Thread by @ooana

I grew up on Fire Island. My family ran a local newspaper, begun by my father when he was 16 years old in 1956 until we sold it in 1996. Fire Island includes two primarily gay communities.

I would often go with my mother, who was executive editor from 1976-1996, when she would be covering a story or attending an event. I remember the AIDS crises through the eyes of a child.

I remember seeing men I looked up to adored carrying their lovers, to weak to walk, in their arms and the look of desperation and terror and love in their eyes.

I remember the formation of the GMHC and then Act Up. I remember meeting the founders and I remember asking my mom if “uncle <name after name>“ had lived to see any other summer. I remember dancing at the first Morning (Mourning) Party.

I began volunteer work very young, maybe too young. I brought kids from my suburban private school to NYC for the AIDS Dance-a-Thons and Walk-A-Thons. I stood up during our school wide meetings and talked about HIV/AIDS.

I talked about safe sex while I was a virgin, about what I’d heard and the pain of what I saw. I talked about hope. I lied about my age so I could hold someone’s hand who had no one else.

I went with people for tests, and then later to check TCell counts. I cried with friends. I cried with parents/girlfriends/wives/exes. I also sat silently with even more people.

I collected supplies for memorials, challenged bigotry and lies. I tried to contact family members, sat quietly during heartbreak and I told “noble lies.”

I created my school’s gay/straight alliance and to this day I’ve no idea if any other schools had such a thing. I made it because I felt it had to be made. To me, a child, this wasn’t just about human rights. This was also about fear; choosing to stop counting after 20 funerals.

Why do I bring this up now? Well, because I’ve known the name Fauci since I was about ten years old. I remember a lot. My memories aren’t political. My memories are of men afraid, mourning, dying, angry, heartbroken and confused. Sometimes betrayed.

My memories are of heroes from the ward 5B in SF and then again, without reason or rationale, people dying alone because Dr. Fauci wrote an unscientific editorial that set back their work and squandered their bravery and their hearts.

My memories are of confusion why treatments that were proven to work had to be discussed in whispers. My memories are of the brief Hope then horrors of AZT.

I remember a particular article, in SPIN magazine. I remember the author’s name, Celia. I recently reached out to her and began to get to know her and part of me was as nervous as a child speaking to someone who has only been an image; a heroine.

Someone I wanted to be for those men I adored.

I just went to look for this article again a few months ago. A year ago I shared it when the pandemic began. I shared it as a piece of evidence or explanation for why Dr. Fauci didn’t fill me confidence.

I shared it before Larry Kramer died with FB friends. I said in “if Larry could forgive him, I could.”

Larry is dead now. We don’t know what he would say about this past year.

But I have my suspicions. He said he was writing a play about Covid. If Normal Heart gives us a hint to what he might have said...I have my suspicions.

There are very few people speaking about those years. And now, articles like this one are only available on the way back machine. This doesn’t make me feel confident.

I’ve been afraid to say much about my fears that come from those years as a child during the AIDS crises. I’ve always felt deference to those who were the leaders, the advocates and of course to those both mourning and the mourned.

But I think my deference has become cowardice. I don’t know why more voices from those years aren’t speaking out. It may just be that most of them are dead. I hate that.

I don’t want to think that it may be the case. But if I can’t show a hint of the passion I showed as a child now, I would be dishonoring so many people.

People who were truly far better than I ever could imagine to be.

I’d also be doing Celia a disservice. And I’d be letting down people who may simply be exhausted.

So with that, here is a 2015 intro written for that 1989 article. Here is a link to the article that cannot be read outside the archive anymore. I don’t know why. But I have my suspicions.

There is good reason to question those who are making COVID policy and defining what is and what is not “science” or “common sense.”

We remember what “noble lies” were then. And we remember what they did. I remember.

I’ve not been mute, but I’ve been silent.

To Celia, Larry, Pepper, Marty, Bob, Charle and my mom and dad (and so many more) I know I don’t need to say I’m sorry. But I am. I’m afraid even now to say we may have not learned from those years as much as we thought, but I do remember how true it is that silence=death.

So, I’ll start here.

“At the end of 1989, two years after we had started the highly controversial AIDS column in SPIN, we published an article by Celia Farber called “Sins of Omission” about the truly bad and corrupt science surrounding promoting AZT as a treatment for the syndrome of diseases.

Celia was the editor and frequent writer of the column and unearthed hard evidence of the cold-bloodedness of the AIDS establishment pushing a drug that was worse than the disease, and killed faster than the natural progression of AIDS left untreated.

AZT had been an abandoned cancer drug, discarded because of it’s fatal toxicity, resurrected in the cynical belief that AIDS patients were going to die anyway, so trying it out was sort of like playing with the house’s money.

Because the drug didn’t require the usual massively expensive research and trial processes, having gone through that years earlier, it was insanely profitable for its maker, Burroughs Wellcome.

It was a tragically perfect storm of windfall profits, something to pacify AIDS activists and the media, and a convenient boom to the patent holders for HIV testing.

Celia — who should get the Congressional Medal of Honor for her brave and relentless reporting, here and throughout the ten years we ran the column — exposed the worthlessness of the drug,

the shady studies and deals to suppress the negative findings, and its awful and final consequences.

This piece very literally changed the media’s view of AIDS and sharpened their discerning and skeptical eye. And soon after, AZT was once again shelved, hopefully this time forever.

Many times over the years since, people have come up to me and said that reading this article saved their lives, that they either stopped taking the drug and their health improved vastly, or they never took it because of what we reported. Nothing ever made me prouder.

— Bob Guccione Jr., founder of SPIN, October 3, 2015”

web.archive.org/web/2021012703…

1986-1996 (typo correction for the years my mother was editor.)

For anyone having trouble navigating the WBM here are captures of the article.