and they were all pretty much know when the nobel of another big battle the fact is that it had been presumed

because of demographics that only men got a friday and from how doctors were blind to the fact that women were all forgiving each it but they were preventing with different if they had held a conflict or a disease they had other issues that were quite different from then so they don't like at the level of the fee li fi fantasy tv of control they believe that women did not get a chatty fellow women with all these new illnesses would come to their doctor and of course they would not be tested for each other the way that katharine finally available and since they were deemed not a new page of the doctors would finally protocol to address the chevy and so activists would say all women don't get a chubby they didn't die from it because there was this

fatally erroneous notion that women weren't getting aids and the women were being shut out of clinical trials as wealth of these clinical trials were very backward and they were not being effective or innovation like act up had to fight to get women and people and of color into these clinical trials because they were the ones who are disproportionately we're affected by the epidemic you in addition to gay men so they're of great chaos just like there is now with overtaxed medical system not enough beds for people with golden nineteen not enough access to basic math for healthcare workers the fact is that for a while act up in other innovations were able to flout the medical fifth them into place and make them respond energetically to be aids pandemic but with the arrival of bush forty

three in the white house and all the work that the republicans have done and the last few years to really undermine the health care system to make it more costly to make it not work as well to allow only insurance companies this ridiculous amount of power to deny people health care access in to deny them benefit for healthcare and the right republicans inflamed an obsessive need to dismantle obamacare brings us to where we are now where our government cannot properly address the tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of pieces of courted and it happened in the last month and a half say mission the government response the coven at the wall rolls of the federal state and local governments play during the aids crisis

i carry i really have the fifth think about that i can only say that certain organizations on a local level would help their respective communities but there wasn't any real choreographed national effort the only thing that i recall is that the surgeon general at the time named fi everett koop did something very heroic and they're very logical but given the pushback in our republican dominated government that was quite heroic he sent out a circular to every house in america saying this is what age idea of that of how you captured it and how to avoid it and that of life saving information and so that was one important effort to just bring people up to speed on what was going

on because you know we didn't have the internet back then we you know we didn't have or lack of that information with the stroke of a few key on your keyboard it was a different world and information traveled much slower and because the chevy with sexually transmitted or in some cases no transmitted through blood product america got very puritanical and he didn't want to talk about it because it was embarrassing it was uncomfortable for people were dying but the media did not want to really address that they might talk about a chevy but they would talk but how you got a head and howl you could avoid it new media we're not going to talk about condom use media were not going to talk about the potential that anal intercourse posed as a high risk behavior for age it there were some real elements of the epidemic that were

being muffled were being fabricated were being heard i need yet and by the government and so it was important that he everett koop plain speaking information out there in every mailbox across america and other than that you know depends on what type of faith you are in or what type of thing you are in what kind of information you got what kind of health care he received and what kind of compassion you would get from doctors you know needless to say in places that were conservative or were dominated by religious people they believe that this was god's retribution that's always the go to when something tragic happens they say oldest god punishing people there are many heroes but there are many more villains showing the aids epidemic who use the epidemic

for their own that's the agenda to demean to divide aid to really ruin people and heard people in your thing that again with coded to a certain extent early in the outbreak the community was ignited interaction and groups came into existence the gay men's health crisis or gm hca and act out how those groups are and what roles did they play i want to be clear that gm at was not an activist group g meaty was a terrorist group and in fact the larry kramer who is one of the co founders and she meets the fight to get them to accelerate their agenda to be more i'm open about talking to the gay community about you charlie and transmission routes and how certain behavior was dangerous and should be stopped and then the other people would she made three were horrified that larry wanted to tell people to stop having fact from the fed

we can't do that that is not our agenda and in fact where it was drummed out of jimmy lee film jimi played with caring for the effect and helping them die but jimmie lee was it not an activist or innovation they were usually they were trying to help improve legislation and access to health care but i would argue that act up founded in march of nineteen eighty seven years after the epidemic really blew up was the church or innovation to proactively fight the government that was broken and not doing enough because the pulse rates this is al kasim public radio's lgbt q youth program produced in new york by media for the public good online an outcast immediate dot org as the coven eighteen pandemic unfolds

around the world some people upset this is what it must have felt like at the onset of aids guest is jay blush or a long time activist who was involved in the struggle against aids in your city says it tells a veteran of all the actions by actor the way that it ended up and act up first demonstration in march of nineteen eighty seven was because i was a volunteer at the time for jim eighties aids walk this was an annual fund raising event and in a year or two before then i had ryan to make pledges that i walk you know raise money and that year at them and i thought you know what i want to do a little bit more and do the phones you know mom i'm going to walk the on the phone bank and foe like two or three times a week i would go over to the offices of aids walk new york which was jim at special events and i would make phone calls and i

didn't know much about the epidemic at the time i knew perhaps just one person who had died and even then the he died in late eighty three and nobody was really sure about it i had marched in an early nineteen eighty three and i think that perhaps the first protest march for aids awareness happened in april of nineteen eighty three but since then i know that there were people who were bodies and gm at and these were people who were running errands for people who are homebound of aids in bringing them food and you know and the body is offering emotional support and i was very clear with myself that i was too cowardly to do that i did not think that i could handle the emotional stress of being there for somebody with dying and film it did it was to

work the phones liam age walk one night in march one of my friends call valentino who haven't had a wonderful activist and ag teacher and downs call came in the fed you know something happened to mark down on wall street i heard that there's an organization that's going to go down there and they're going to protest the fact that pharmaceutical companies are charging so much money for it the key and you know we're just not doing enough of this epidemic will something for thirteen years that really would this group he said well they don't have a name yet i think they would have found it but they're going to do this and we have now expired me until the next morning you know it's seven am i would down on wall street with you about a hundred other people who are protesting our capitalist system and how if you have money you're ok and if you don't have money then you're second class

citizen and if your person with h i v in a good medical setting you really at a lot and so i marched and i protested and that point of the feed for me to join act up and it really changed my life and i became a doctor and we worked to change the system in america to address the fact that people with aids had no right to address a broken medical system to address the we get you to flee overpriced pharmaceutical company policies to address the slow approval process of drugs through the fda i mean there was so much that was wrong they fed before and when the epidemic came along it through a spotlight on all the

things that already had not been working for many years and now leads with over taxing and already crippled fist them and people were dying who didn't have to die and that anger and a member of act up at work because it is broken medical system it became necessary for community members to become more informed in some respects that some doctors had to do it you know the act up in other groups at the time really change the dynamic of the doctor patient relationship up until that time one could argue that doctors within of god whatever the doctor said you would completely agree with and your life within these doctors have been mostly they would help you they would fade you with the advent of a tie the end they're being not enough information out

there the fact is that if you want to learn more about h o b you are going to learn that in college and if you were a doctor who was already out of college he certainly had no place to go to learn that she had to worry yourself there had to be a clearinghouse of information at the members of that dark became an expert to the extent that they were learning more than doctors they were becoming experts at the greatest in the new shop surrounding the epidemic around the virus around certain drugs that have been shown to be promising and clinical trial of and these people they were not medical people buy only my comrades an act of war or they were or they were in the financial world are they were writers

or they were cabaret stars and here they were faced with the prospect of you dying from a disease that the government didn't care enough to throw research money out and they realize that if they didn't learn this information than that nobody was going to and these people became the most amazing experts on the subject to the extent that the pharmaceutical companies and the federal medical organizations finally opened their doors and let these people feel about their boardroom tables because they realize that they eat command of the issue and we're finding making progress in and then finding reluctant really cracking the code to a lot of these problems in fact though the work that aids activism had finally led to the discovery

and i'd feign breaking bad effects of protease inhibitors the so called aids cocktail which really changed the face of the epidemic and saved countless lives people were on their deathbed or administered protease inhibitors friendly anti retro viral and all this came to light again is called the lathrop effect though arm it really is an amazing how people with aids became the experts in the absence of doctors are doing enough sometimes they pursued very unconventional route for this information they were willing to would get stuff that maybe hadn't been tried in large clinical trials yet perhaps the sampling of people would take a certain drug with moll but where we were seeing from

a glimmer of hope frankly when you're facing certain death you try anything info act up also fought to get more compassionate i'll use our or compassionate distribution of certain drugs you and clinical trials the way that they are conducted of that you give out you know half the people drug and then you give half the people a placebo and so then you can see how the revolt are well if you're dealing with people where they drive the wanted more cold and bloodless than giving a placebo to somebody with h i v and then having them die for that you cannot fail well you know my data it died but we now we know you were her rhetoric emergency times and we had to we act up with demanding

that all the rules be re written to accommodate this unparalleled irish endemic so on you know act up worked hard to fight some of the long standing and just wave that the medical establishment card itself and carry the way it i cared for people or didn't care for people or you know how it let people down in its pursuit of fight in its pursuit of money three in its pursuit of the supporting the pharmaceutical world you know not only did we challenge doctors and joe and not fake old doctor you were all powerful under militant you people with aids were learning themselves how to take care of them felt and they go into a darkened fake and you heard of this find out about this drug i wanna try this road and we were also challenging the pharmaceutical companies in the united states as a pharmaceutical

companies have this irrational land issues amount of autonomy they complied and charge it in europe you'll find that the drug companies have to open their books to the government and justify how much they spent on research and development for their drugs and then charge a fee that is commensurate with those research and development but in the united states a pharmaceutical companies have reflected amount of the baton a nice couch our times are not again what at this conversation on the next edition about gas thanks for joining us today talk about our collective

that's it for this edition and outcast this fervor has been produced by the outcast ed team including its participants all the league star one start to the press lil foreign justin brian can be lucas executive producer is mark so this podcast is produced in new york there for the public that more information is available about casting media dot org to find information about the show was a link for all out casting content in the podcast league my guest is also a social media connect with us on twitter facebook and instagram have casting media if you're having trouble whether its at home or school or just with yourself call the trevor project hotline at eight six six for a date seven three eight sixth visit them online at the trevor project dot org the trevor project is an organization dedicated to lgbt q youth suicide prevention call them if you have a problem seriously don't be scared

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