Fauci walking amongst the Faggots

Carol Brown Moskowitz, a research nurse and neurological nurse practitioner, recalls running into a group of leather-clad men, many of them body pierced and draped in chains, in the lobby of Washington’s Omni Hotel, in the fall of 1988. They looked as if they might be members of a motorcycle gang, but the Omni seemed an unlikely place for a biker convention.

When she asked one of them who they were, he told her that they were members of “Act Up,” and that they were going out to make some noise at the FDA about the AIDS epidemic and the lack of funding for research.

Make some noise they did. On Oct. 11, about 1,000 demonstrators descended on the FDA facility in Rockville, Md., for some nine hours and shut it down; there were almost 200 arrests.

Fauci asked the police and the FBI on the NIH campus not to make arrests. He also asked that a handful of the demonstration’s leaders be brought to his office.

“That began a relationship over many years that allowed me to walk amongst them,” Fauci says. “It was really interesting; they let me into their camp. I went to the gay bath houses and spoke to them. I went to San Francisco, to the Castro District, and I discussed the problems they were having, the degree of suffering that was going on in the community, the need for them to get involved in clinical trials, since there were no other possibilities for them to get access to drugs. And I earned their confidence.” asked the police and the FBI on the NIH campus not to make arrests. He also asked that a handful of the demonstration’s leaders be brought to his office.

“That began a relationship over many years that allowed me to walk amongst them,” Fauci says. “It was really interesting; they let me into their camp. I went to the gay bath houses and spoke to them. I went to San Francisco, to the Castro District, and I discussed the problems they were having, the degree of suffering that was going on in the community, the need for them to get involved in clinical trials, since there were no other possibilities for them to get access to drugs. And I earned their confidence.”

https://www.holycross.edu/departments/publicaffairs/hcm/summer02/features/fauci.html>>9107078