Download or read book How AIDS Activists Challenged America and Saved the FDA from Itself written by James P. Driscoll and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this extraordinary history, James Driscoll reveals the untold story of how AIDS activists, by thwarting bureaucratic plans imposed by the U.S. Federal Drug Administration (FDA), both saved HIV patients and rescued the FDA itself from a self-inflicted public health catastrophe. By 1996, accelerated approval of AIDS drug cocktails transformed AIDS from a death sentence to a manageable disease. That approval, however, came only after years of struggle pitting AIDS activists against the hidebound culture of the Food and Drug Administration, which wanted to run lengthy efficacy trials required for full approval and possibly delay the drugs at a cost of tens of thousands of lives. Driscoll's courageous efforts, which are an important personal part of the story, navigated conflicts among AIDS activist groups as they struggled with both major American political parties to be heard and respected. He examines the effect of AIDS activism on the LGBT community, its views of itself, and its place in modern American society. Additional materials analyze FDA mistakes, drug pricing, and other contemporary challenges for the LGBTs community.

Download or read book How AIDS Activists Challenged America and Saved the FDA from Itself written by James Driscoll and published by . This book was released on 2020-04 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this extraordinary history, James Driscoll reveals the untold story of how AIDS activists, by thwarting bureaucratic plans imposed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), both saved HIV patients and rescued the FDA itself from a self-inflicted public health catastrophe. By 1996, accelerated approval of AIDS drug cocktails transformed AIDS from a death sentence to a manageable disease. That approval, however, came only after years of struggle pitting AIDS activists against the hidebound culture of the Food and Drug Administration, which wanted to run lengthy efficacy trials required for full approval and possibly delay the drugs at a cost of tens of thousands of lives. Driscoll's courageous efforts, which are an important personal part of the story, navigated conflicts among AIDS activist groups as they struggled with both major American political parties to be heard and respected. He examines the effect of AIDS activism on the LGBT community, its views of itself, and its place in modern American society. Additional materials analyze FDA mistakes, drug pricing, and other contemporary challenges for the LGBTs community.

Download or read book HIV and the Blood Supply written by Institute of Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 1995-10-05 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the early years of the AIDS epidemic, thousands of Americans became infected with HIV through the nation's blood supply. Because little reliable information existed at the time AIDS first began showing up in hemophiliacs and in others who had received transfusions, experts disagreed about whether blood and blood products could transmit the disease. During this period of great uncertainty, decision-making regarding the blood supply became increasingly difficult and fraught with risk. This volume provides a balanced inquiry into the blood safety controversy, which involves private sexual practices, personal tragedy for the victims of HIV/AIDS, and public confidence in America's blood services system. The book focuses on critical decisions as information about the danger to the blood supply emerged. The committee draws conclusions about what was doneâ€"and recommends what should be done to produce better outcomes in the face of future threats to blood safety. The committee frames its analysis around four critical area: Product treatmentâ€"Could effective methods for inactivating HIV in blood have been introduced sooner? Donor screening and referralâ€"including a review of screening to exlude high-risk individuals. Regulations and recall of contaminated bloodâ€"analyzing decisions by federal agencies and the private sector. Risk communicationâ€"examining whether infections could have been averted by better communication of the risks.

Download or read book Public Health and Human Rights written by Chris Beyrer and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2007-09-28 with total page 520 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides critical evidenced based assessements and tools with which to investigate the role of rights abrogation in the health of populations.

Download or read book Against the Odds written by Peter S. Arno and published by HarperCollins Publishers. This book was released on 1993 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Against the Odds is the most important book yet written about the quest for a cure and treatments for AIDS. Authors Arno and Feiden cut through the complex issues to tell the tragic, inspiring story behind the scenes of the AIDS crisis - how a diverse group of extraordinary people banded together to fight bureaucracy and greed to save lives. AIDS has been called the greatest public health menace of our time, and yet political and bottom-line agendas, couples with fear, racism, and homophobia, have made the battle against it a painful uphill struggle. Against the Odds is the tale of government officials, agencies, and pharmaceutical companies that have delayed the development of life-saving and life-prolonging drugs, and of others who have bent and changed the rules. Most of all, it is the story of the activist and patient communities that have now altered the course of government policy toward AIDS and other diseases with their creative, and often heroic, tactics"--Unedited summary from book.

Download or read book Infectious AIDS written by Peter Duesberg and published by North Atlantic Books. This book was released on 1995 with total page 602 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of 13 articles originally published in scientific journals between 1987 and 1995, that call into question the dogma of Infectious AIDS.

Download or read book And The Band Played on written by Randy Shilts and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2000-04-09 with total page 666 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An investigative account of the medical, sexual, and scientific questions surrounding the spread of AIDS across the country.

Download or read book The Life and Death of ACT UP LA written by Benita Roth and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-05-11 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Life and Death of ACT UP/LA explores the history of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, Los Angeles, part of the militant anti-AIDS movement of the 1980s and 1990s. ACT UP/LA battled government, medical, and institutional neglect of the AIDS epidemic, engaging in multi-targeted protest in Los Angeles and nationally. The book shows how appealing the direct action anti-AIDS activism was for people across the United States; as well as arguing the need to understand how the politics of place affect organizing, and how the particular features of the Los Angeles cityscape shaped possibilities for activists. A feminist lens is used, seeing social inequalities as mutually reinforcing and interdependent, to examine the interaction of activists and the outcomes of their actions. Their struggle against AIDS and homophobia, and to have a voice in their healthcare, presaged the progressive, multi-issue, anti-corporate, confrontational organizing of the late twentieth century, and deserves to be part of that history.

Download or read book AIDS Pandemic The Untold Story written by Dorothy Keville and published by . This book was released on 2021-10-05 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Dorothy writes her book at a critical time. COVID-19 and AIDS are different viruses - but pandemics lay bare the inequities and problems in our social order and the programs we create to solve problems." -Tom Sheridan, Author of Helping the Good Do Better In the mid-1990's, HIV/AIDS was a new and unknown disease requiring a revolution in attitude, approach, and funding. Dorothy Keville helped facilitate the first Federally funded program for HIV/AIDS drugs by bringing together an unlikely alliance of angry activists, conservative politicians and unwilling drug manufacturers. Their work evolved into the AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP) Working Group, an initiative which provided medicine and care for HIV positive people in all U.S. States and Territories. In Part One, we meet many of the former ADAP managers and directors who share their own experiences and efforts of working tirelessly to get the pandemic under control when there was no manual and no procedures to follow. HIV/AIDS was different from any other national health crisis to that point and these are the stories of some of the unsung heroes. In Part Two, Dorothy shares the pieces of her own experience, from early volunteer work through to positions with federal agencies and multinational corporations, and even acting. Her memories reveal a life of compassion, dedicated to those with HIV, to the homeless, and to many others. As an added bonus, the book features a practical guide on the Nuts & Bolts of Government for those interested in getting involved in the political process at the local, state, and national levels. Note: A portion from the sale of this book will be donated to Africa Bridge, the non-profit Dorothy founded dedicated to the care of children whose parents have died of HIV/AIDS.

Download or read book Pain Management and the Opioid Epidemic written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2017-09-28 with total page 483 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drug overdose, driven largely by overdose related to the use of opioids, is now the leading cause of unintentional injury death in the United States. The ongoing opioid crisis lies at the intersection of two public health challenges: reducing the burden of suffering from pain and containing the rising toll of the harms that can arise from the use of opioid medications. Chronic pain and opioid use disorder both represent complex human conditions affecting millions of Americans and causing untold disability and loss of function. In the context of the growing opioid problem, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) launched an Opioids Action Plan in early 2016. As part of this plan, the FDA asked the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to convene a committee to update the state of the science on pain research, care, and education and to identify actions the FDA and others can take to respond to the opioid epidemic, with a particular focus on informing FDA's development of a formal method for incorporating individual and societal considerations into its risk-benefit framework for opioid approval and monitoring.

Download or read book The Plague Year written by Lawrence Wright and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2021-06-08 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Looming Tower, and the pandemic novel The End of October: an unprecedented, momentous account of Covid-19—its origins, its wide-ranging repercussions, and the ongoing global fight to contain it "A book of panoramic breadth ... managing to surprise us about even those episodes we … thought we knew well … [With] lively exchanges about spike proteins and nonpharmaceutical interventions and disease waves, Wright’s storytelling dexterity makes all this come alive.” —The New York Times Book Review From the fateful first moments of the outbreak in China to the storming of the U.S. Capitol to the extraordinary vaccine rollout, Lawrence Wright’s The Plague Year tells the story of Covid-19 in authoritative, galvanizing detail and with the full drama of events on both a global and intimate scale, illuminating the medical, economic, political, and social ramifications of the pandemic. Wright takes us inside the CDC, where a first round of faulty test kits lost America precious time . . . inside the halls of the White House, where Deputy National Security Adviser Matthew Pottinger’s early alarm about the virus was met with confounding and drastically costly skepticism . . . into a Covid ward in a Charlottesville hospital, with an idealistic young woman doctor from the town of Little Africa, South Carolina . . . into the precincts of prediction specialists at Goldman Sachs . . . into Broadway’s darkened theaters and Austin’s struggling music venues . . . inside the human body, diving deep into the science of how the virus and vaccines function—with an eye-opening detour into the history of vaccination and of the modern anti-vaccination movement. And in this full accounting, Wright makes clear that the medical professionals around the country who’ve risked their lives to fight the virus reveal and embody an America in all its vulnerability, courage, and potential. In turns steely-eyed, sympathetic, infuriated, unexpectedly comical, and always precise, Lawrence Wright is a formidable guide, slicing through the dense fog of misinformation to give us a 360-degree portrait of the catastrophe we thought we knew.

Download or read book Bad Bug Book written by Mark Walderhaug and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2014-01-14 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Bad Bug Book 2nd Edition, released in 2012, provides current information about the major known agents that cause foodborne illness.Each chapter in this book is about a pathogen—a bacterium, virus, or parasite—or a natural toxin that can contaminate food and cause illness. The book contains scientific and technical information about the major pathogens that cause these kinds of illnesses.A separate “consumer box” in each chapter provides non-technical information, in everyday language. The boxes describe plainly what can make you sick and, more important, how to prevent it.The information provided in this handbook is abbreviated and general in nature, and is intended for practical use. It is not intended to be a comprehensive scientific or clinical reference.The Bad Bug Book is published by the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN) of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Download or read book Patient Zero and the Making of the AIDS Epidemic written by Richard A. McKay and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2017-11-22 with total page 447 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now an award-winning documentary feature film The search for a “patient zero”—popularly understood to be the first person infected in an epidemic—has been key to media coverage of major infectious disease outbreaks for more than three decades. Yet the term itself did not exist before the emergence of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. How did this idea so swiftly come to exert such a strong grip on the scientific, media, and popular consciousness? In Patient Zero, Richard A. McKay interprets a wealth of archival sources and interviews to demonstrate how this seemingly new concept drew upon centuries-old ideas—and fears—about contagion and social disorder. McKay presents a carefully documented and sensitively written account of the life of Gaétan Dugas, a gay man whose skin cancer diagnosis in 1980 took on very different meanings as the HIV/AIDS epidemic developed—and who received widespread posthumous infamy when he was incorrectly identified as patient zero of the North American outbreak. McKay shows how investigators from the US Centers for Disease Control inadvertently created the term amid their early research into the emerging health crisis; how an ambitious journalist dramatically amplified the idea in his determination to reframe national debates about AIDS; and how many individuals grappled with the notion of patient zero—adopting, challenging and redirecting its powerful meanings—as they tried to make sense of and respond to the first fifteen years of an unfolding epidemic. With important insights for our interconnected age, Patient Zero untangles the complex process by which individuals and groups create meaning and allocate blame when faced with new disease threats. What McKay gives us here is myth-smashing revisionist history at its best.

Download or read book The Activist s Handbook written by Randy Shaw and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2013-08-26 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Activist's Handbook: Winning Social Change in the 21st Century details the impact of specific strategies on campaigns across the country, from Occupy Wall Street to battles over sweatshops, the environment, AIDS policies, education reform, homelessness, and more: How should activists use new media tools to expose issues and mobilize grassroots support? When should activists form coalitions, and with whom? How are students?be they DREAMers seeking immigration reform or college activists battling ever-increasing tuition costs?winning major campaigns? Whether it?s by inspiring "fear and loathing" in politicians, building diverse coalitions, using ballot initiatives, or harnessing the media, the courts, and the electoral process towards social change, Shaw?a longtime activist for urban issues?shows that with a plan, positive change can be achieved. Century details the impact of specific strategies on campaigns across the country, from Occupy Wall Street to battles over sweatshops, the environment, AIDS policies, education reform, homelessness, and more: How should activists use new media tools to expose issues and mobilize grassroots support? When should activists form coalitions, and with whom? How are students?be they DREAMers seeking immigration reform or college activists battling ever-increasing tuition costs?winning major campaigns? Whether it?s by inspiring "fear and loathing" in politicians, building diverse coalitions, using ballot initiatives, or harnessing the media, the courts, and the electoral process towards social change, Shaw?a longtime activist for urban issues?shows that with a plan, positive change can be achieved.

Download or read book Body Counts written by Sean Strub and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-01-14 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sean Strub arrived in Washington, D.C. in 1976 harbouring a terrifying secret: his attraction to men. As Strub explored the capital's political and social circles, he discovered a parallel world where powerful men lived double lives shrouded in shame. When the AIDS epidemic hit in the early '80s, Strub turned to activism to combat discrimination and demand research. Strub takes readers through his own diagnosis and inside ACT UP, the activist organisation that transformed a stigmatised cause into one of the defining political movements of our time.

Download or read book Vaccinated written by Paul A. Offit, M.D. and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2022-02-01 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vaccines save millions of lives every year, and one man, Maurice Hilleman, was responsible for nine of the big fourteen. Paul Offit recounts his story and the story of vaccines Maurice Hilleman discovered nine vaccines that practically every child gets, rendering formerly dread diseases—including often devastating ones such as mumps and rubella—practically forgotten. Paul A. Offit, a vaccine researcher himself, befriended Hilleman and, during the great man’s last months, interviewed him extensively about his life and career. Offit makes an eloquent and compelling case for Hilleman’s importance, arguing that, like Jonas Salk, his name should be known to everyone. But Vaccinated is also enriched and enlivened by a look at vaccines in the context of modern medical science and history, ranging across the globe and throughout time to take in a fascinating cast of hundreds, providing a vital contribution to the continuing debate over the value of vaccines.

Download or read book Never Silent written by Peter Staley and published by Chicago Review Press. This book was released on 2021-10-12 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Never Silent is a gorgeous book . . . Peter Staley has written an electrifying primer for anyone who's thinking/worrying/wondering about how to change/save the world." —Tony Kushner, Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright of Angels in America 2022 Lambda Literary Award Finalist The previously untold stories of the life of the leading subject in David France's How To Survive A Plague, Peter Staley, including his continuing activism In 1987, somebody shoved a flyer into the hand of Peter Staley: massive AIDS demonstration, it announced. After four years on Wall Street as a closeted gay man, Staley was familiar with the homophobia common on trading floors. He also knew that he was not beyond the reach of HIV, having recently been diagnosed with AIDS-Related Complex. A week after the protest, Staley found his way to a packed meeting of the AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power—ACT UP—in the West Village. It would prove to be the best decision he ever made. ACT UP would change the course of AIDS, pressuring the National Institutes of Health, the FDA, and three administrations to finally respond with research that ultimately saved millions of lives. Staley, a shrewd strategist with nerves of steel, organized some of the group's most spectacular actions, from shutting down trading on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange to putting a giant condom over the house of Senator Jesse Helms. Never Silent is the inside story of what brought Staley to ACT UP and the explosive and sometimes painful years to follow—years filled with triumph, humiliation, joy, loss, and persistence. Never Silent is guaranteed to inspire the activist within all of us.