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Grossman, Continued
In truth, the FDA had not been completely inert in response to the horri c rise of the epidemic. In 1986, the agency had made azidothymidine (AZT)—an investigational antiretroviral drug that targeted the human immunode ciency virus (HIV)—available to patients outside of formal clinical trials on a “compassionate use” basis. The following year, it had approved AZT’s New Drug Application (NDA) with extraordinary speed. In addition, the FDA had issued a “treatment IND” rule in 1987, formalizing its longstanding ad hoc practice of allowing therapeutic use of investigational new drugs in desperate situations.
AIDS activists were nonetheless enraged in the fall of 1988. AZT remained the only FDA-approved therapy for HIV/AIDS. At best, this drug delayed the disease’s inevitably fatal outcome, and many people with AIDS (PWAs) could not tolerate its severe side e ects. In October 1987, an FDA advisory commi ee had recommended against the approval of ganciclovir, a promising drug for a blindness-inducing eye infection common among PWAs. Meanwhile, the treatment IND process was not signi cantly increasing access to AIDS drugs still under investigation. At the time of the Parklawn protest, the FDA had made only one AIDS-related experimental therapy available pursuant to the new procedure—trimetrexate, a medicine for an o en fatal form of pneumonia acquired by many PWAs.
American scientists were studying scores of other compounds, and many in the HIV-positive population were eager to try each one as soon as it showed the slightest evidence of e cacy, rather than wait the seven to ten years the FDA ordinarily took to approve a drug. Accompanied by whistles and noisemakers, the crowd around the Parklawn Building chanted its demands for pharmaceutical access. “AZT is not enough, give us all the other stu !” “Release the drugs now!”
Most provocatively, the demonstrators, referring to the FDA Commissioner, yelled “Frank Young, you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide!” Their placards and banners were no gentler. “AIDS Doesn’t Discriminate—Our Government Does.” “Federal Death Administration.” Many signs displayed a pink triangle, evoking the patch sewn onto the uniforms of gay inmates in Nazi concentration camps.
The action’s theatrical elements captured the a ention of cameramen from the television networks and major newspapers. Protestors lay down on the street holding cardboard tombstones bearing epitaphs such as “RIP, Killed by FDA” and “I Died for the Sins of FDA.” Others paraded around in “blood”-stained white doctors’ coats. ACT UP’s Peter Staley, a J. P. Morgan bond trader turned full- time activist, hoisted himself onto the portico over the building’s main entrance, wearing a bandana that made him look, in the eyes of a fellow protestor, like the Karate Kid. Once there, he a ached a giant “Silence=Death” sign on the façade and set o smoke bombs, to the cheers of the throng.
The event was peaceful overall. A glass door and a couple of windows were sha ered. Six activists snuck inside the building and brie y occupied some non-FDA o ces. One protester was arrested a er knocking a police o cer o his motorcycle. Other demonstrators, some in T-shirts declaring “Gay and Positive,” occupied the driveway in front of the building and refused to move. Eventually, police—some wearing latex gloves—escorted or dragged 175 handcu ed activists to buses, which carted them o to be booked for loitering. Despite the gravity of the cause, the event was characterized by inspired camp and an almost festive camaraderie. As the buses rolled away to transport the arrestees to the police station, the passengers crooned the theme song from television’s Carol Burne Show: “I’m so glad we had this time together.” One activist recalled, “It was really fun. I mean, it was really fun.”
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