| Jan 22 | Treatment Action Group (TAG) splits off from the Treatment + Data (T+D) Committee of ACT UP/New York. Our media debut: Catherine Woodard’s “AIDS Hit Squad Seeks More Than Attention,” Newsday, 1.22.92. |
| Jan 27 | Eight Treatment Action Guerillas chain themselves to trucks at the entrance to Astra Pharmaceuticals (now part of AstraZeneca) in Westborough, Massachusetts, protesting excessive prices for the anti-CMV drug foscarnet.
Tipped off by drug-maker Hoffmann-La Roche, which refused to provide a substantial parallel track program for ddC, FDA investigators seize batches of underground ddC from numerous PWA Buyers’ Clubs nationwide. |
| Feb 4 | TAG Astra zap covered on Sixty Minutes, including interview with TAG co-founder Peter Staley. ACT UP and TAG member Bob Rafsky is also featured. |
| Feb 5 | FDA reports underground ddC contained between 0-200% of the putative dose. |
| Feb 19 | TAG’s Mark Harrington replaces Project Inform’s Martin Delaney on the ACTG’s Primary Infection Committee. |
| Feb 24 | Debate in ACT UP about whether Peter Staley is colluding with drug companies by requesting money from industry for community-based clinical trials. |
| Feb 25 | TAG’s Gregg Gonsalves, Mark Harrington and Derek Link meet with Deputy Director Jack Whitescarver at the NIH Office of AIDS Research (OAR), instigating the landmark TAG research critique. |
| Apr 12-15 | 14th AIDS Clinical Trials Group (ACTG) meeting, Bethesda. New drugs under discussion include FTC, d4T, tat inhibitors, protease inhibitors, hypericin and nevirapine. |
| Apr 16 | Burroughs-Wellcome sponsors “Day of Dialogue,” one of the first drug-company community junkets. |
| Apr 30 | Riots in Los Angeles over Rodney King verdict. |
| May 29 | Community meeting with Syntex pharmaceuticals (now part of Roche) about oral ganciclovir for CMV retinitis. |
| Jun 19 | FDA approves ddC (Hivid) using its new accelerated approval regulations. |
| Jul 14 | At Madison Square Garden, the Democratic National Convention prepares to nominate Bill Clinton for president. |
| Jul 20 | 8th International AIDS Conference in Amsterdam. (Originally scheduled to take place in Boston, the meeting was moved to the Netherlands after the first Bush administration banned HIV-infected foreigners from entering the USA.) TAG’s Mark Harrington debates NIAID’s Anthony Fauci on The MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour. |
| Jul 22 | Mark Harrington gives plenary lecture on “Pathogenesis & Activism” in Amsterdam. Later he and Gregg Gonsalves present AIDS Research at the NIH: A Critical Review at a press conference. Media coverage: a front page story in The New York Times as well as “Activists home in on basic research” in The New Scientist, 7.18.92. |
| Sep 10 | TAG meets with NIH Director Bernadine Healy and institute directors to discuss OAR recommendations. Later we meet privately with Healy, Broder and Fauci to discuss a Manhattan Project for AIDS. |
| Sep 30 | TAG letter to ACTG principal investigator Ann Collier protests the failure of Roche to define a maximum tolerated dose for the first HIV protease inhibitor, Ro 31-8959, later known as saquinavir (Invirase). |
| Oct 5 | FDA approves a parallel track program for Bristol-Myers’s d4T, later known as Zerit. |
| Oct 19 | TAG meets with Fauci and Whitescarver to discuss OAR recommendations. |
| Nov 2 | Political funeral for ACT UP’s Mark Lowe Fisher. Activist funeral march to Bush NYC headquarters on 43rd Street. |
| Nov 3 | Bill Clinton defeats George H.W. Bush in national elections and becomes president-elect of the United States. |
| Nov 4 | Post-election meeting between TAG and Fauci about the OAR. |
| Nov 5 | First meeting of FDA/NIH Panel on $20 million Congressional rgp160 earmark. |
| Nov 20 | TAG meets with Tim Westmoreland from the office of Congressman Henry Waxman to discuss turning TAG’s NIH recommendations into law. |
| Dec 7 | TAG meets with Michael Iskowitz in Senator Ted Kennedy’s office to discuss implementing TAG’s OAR recommendations in the forthcoming Senate bill 1, “the NIH Revitalization Act of 1993.” |
| Dec 15 | TAG meets with Sam Broder at NCI and Fauci and Jim Hill of NIAID about the impending OAR legislation. |
| Dec 22 | FDA approves Unimed’s dronabinol (Marinol) for the treatment of weight loss in people with AIDS. |
| Dec 23 | FDA approves Adria’s rifabutin (Mycobutin) for prevention of disseminated mycobaterium avium complex (MAC). |