Summary

Chapter 4 opens with Peter Staley, whose health had declined to the point where he left his job and filed for disability payments. He had begun working at a different firm with an even more homophobic culture than the previous one, adding to his stress. This allowed him to contribute more time and energy to ACT UP. Partially due to Staley’s fundraising abilities, ACT UP was growing more powerful, planning multiple large protests to pressure the President’s AIDS commission. The commission eventually released a report with hundreds of well-considered policy recommendations, but it was ignored by Reagan’s administration. ACT UP’s most significant action to date, coordinated by activist Mark Harrington, was a massive protest outside FDA headquarters in an attempt to pressure the agency to accelerate the approval of AIDS drugs. The protest generated substantial media attention, including a...