Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media, Hello and welcome to Cool People Do
Speaker 1: Cool Stuff. You're weekly twice weekly reminder that when there's
Speaker 1: bad things, there's good things. I'm your host, Margot Kiljoy
Speaker 1: and my guest who I was I should have I'm
Speaker 1: now hamming it up because they took a moment to
Speaker 1: take a drink is Andrew t.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Hi, thanks for having me again, my plan continuing.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I got to kind of brag to
Speaker 1: my friends the first time you came on my show.
Speaker 1: But people heard me say this the first time you
Speaker 1: came on. But we used to read you know, is
Speaker 1: this racist? Was it Tumblr or something?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's so.
Speaker 1: That is coming on twenty years ago, as.
Speaker 2: I know what's not that?
Speaker 1: Yeah totally, But yeah, we used to We used to
Speaker 1: sit around and you know, yell, oh shit at all
Speaker 1: the cool stories that you would share on that.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I mean, you know what, it was a
Speaker 2: fun time. I actually someone had just reached out on
Speaker 2: Blue Sky and was like, I don't know if you
Speaker 2: remember you wrote this one line that I quote all
Speaker 2: the time, and I did not remember the line, but
Speaker 2: it was very nice.
Speaker 1: Do you remember the line now?
Speaker 2: Well? Yeah, yeah, the line truly is. It's not remarkable.
Speaker 2: It's just like, first of all, go fuck yourself, and
Speaker 2: second of all, YadA YadA. But I guess the phrasing.
Speaker 2: The phrasing landed, but I was like, I don't know,
Speaker 2: I just talked like that all the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I like it. It's a little bit of
Speaker 1: confusing because you know, when you when you produce content
Speaker 1: as your job, you don't remember everything that you say.
Speaker 2: Oh my god.
Speaker 1: But so that it's like interesting when people are like, oh,
Speaker 1: you said this thing, and I'm like, I believe you.
Speaker 1: That sounds like something I would say, you know.
Speaker 2: It typically at least sounds like me. So I'm like,
Speaker 2: I don't think anyone's being disingenuous, but I'm like, I
Speaker 2: don't know, or for Yosa's racist. Sometimes people would be like, oh,
Speaker 2: when you you answered this question on the pod, and I.
Speaker 1: Was like, yeah, I believe you.
Speaker 2: Yeah I hope.
Speaker 1: So yeah. Well, we are in part two of an
Speaker 1: episode about lesbian stepping the fuck up during the AIDS crisis,
Speaker 1: and when we last left part one, people were the
Speaker 1: blood Sisters were leaving Warhammer forty K to take care
Speaker 1: of people, and I don't know, I kind of like
Speaker 1: these episodes that are like collections of individual stories, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: sort of vignette episodes, because it's really interesting to me
Speaker 1: doing research on the AIDS epidemic is like one of
Speaker 1: the more researched historical events right in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1: But it's interesting because a lot of it is I
Speaker 1: don't know if you, I don't know the right word here.
Speaker 1: It's not like full history, but a lot of it
Speaker 1: is like oral history projects. There's a lot of like sure,
Speaker 1: I was reading a lot more archives and a lot
Speaker 1: more you know, reports about individual people as compared to
Speaker 1: I didn't pick up a book called like Lesbian Step
Speaker 1: the fuck Up during the AIDS crisis, the book right now.
Speaker 2: And well also I do I do think to your
Speaker 2: point also about the like the individual stories nature of
Speaker 2: this is I prefer that sort of look at history
Speaker 2: also because I increasingly, especially like really do not subscribe
Speaker 2: to the sort of like great person of history model.
Speaker 2: And it is just like it doesn't really matter whether
Speaker 2: it was like a collective action or a series of
Speaker 2: collective actions or independent actions not even collective. Maybe that
Speaker 2: made X or y thing happen. Yeah, yeah, I just
Speaker 2: like as opposed to like, uh, you know, the Great Man.
Speaker 2: I guess it's always great.
Speaker 1: Almost always is.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was like I was very well, wok are you
Speaker 1: to say the great personal history?
Speaker 2: But it's like that's not how history works, right, that's
Speaker 2: not the problem.
Speaker 1: And like one of the problems with the Great Man
Speaker 1: theory of history is it gets people off the hook
Speaker 1: too easily because like, yeah, we are living in history,
Speaker 1: we are making history, and so we tend to think
Speaker 1: like either we are the most amazing important person, like
Speaker 1: we're either Fred Hampton or nobody. Yeah, you know, and
Speaker 1: that's just not true, right, Like, and Fred Hampton was
Speaker 1: an amazing person. He was so amazing that the government
Speaker 1: had to kill him. But like it's all of the
Speaker 1: things that come together, and it's all of the people.
Speaker 1: It's all of the individual people doing all of this stuff,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: And on the on the evil men of history side,
Speaker 2: like as we were talked about last episode, like yes,
Speaker 2: Ronald regularly indisputably like evil, but truly like his power,
Speaker 2: you know, and as we see with like the Donald Trump,
Speaker 2: it's like the power doesn't come from Donald Trump makes
Speaker 2: it more stark because it's like obvious that he doesn't have.
Speaker 2: He has like a type of charisma, but he does
Speaker 2: not have savvy or intelligence or whatever. But what he
Speaker 2: does have is this apparatus of like fascists that are
Speaker 2: moving this thing forward. And those are all the nameless
Speaker 2: people of history or you know, relatively nameless compared to
Speaker 2: Donald Trump, but they're the ones doing it. And you know,
Speaker 2: this era of Reagan or soon to be, you know,
Speaker 2: going into this era of Reagan is like you know,
Speaker 2: when he was in severe mental decline and the agenda
Speaker 2: didn't pause for a second. So he's not drive. He
Speaker 2: didn't create or drive or like give the you know,
Speaker 2: he was sort of just like a figurehead, especially near the.
Speaker 1: End, especially even in the like figurehead is like literally
Speaker 1: the thing on the front of the ship, you know,
Speaker 1: like the icon of this thing, like oh, we're all
Speaker 1: doing it for Mermaid lady or yeah you know, yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: that is a good point. Well, the next vignette I'm
Speaker 1: going to do is going to be the first person
Speaker 1: I featured on the podcast whose Instagram page I found, which.
Speaker 2: Makes me nervous.
Speaker 1: Specific when I first started this show, I actually wasn't
Speaker 1: going to do anything from about nineteen fifty onwards because
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, I'm going to stick to history,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to stick to like a little bit
Speaker 1: more settled history. And also like specifically, I was like,
Speaker 1: I don't want to talk about someone who's alive and
Speaker 1: get it wrong. And it was kind of a cop
Speaker 1: out because then eventually I realized I was like, well,
Speaker 1: a lot of important stuff and interesting stuff happened, Like
Speaker 1: I'm still probably not going to do like current events
Speaker 1: on this show, you know, but like but also, I mean,
Speaker 1: one of my whole favorite things about the show is
Speaker 1: like pointing fairly clearly to historical patterns and be like see, yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it doesn't matter whether it's a current event.
Speaker 2: It's like, you know, we're pretty evidently at least in
Speaker 2: our natural lifetime's not going to be pushing equality for word.
Speaker 1: The whole apparatus could collapse and then we can Yeah.
Speaker 2: I suppose, sure, but we're.
Speaker 1: On the defensive right now. I will yit.
Speaker 2: We're on the defensive, right yeah, yeah, yeah, we will
Speaker 2: be lucky to claw back gains that existed in our lives.
Speaker 2: I would I would say.
Speaker 1: You're probably right. But the person whose Instagram page I
Speaker 1: found is Bishop Evette Flunder who is a who is
Speaker 1: whose bishop? Underscore flunder for anyone who's.
Speaker 2: And a delightful vabe, delightful, vab delightful handle.
Speaker 1: I know, and this woman ruled. She probably still rules.
Speaker 1: She's a queer Black gospel singer who did an astounding
Speaker 1: amount for people with AIDS, in particular in making sure
Speaker 1: that black communities and communities of faith weren't left out
Speaker 1: of the conversation. She was watching so many people die
Speaker 1: in the bay and was like, all right, we're gonna
Speaker 1: do something. And one of the things her and her
Speaker 1: broader community did was start an underground clinic, working with
Speaker 1: something called Compound Q. This is literally an underground clinic.
Speaker 1: It was in the basement of her church. Unless there
Speaker 1: are multiple such clinics in San Francisco at the time,
Speaker 1: I believe this was called Project Inform. I there's a
Speaker 1: bunch of articles about them, and they're all not quite
Speaker 1: lining up. Is where I'm at about this particular moment
Speaker 1: of history. But I think something too important because I'm
Speaker 1: now going to talk about illegal studies of untested drugs, right,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to talk about it as a positive thing.
Speaker 1: And I think the thing that is important to understand
Speaker 1: about the AIDS crisis is that people were being failed
Speaker 1: and masked by the government and the CDC. So AIDS
Speaker 1: activists themselves had to become the experts on their own illness.
Speaker 1: And we covered this a bunch of the act Up
Speaker 1: episodes that one of the things that act Up the
Speaker 1: kind of primary direct action group working on the AIDS
Speaker 1: crisis in the United States. One of the primary things
Speaker 1: they did was get people with AIDS into conversation with
Speaker 1: the CDC and like make sure their voices were actually
Speaker 1: heard and become actual experts on the science, not just
Speaker 1: like I'm an expert on my own experience, but like
Speaker 1: literally an expert on the surrounding stuff too, you know, Yeah.
Speaker 2: I wonder. I mean again, it's like like drag parallels
Speaker 2: today it is so like totally you don't want to
Speaker 2: like fall into this like do your own research people trap.
Speaker 1: Right, But it's so messy, right, Yeah, because when you say, oh,
Speaker 1: do your own research, you mean like go find things
Speaker 1: that conform to your own echo chamber and like, yeah,
Speaker 1: go like convince yourself that vaccines are bad or whatever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, but you do, Yeah, actual research might need
Speaker 2: to be done, right, I guess it's the word research
Speaker 2: has been completely bastardized.
Speaker 1: No, no, totally, no, it's it's so sketchy. This is
Speaker 1: the thing about being critical about like government infrastructure of
Speaker 1: health is that you're like, well about half of the
Speaker 1: people at least who are critical the government infrastructure on
Speaker 1: health are doing it in really bad ways.
Speaker 2: Yeah you know, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: But like a lot of my friends do DIYHRT, like
Speaker 1: hormone replacement therapy, and there is like a fairly broad
Speaker 1: established community working on trying to do this as safely
Speaker 1: as possible. It's not what I would specifically recommend any
Speaker 1: listener who's like, oh, it might be trands, I'm like,
Speaker 1: you know what I actually think because by and large,
Speaker 1: like most trans clinics that come out of literally old
Speaker 1: AIDS clinics. You know, there's a trans affirming clinic that
Speaker 1: I would go to for a long time, and they
Speaker 1: like specifically calm out of an AIDS clinic, you know.
Speaker 1: And that's actually an important thing to remember about it too, Right, Okay,
Speaker 1: it's a kind of a tangent, but we were talking
Speaker 1: earlier about mutual aid, and you're talking about how like
Speaker 1: the limitation of mutually ad how you don't have any
Speaker 1: bulldozers because you haven't stolen any yet. And and so
Speaker 1: then I told you how to steal them. I mean
Speaker 1: that didn't happen.
Speaker 2: How one could. Yeah, that's the thing is, that's the
Speaker 2: important thing, is like, yeah, no one knows.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I wouldn't know how to dry one.
Speaker 1: But like people see formal and informal disaster relief as
Speaker 1: entirely separate spheres, and they're not right. Yeah, Like formal
Speaker 1: disaster relief relies on informal disaster relief at the very
Speaker 1: least for the last mile problem. Right, If you show
Speaker 1: up and you're like, oh, we put all this stuff
Speaker 1: in a warehouse, how does it get to where it
Speaker 1: needs to go? The answer is like, well, if it's
Speaker 1: in if it's in western North Carolina, it means like
Speaker 1: people will pick up trucks or mules, you know, And
Speaker 1: it's just different in different areas. But like I think
Speaker 1: that sometimes health, like the aid's response, is another situation
Speaker 1: where there's formal and informal, and the informal is pushing
Speaker 1: the formal, yes to be good.
Speaker 2: I will say, actually a thing that I didn't say
Speaker 2: last episode about just like the things that were happening
Speaker 2: around the wildfires. Is as much as I was putting
Speaker 2: in sort of friendly, friendly digs and jokes about the
Speaker 2: mutual aid community, I will actually say the thing that
Speaker 2: was also very evident and eye opening for me, and
Speaker 2: maybe less eye opening for some but definitely opening for
Speaker 2: me was the formal like humanitarian response not better. Yeah,
Speaker 2: like fucking Red Cross is also just made up of
Speaker 2: a bunch of people with incomplete information, and they also
Speaker 2: have the added layer of sort of not necessarily the purest.
Speaker 1: Motives and slowness with red tape.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so they it is. Yeah, so I should say,
Speaker 2: like for all my joking about you know, yeah, fucking
Speaker 2: communists are always late, like whatever, you know, And I'm
Speaker 2: not saying these organizations are necessarily bad, but even like
Speaker 2: you know, your Planned Parenthoods, your Red Crosses or whatever
Speaker 2: the fox, you know, you're good parts of the federal government.
Speaker 2: They're not necessarily better are at this shit than you
Speaker 2: and your friends? Right?
Speaker 1: And they're also, like you said, they're made up of
Speaker 1: people you know, and so often those people are like,
Speaker 1: oh whoops, all this was supposed to go to the
Speaker 1: Red Cross, where it was sit around a warehouse but
Speaker 1: I seem to have left it here in front of
Speaker 1: you punks.
Speaker 2: Gotta go yeah, yeah, yeah, well, and that's the version
Speaker 2: that works, or it's just like, oh, the Red Cross
Speaker 2: also didn't know where all these supplies should go.
Speaker 1: Yeah totally.
Speaker 2: So like you know, they don't they're not magic. They
Speaker 2: don't have like a system, even though we want them
Speaker 2: to know. They don't necessarily have a system. What they
Speaker 2: do have a little bit is a little more experience
Speaker 2: and vastly more resources.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 1: The compound Q was an experimental drug in the late eighties.
Speaker 1: I was being tested in tiny doses, and it was
Speaker 1: like being formally tested in a clinical setting in the
Speaker 1: hospital nearby hospital. But people were like, look, we are
Speaker 1: going to die. We are we have a disease with
Speaker 1: a one hundred percent mortality rate. People were willing to
Speaker 1: try anything.
Speaker 2: Yeah, who cares.
Speaker 1: Aids patients and doctors worked illegally together to run tests.
Speaker 1: They knew that folks were going to try injecting this
Speaker 1: stuff at home, so why not trying to do it
Speaker 1: in a more controlled environment where the lessons could be
Speaker 1: applied to others. I want to know more about this part.
Speaker 1: I will say like there's like I started reading about
Speaker 1: like how many people died as a result of this
Speaker 1: these tests and you know, all of these comparing mortality stuff.
Speaker 1: That is maybe a story for another day.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm sure some of that information is not available
Speaker 2: or some of it would have to have been, you know.
Speaker 2: And again, you know, maybe this was not the right compromise.
Speaker 2: And I am purely speculating, but like, sometimes it might
Speaker 2: not be available for legal reasons, for legal peril, et cetera.
Speaker 1: Like, Well, what's interesting is that people who are involved
Speaker 1: in this do talk about it really openly, and they
Speaker 1: actually like, I mean partly because they're like, well, what
Speaker 1: the hell do we have to lose?
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, what are you going to do?
Speaker 1: Yeah? And like and the people who weren't dying of
Speaker 1: h e ades were like, but I have a moral
Speaker 1: imperative to try and save people. And so it was
Speaker 1: like literally, you know, it was like five hundred patients
Speaker 1: and six doctors working at this clinic, you know, and
Speaker 1: they like supposedly and there's people arguing one way or
Speaker 1: the other about this, they actually gave the CDC a
Speaker 1: heads up that they were going to do this. Oh no,
Speaker 1: not the CDC, the the people, h no, what did
Speaker 1: FDA maybe, Oh sure, yeah, they like gave them a
Speaker 1: heads up that they were going to do this, and
Speaker 1: then the FDA was like, oh, I don't know that's
Speaker 1: out over there, you know, yea, And so it was
Speaker 1: kind of a like I think there was like a
Speaker 1: wink and a nod coming from institutions because they were
Speaker 1: probably like, yeah, no, that makes sense. All those people
Speaker 1: are going to die, yeah, you know. And then also
Speaker 1: it's hard because like some of the articles I read
Speaker 1: were from nineteen eighty nine, when a lot of this
Speaker 1: stuff happened, and so like I didn't find the articles
Speaker 1: on the follow up. This is the thing that I've
Speaker 1: run across a lot. A lot of stuff is newsworthy
Speaker 1: when it first happens, but then the long term results
Speaker 1: aren't as like immediately available to lazy researchers, I mean,
Speaker 1: hard working researchers.
Speaker 2: Right, and well, but you know, like all things like
Speaker 2: they are just less likely to be published. Like it's
Speaker 2: just like you got the headline and you move on.
Speaker 1: Yeah and yeah. So out of this church, doctors and
Speaker 1: patients were working together and you know, and there were
Speaker 1: some positive it was a very toxic drug, right, But
Speaker 1: it like people were seeing results and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: and so people were trying it, and Bishop Flunder worked
Speaker 1: tirelessly for AIDS patients. She wrote once quote in those years,
Speaker 1: there weren't a lot of men who were engaged with
Speaker 1: this work, not a lot of men who were involved
Speaker 1: in handling people with HIV and interacting with people up close.
Speaker 1: There were a lot of women, though, And I can
Speaker 1: remember when most of the folks who would really actually
Speaker 1: touch people and engage with people were women. And I
Speaker 1: was one of those women, and I was surrounded by
Speaker 1: other women. And so her and the people she's working with,
Speaker 1: they also built faith based AIDS organizations. They worked with
Speaker 1: act UP and called themselves blacked up because there weren't
Speaker 1: enough black voices in the act UP movement from there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well there weren't. So they were working to correct that.
Speaker 1: And then, in one of the most like amount of
Speaker 1: effort to amount of dollars won by a direct action
Speaker 1: I've ever seen in my life, her and a bunch
Speaker 1: of other black AIDS activists and faith AIDS activists were
Speaker 1: having a meeting with the CDC and they were trying
Speaker 1: to get them to design a minority AIDS initiative to
Speaker 1: like work inside communities that weren't white or whatever, and
Speaker 1: they weren't being taken seriously, so they just like did
Speaker 1: a walk out, and it was like it looked really
Speaker 1: bad because it was all the like pastors and shit
Speaker 1: had just walked out. So they got half a billion
Speaker 1: dollars of funding.
Speaker 2: Like, yeah, I mean, we'll see, we'll see if anything
Speaker 2: like that ever continues.
Speaker 1: But I know good, I know good. She did an
Speaker 1: awful lot of work, I believe, with others to develop
Speaker 1: a theological framework within Christianity to support queer people and
Speaker 1: people with aids. And a lot of her work was
Speaker 1: like specifically two faith communities to be like hey, stop
Speaker 1: abandoning people, you know, And people fucking hated her for that.
Speaker 1: That was the thing, not the illegal drug tests, not
Speaker 1: the like you know, sure people hated her in the
Speaker 1: conservative parts of religious communities. Yeah, someone shot out the
Speaker 1: back window of her car. Someone else shot through the
Speaker 1: window of her bedroom. These were different events. She never
Speaker 1: figured out who did it, but she's pretty sure it
Speaker 1: was like I think it was even like someone from
Speaker 1: like a church that she went to or something, but
Speaker 1: it was like people from within faith communities who were like, no,
Speaker 1: fuck you, right, And to this day she has ashes
Speaker 1: on the altar of her office of the people whose
Speaker 1: families wouldn't take them, And that's like an image from
Speaker 1: everything that I'm like reading today. The stuff that happens
Speaker 1: with people's ashes when they're abandoned is like one of
Speaker 1: the things that sticks with me. She went on to
Speaker 1: serve on Obama's HIV AIDS Council, and she's now senior
Speaker 1: pastor of the City of Refuge United Church of Christ,
Speaker 1: a radically inclusive congregation in the Bank. And I think
Speaker 1: actually was her. I can't remember. I read a lot
Speaker 1: of these vignettes all at once and then didn't put
Speaker 1: it in the script. Several of them made it really
Speaker 1: clear to include trans women among the people who were
Speaker 1: suffering and dying and like really speak and like trans
Speaker 1: inclusive language that I really appreciate it. So that was you,
Speaker 1: and you're listening, I appreciate it. And if you're not listening, well,
Speaker 1: then you won't hear this. And if it wasn't you,
Speaker 1: well I believe you would have done it too, because
Speaker 1: you seem nice. Yeah, but you know what I would
Speaker 1: be annoyed at if I was listening to a podcast
Speaker 1: about myself from actions I did forty years later. I
Speaker 1: would be annoyed at missing out on the sweet sweet
Speaker 1: deals offered by our advertisers. But you don't have to
Speaker 1: because you can hear them. Well, not you, but the listener.
Speaker 2: This way's around it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, anyway, here's ads. Then we're back. Okay, another one
Speaker 1: of these stories. In Salt Lake City. You have another
Speaker 1: sort of example of how everything can go down and
Speaker 1: how complicated this world that we live in can be.
Speaker 1: There was an infectious disease expert in Salt Lake City,
Speaker 1: a lesbian named doctor Kristen Rice. She had just moved
Speaker 1: to Salt Lake City in nineteen eighty one. She like
Speaker 1: literally moved there the same day that I think the
Speaker 1: CDC was like, hey, Grid is happening, you know, right,
Speaker 1: And her and a bunch of game started the AIDS
Speaker 1: Project Utah. As best as I can tell, this happened
Speaker 1: like a lot of these other things where a lesbian
Speaker 1: and some gay men start a gay thing and then
Speaker 1: the lesbian's the only one left to run it, right.
Speaker 1: And there's another woman, a PA, a physician's assistant who's
Speaker 1: working with doctor Kristen Rice. Maggie Snyder. The two actually
Speaker 1: fall in love doing this work, and they're still together today,
Speaker 1: and it's like really sweet. They're like, meet cute is
Speaker 1: like a fucking battlefield.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, yeah, I guess happens. Yeah, it's nice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess real battlefields are also a lot of
Speaker 1: gay couples meet cutes.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite sayings from like gay liberation stuff
Speaker 1: is an army of lovers cannot lose. Yeah, and it's
Speaker 1: a reference to like some shit in Rome where like
Speaker 1: the units of gay men or whatever. You know, it's
Speaker 1: fucking good. Yeah. Anyway, Aggie, when talking about when she'd
Speaker 1: just been working as a PA, told an interviewer for
Speaker 1: The Body quote, nurses wouldn't go into patients rooms. And
Speaker 1: I'm a person that always thinks everybody should get care,
Speaker 1: so I wasn't fearful. I didn't understand why the nurses
Speaker 1: didn't go in. As nurses, we took an oath to
Speaker 1: take care of people, and to me, that meant you
Speaker 1: take care of everybody. But Mormon, Utah was a really
Speaker 1: rough place to be a gay person period, let alone
Speaker 1: someone with AIDS. Right, Doctor Rice ended up the only
Speaker 1: doctor in Utah or at least sat Lake City, but
Speaker 1: I believe Utah who treated every aid's patient in the city.
Speaker 2: Jesus.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they ended up partnering with when their clinic was
Speaker 1: like a private clinic, because basically what would happen is
Speaker 1: that as soon as you have like AIDS, your family
Speaker 1: would kick you out, and then your job to fire you,
Speaker 1: and then also your health insurance would be like now
Speaker 1: we're good, we don't care, right, fuck you, you're the devil.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I actually don't know the means by which
Speaker 1: everyone was kicked off of their health care, but it's
Speaker 1: certainly when I'm reading about this particular story, it seems
Speaker 1: like everyone's getting kicked off their health care, and so
Speaker 1: they end up going to the one clinic that will
Speaker 1: take them, and so they end up partnering with a
Speaker 1: Catholic hospital. The Sisters of the Holy Cross is a
Speaker 1: congregation of nuns who worked at I believe Holy Cross Hospital,
Speaker 1: and the nuns then started throwing down two working to
Speaker 1: help everybody there, like running errands and providing care and
Speaker 1: early AIDS healthcare was more or less hospice care right right,
Speaker 1: and the other I was like, oh, there's another story
Speaker 1: about ashes in here that really affects me when I
Speaker 1: think about it, is that a ton of gay Mormon
Speaker 1: men who are abandoned by their families wound up with
Speaker 1: their ashes and turned in the Catholic cemetery because the
Speaker 1: Catholic Cemetery had a place that was like, no matter
Speaker 1: who you are, you can have your ashes buried here.
Speaker 1: You know, we'll take everyone, which brings me not to
Speaker 1: an add transition. So the really bizarre role of the
Speaker 1: Catholic Church during the AIDS crisis, I kind of assumed
Speaker 1: it was like just universally bad, right, Yeah, it's not.
Speaker 1: There's no middle ground. This is like I was talking
Speaker 1: to my friend about this, like Oscar Wilde, I think
Speaker 1: as a quote where he's like the Catholic churches for
Speaker 1: saints and sinners. Yeah, like there's no middle fucking ground.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that is. I have very little, Like I
Speaker 2: grew up with the religion and I didn't really have
Speaker 2: a sense of this, but I have sense. Weirdly, I
Speaker 2: feel like more than I would have thought in La
Speaker 2: run into like you know, left wing Catholics, I guess.
Speaker 2: And it is the thing where I'm like, okay, but
Speaker 2: surely you see what this. I can't believe. I just
Speaker 2: can't believe these people are willing to be part of
Speaker 2: the larger institution of the Catholic Church.
Speaker 1: That is the real messy part.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but they are and they are not conflicted, So yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, what do I know? But yeah, it is
Speaker 2: it is sort of eternal. Only surprising to me these
Speaker 2: folks exist even though they do.
Speaker 1: I was reading didn't end up in the script, but
Speaker 1: I was reading this piece about a Catholic, a gay
Speaker 1: Catholic during the AIDS crisis, and how he'd been super
Speaker 1: Catholic but he was also just super gay and he
Speaker 1: was just fine with it. But then during the AIDS crisis,
Speaker 1: he was like fuck this and he left the church.
Speaker 1: But then he actually came back to the church, and
Speaker 1: his argument for why he came back was, I'm as
Speaker 1: Catholic as the Pope is. I'm not going to let
Speaker 1: them kick me out of my home. And so I
Speaker 1: think it's like, because I'm kind of a like, I
Speaker 1: think there's a lot of Catholic teachings I really appreciate
Speaker 1: people have probably caught onto that from this show. But
Speaker 1: I have a lot of critique of the Catholic Church
Speaker 1: as an institution. People have probably also caught onto that
Speaker 1: I'm sort of a like love the Catholic, hate the Church.
Speaker 2: You know, it's just like the like I don't. I mean,
Speaker 2: I think to me and again as an outsider who's
Speaker 2: never had any religion, and yeah, I mean my biggest
Speaker 2: shortcoming in religion talks is I do not see the
Speaker 2: value of it, yeah, the same way that I think
Speaker 2: people who really get a lot out of it do. So.
Speaker 2: To me, the cost benefit analysis is like so skewed
Speaker 2: towards What the fuck is wrong with you for doing this?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, because I'm just like, I just see huge damage
Speaker 2: to society, humanity, the world because of this. So I
Speaker 2: don't have a sense of, like, you know, the value
Speaker 2: of it really yeah, which is my own deficit. But
Speaker 2: I mean I'm just like, I don't know. You can
Speaker 2: believe in a lot of teachings, but also like ten
Speaker 2: percent of your money or however much you know that
Speaker 2: works goes to some pretty awful things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's kind of like taxes, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: taxes go to my roads, which I appreciate, and it
Speaker 1: goes to like genocide, which I don't appreciate.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's like you can't disentangle them. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the Catholic Church supports a lot of like
Speaker 1: social justice initiatives. Yeah, it supports a lot of like
Speaker 1: preventing people from getting birth control initiatives. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: like it's like it's ad Yeah, and I'm not saying that,
Speaker 1: like even I'm not even saying that, like averages out
Speaker 1: fifty to fifty. When I was thinking about this particular
Speaker 1: thing about why the Catholics have such a strange role
Speaker 1: in the AIDS crisis, I think of Catholicism as trying
Speaker 1: to create paladins, like trying to like from a D
Speaker 1: and D point of view, not a crusade point of view,
Speaker 1: although very related in this context. Yeah, but people who
Speaker 1: will do what they believe is right regardless of the consequences.
Speaker 1: And the problem is is that they both believe it
Speaker 1: is right to take care of the sick regardless, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and try to stop people from having condoms.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, like yeah, it's like it's really just like
Speaker 2: what they think a soul is.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if it was just helping humanity, that would be fine.
Speaker 2: It's just that their soul, they're you know, saving souls
Speaker 2: also intel or making life better for souls. Involves a
Speaker 2: lot of other shit that is yeah, fake at best,
Speaker 2: fair enough.
Speaker 1: I think NPR did a really good job with the
Speaker 1: headline from twenty nineteen how the Catholic Church aided both
Speaker 1: the sick and the sickness as HIV spread. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: we mostly hear about and for good reason, we mostly
Speaker 1: hear about, like specifically how they helped the spread of
Speaker 1: AIDS by trying to like the Pope literally doubled down
Speaker 1: on no condoms during this period. Yeah, and Act Up
Speaker 1: was protesting against the Catholic Church and like or specifically
Speaker 1: against one bishop in New York City who was doing
Speaker 1: a lot of that stuff. But at the same time
Speaker 1: a ton of in the same way that you can say,
Speaker 1: like lesbians stepped up the largest institution I think for
Speaker 1: a while that was like supporting gay people financially and
Speaker 1: like hospice care and like all of this stuff was
Speaker 1: literally the Catholic Church is what's so fucking wild about it?
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so it's during the AIDS that the Church
Speaker 1: doubles down on a nocondom's policy, possibly the worst time
Speaker 1: in human history to do so. These policies almost certainly
Speaker 1: killed millions of people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And to.
Speaker 1: Be clear, Well, the Mormon Church came out of the
Speaker 1: gate horrible because the Mormon Church also wasn't not so
Speaker 1: positive on homosexuality.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: Originally it came out the gate saying like famili should
Speaker 1: disown their HIV positive children. Then a bunch of mothers
Speaker 1: forced the church to change its position. It's only in
Speaker 1: the past few years at the LDS Hospital in Salt
Speaker 1: Lake City has opened an AIDS clinic.
Speaker 2: Oh god, yeah, I mean that. I guess you know again,
Speaker 2: I do not see the value of religion personally. Yeah.
Speaker 1: No, it all seems very silly with that. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So, but it's just like all of this stuff, all
Speaker 2: the good things could have been done without the bad stuff.
Speaker 2: I feel in a non religious context. Yes, is I
Speaker 2: guess my largest take on this sort of like thing
Speaker 2: where I'm like, you see how religion and makes us
Speaker 2: have to do all this horrible shit just to get
Speaker 2: a slipper of something good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I mean I think that the people who
Speaker 1: are proving that are the mutual AID groups, are the
Speaker 1: lesbian stepping up. Many of them are religious, but many
Speaker 1: of them are not. Right. Yeah, So I think there
Speaker 1: are the people who are proving that you can do that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it's like, but then again, you look at like
Speaker 1: the religious community and the non religious community are just
Speaker 1: both full of people doing really good and really bad
Speaker 1: shit with the AIDS crisis.
Speaker 2: You know, yes, I will say one of my absolute
Speaker 2: worst thing habits is because a fairly common question when
Speaker 2: when we're on skid Row for solidating snacks is like, oh,
Speaker 2: what church are you with? And I am, I am
Speaker 2: way too snippy that about no church, never church. And
Speaker 2: I also I am like I should be more unaware
Speaker 2: that I'm not religious, but many people are very religious,
Speaker 2: including you know, many residents of skid Row, and I'm
Speaker 2: just like, why am I starting anything? And it's not
Speaker 2: like I'm starting.
Speaker 1: Ship but telling them you're not with a church and
Speaker 1: that you like are an atheist or I'm not to
Speaker 1: put labels on you.
Speaker 2: But no, no, yeah I am.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so like, but telling them you know that isn't
Speaker 1: like you're not telling them like and therefore you're fucking wrong.
Speaker 1: You know, you're just like, yeah, I mean, okay, maybe
Speaker 1: you are, but like.
Speaker 2: I'm not, I'm not like that, but my tone is
Speaker 2: definitely that. But also sometimes people just don't like that,
Speaker 2: you know, I I am. I will say stuff like, oh,
Speaker 2: I don't believe in I'm not religious, I don't believe
Speaker 2: in a god, And you'd be surprised at how that is,
Speaker 2: you know, more combative than I would have thought.
Speaker 1: Well, it's like when I tell people I'm vegan and
Speaker 1: they're like, but I eat meat. I'm like, I didn't
Speaker 1: say anything about that. Yeah, that's a whole separate conversation
Speaker 1: that you brought up. Like, yeah, you know, yeah.
Speaker 2: But it's fairly common. I would just say, yeah, anyways,
Speaker 2: I believe.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's very common when you say things like this
Speaker 1: because people take it as a challenge, whether or not
Speaker 1: it's intended as it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: But doctor Reese worked with the hospital and the nuns
Speaker 1: to care for people, and nuns were running around trying
Speaker 1: to convince doctors and funeral directors alike to stop being
Speaker 1: afraid of people with AIDS. All the while, everyone kept
Speaker 1: telling them, all you're going to catch AIDS and die.
Speaker 1: What are you doing? You you know you're dooming yourself
Speaker 1: by going anywhere near these people. And they're like, no,
Speaker 1: we're going to do it. This is what we're gonna do,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: They also provided medications under the table basically using PREP
Speaker 1: years before it was approved. When AIDS patients died, I
Speaker 1: read an interviewer. I was like, wait, where'd you get
Speaker 1: all the medications? And they're like, oh, well, AIDS patients
Speaker 1: die all the time, So we take their surplus and
Speaker 1: then give it to the people who you know can't
Speaker 1: get it, prescribe to them or whatever, because you can.
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to tell people how to do AIDS
Speaker 1: drugs in never mind, go to doctors, talk to them,
Speaker 1: which is great AIDS clinics if you ever want to
Speaker 1: take PREP. But but yeah, so they like were doing
Speaker 1: this well before PREP became on the scene. And they
Speaker 1: would also work with people who are ordering drugs in
Speaker 1: from overseas and people would just like smuggle them drugs
Speaker 1: from all over Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think that is also tough about this, like you know,
Speaker 2: you see it with with this fucking right wing garbage
Speaker 2: of the ivermectin, which is that like like, thankfully this
Speaker 2: was all correct, but in the moment and you know
Speaker 2: what and this this you know, use of the medication
Speaker 2: was much much much more based in reality. Yeah, but
Speaker 2: there is still like a you will simply be judged
Speaker 2: by hindsight and you cannot totally know where you're at
Speaker 2: while you're doing it.
Speaker 1: Oh, totally, they could have been totally wrong. Yeah, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think they did a good cost benefit analysis. I
Speaker 1: think overall all the people doing not all of the
Speaker 1: doctors and social workers and AIDS activists that I read
Speaker 1: about who were working with like drugs that were not
Speaker 1: allowed yet. I think that they did a good cost
Speaker 1: benefit analysis. But like they could have done a bad one,
Speaker 1: you know, and they could have or.
Speaker 2: You could have done it right, but you could have
Speaker 2: done the analysis right, and you can still just be
Speaker 2: on the marginal side of I'm wrong and history. History
Speaker 2: just looks at you differently.
Speaker 1: Totally, No, you're right, because all of this looks really
Speaker 1: like hah. They were just ahead of their time, right,
Speaker 1: And if I we mectin had cured COVID or.
Speaker 2: Whatever, then yeah, you know, they'd be the same thing.
Speaker 1: But yeah, but yeah they were. That's just sort of
Speaker 1: like wonky science where they're like, yes, oh, I think
Speaker 1: this one thing that's good for another different thing will
Speaker 1: totally be good for this other thing because I want
Speaker 1: it to be related, whereas like this is like an
Speaker 1: epidemiologist or whatever, you know, like, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: With at least a like a hypothetical mechanism and like
Speaker 2: a totally you know, a path totally Yes, they're not
Speaker 2: the same, but but I just it's.
Speaker 1: Like, no, but they rhyme in a way that's almost uncomfortable, like.
Speaker 2: How can you really be sure? Sure?
Speaker 1: But yeah, you know what you can be sure of.
Speaker 1: These deals are technically deals. Actually that's not true. It
Speaker 1: might not even be products. They might not even be services.
Speaker 1: A lot of the ads are just like go outside
Speaker 1: or gamble.
Speaker 2: I do like, I do like that you've pitched twice
Speaker 2: now that there are deals in the ads, and I'm
Speaker 2: trying to think. I feel like it's actually pretty infrequent
Speaker 2: that there are actual deals in ads.
Speaker 1: I know, it's such a shame. Well, I will say.
Speaker 2: You never know. Yeah, you can only find out if
Speaker 2: there's a deal if you listen to.
Speaker 1: The ad exactly exactly and here they are and we're back.
Speaker 1: So I don't know a ton about the rest of
Speaker 1: the world this relates to it, But I have one
Speaker 1: anecdote from Ulstrol that I found interesting when I was
Speaker 1: doing this research. So lesbian nurse named Anne Maurice Sweeney,
Speaker 1: who wrote about her time as a nurse for AIDS
Speaker 1: patients in the early nineties. Quote, I can't talk easily
Speaker 1: about nursing people who are dying of AIDS. During the
Speaker 1: early nineties, it was like being on the front line
Speaker 1: during a war, except nobody won. Dykes were everywhere during
Speaker 1: the AIDS crisis in this city. We were the least
Speaker 1: likely to contract the virus, but the most likely to
Speaker 1: take it on to help to confront a community crisis
Speaker 1: head on. And just like just like reading her right
Speaker 1: with pride about like, yeah, all right, we could have
Speaker 1: stayed safe. You know, like literally, statistically the there absolutely
Speaker 1: were lesbians who died of AIDS during the AIDS crisis.
Speaker 1: And I'm not trying to diminish that. We're gonna talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about women and AIDS at the end
Speaker 1: of this, but you know, yeah, the safest way to
Speaker 1: have sex and from an aid's point of view, and
Speaker 1: just doing it anyway, just going and helping people anyway,
Speaker 1: Like I like it. Yeah, Slowly, people fought the stigma
Speaker 1: that was isolating AIDS patients. I feel like the waves
Speaker 1: of the early battle against AIDS were like, get people
Speaker 1: to admit that it's happening, Get people to stop isolating
Speaker 1: dying people, get information about transmission out to people, so
Speaker 1: that's safer. Sex practices can spread, get enough basic treatments out,
Speaker 1: and let people experiment rather than just die waiting for
Speaker 1: proper medical trials. These are a lot of the avenues
Speaker 1: by that people were fighting, right, And it's kind of
Speaker 1: interesting too because you can kind of present these like
Speaker 1: victories like death with dignity rather than like because normally,
Speaker 1: when we think about like victory in terms of an
Speaker 1: pandemic or an ailment or whatever, we think of like cures, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but being able to set this bar of like victory
Speaker 1: sometimes means like I can die with my family in
Speaker 1: the room, or I wasn't completely isolated in a weird
Speaker 1: plastic place before I died, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: In terms of fighting the medical stigma, a lot of
Speaker 1: that work was done by the first dedicated AIDS ward
Speaker 1: in the US, Ward five B, which opened in July
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty three in the San Francisco General Hospital. It
Speaker 1: was on the fifth floor, that's why it's called Ward
Speaker 1: five B. It was actually like words five A and
Speaker 1: five B or whatever. But like history wanted to simplify.
Speaker 2: It, you gotta pick a name.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and there's like a documentary from a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago about it, and you know, it's called
Speaker 1: five B. Patients had been dealing with extreme isolation, with
Speaker 1: staff refusing to treat them and all that shit we've
Speaker 1: been talking about. So the idea of putting the AIDS
Speaker 1: patients together was appealing, but at first folks weren't so
Speaker 1: sure it would be for the best. There was an
Speaker 1: awful lot of comparison early on between AIDS patients and lepers,
Speaker 1: who for millennia were put into leper colonies and they
Speaker 1: still are in many places. But in the end folks
Speaker 1: were like, fuck it, we need to give people a
Speaker 1: place to be, so they created five B. San Francisco
Speaker 1: at the time had the highest rate of AIDS per capita.
Speaker 1: New York had more total cases, and those folks needed
Speaker 1: to be cared for, and in particular, they needed to
Speaker 1: be cared for by people who would actually, you know,
Speaker 1: care for them right and not just treat them like shit.
Speaker 1: Early on ward, five B was many ways of hospice.
Speaker 1: Not everyone who checked into the hospital with AIDS died
Speaker 1: right away. You kind of have this kind of oversimplified
Speaker 1: thing where you're like, I now have AIDS, and now
Speaker 1: I am go to hospital and now I die, right,
Speaker 1: which happened to a lot of people. But it was
Speaker 1: more like, I now have a complication of this and
Speaker 1: have to go to the hospital for a while, and
Speaker 1: I might die there. And I eventually will die there,
Speaker 1: but maybe not this time.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Many people did recover temporarily from this or that ailment,
Speaker 1: and there was a companion out patient service of like
Speaker 1: eight different housing organizations and grew like places to go
Speaker 1: help people find places to live outside of it. But
Speaker 1: people came to the hospital and died there. Ninety seven
Speaker 1: percent of the patients in the ward in nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: six were gay men, which is also the like, again,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk a little bit about AIDS affecting women,
Speaker 1: and AIDS absolutely affects a lot of straight people, and
Speaker 1: you know, it's like, yeah, but the very beginning of
Speaker 1: this as a crisis, and during the period in which
Speaker 1: it was killing everyone in the United States, the brunt
Speaker 1: of that was born by Meadow Sex with men. When
Speaker 1: they made this ward, every person who worked there had
Speaker 1: volunteered to be there, and they had a much higher
Speaker 1: retention rate of workers than elsewhere in the hospital because
Speaker 1: they believed in what they were doing. Even though it
Speaker 1: was like this is going to shock you. Other workers
Speaker 1: in the hospital were like dicks about it, and they
Speaker 1: would complain about this. One nurse complained about the quote
Speaker 1: homosexual hierarchy that provided quote preferential treatment for AIDS patients.
Speaker 2: God, right, just because like their caregivers were good people. Yeah, totally, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: The fucking people just don't talk enough about dying of
Speaker 1: AIDS privilege.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: Within five b patients were treated as humans. One of
Speaker 1: the main things they offered was human touch, which people
Speaker 1: were being denied. Like a lot of people were just
Speaker 1: like literally like, oh, kind of the main thing I
Speaker 1: did because I couldn't actually help anyone as I go
Speaker 1: around and give people hugs, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Care was directed by the patients themselves and their loved ones.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that they did was really cool.
Speaker 1: They fought successfully to overturn the hospital rules that limited
Speaker 1: what counted as family, right, Like, you're a gay couple,
Speaker 1: you can't be like you there's no legal marriage, you know, right,
Speaker 1: like the future sorry, I mean keep.
Speaker 2: That, I mean, yeah, not to totally derail. It just
Speaker 2: feels like the bigger impediment to equal marriage being rolled
Speaker 2: back is going to be something along the lines of
Speaker 2: like how big a headache and its state tax planning.
Speaker 2: It's going to cause sure, it's companies are going to
Speaker 2: push back. It's not going to be for justice if
Speaker 2: it survives.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it's like there's a certain amount of
Speaker 1: like genies and bottles and where their relative positions are
Speaker 1: to each other where it's like hard to get them
Speaker 1: back in. Yeah, but like, you know, I think we
Speaker 1: would have thought that. No, actually I'll say it was
Speaker 1: like we would have thought that about abortion. But actually,
Speaker 1: now that I think that through, I'm like, no, that
Speaker 1: has been a territory of struggle, yes, from the day
Speaker 1: of Roe v. Wade, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but still it is like, yeah, I mean, you know,
Speaker 2: there's there's no there's no regression that these folks are
Speaker 2: not on board for is H and are increasingly willing
Speaker 2: to pull the levers on against the face of all evidence.
Speaker 1: And you know, so yeah, and even like the majority
Speaker 1: of American people being like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so yeah, so yeah, I'm not holding my breath.
Speaker 1: Yeah, everything that I read whenever I read like homophobia
Speaker 1: from the eighties and earlier or whatever. It's this the
Speaker 1: literally the same stuff as transphobia from now you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I'm like, yeah.
Speaker 1: They will never defeat us. If they managed to defeat
Speaker 1: the trans people, then they would just then do the
Speaker 1: same for gay people immediately afterwards, Like they're absolutely coming
Speaker 1: for you next. This gay is listening to this, but
Speaker 1: I think you know that, or you wouldn't be listening
Speaker 1: to this.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: But the hospital worked to let more people in to
Speaker 1: count as family or you know, friends. Family partners were
Speaker 1: allowed to visit twenty four to seven. They could sleep
Speaker 1: on cots in the rooms, and patients were encouraged to
Speaker 1: treat these rooms as their home. To quote a New
Speaker 1: York Times article from nineteen eighty five quote, the staff
Speaker 1: also tries to be prepared for the first visit by
Speaker 1: patient's parents, some learning for the first time that a
Speaker 1: son was homosexual, right, and that's like one of the again,
Speaker 1: the like little fucking heart string shit about it is
Speaker 1: You're just like fuck, I just yeah that moment, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and knowing that only like I don't know, probably half
Speaker 1: a parents are going to pass the test.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, God, I can't even imagine what the actual
Speaker 2: like percentages and that stuff is. Yeah, I don't know,
Speaker 2: but I mean I guess for what it's worth, it
Speaker 2: is like not that it gets easier, but you can
Speaker 2: get better at it, get better at like like working
Speaker 2: to prepare and like, you know, I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I guess it's just like heartening that like there's no
Speaker 2: task too horrible that we can't at least get like
Speaker 2: improve at it. And it's good that it's like you know,
Speaker 2: a collection of knowledge can be had. Oh, totally grow. Sorry,
Speaker 2: this is a totally just mind tangent.
Speaker 1: But no, no, because this is in the same way
Speaker 1: that the buddy system developed in Dallas spread across the country,
Speaker 1: the system of how to have an aids ward spread
Speaker 1: across the country. And like, yeah, this is the difference
Speaker 1: between like di Y fake science and DIY actual science.
Speaker 1: Is like they actual science. You build a body of knowledge.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, well because it works.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and like and you compare notes with each other,
Speaker 1: like like everyone at home injecting themselves with random drugs
Speaker 1: as they hope it'll cure COVID or AIDS or whatever.
Speaker 1: I know it's a weak comparison made, but we already
Speaker 1: made it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, but no, I mean I saw that they're
Speaker 2: They're like ifromactine can cure cancer, and I'm just like, wow,
Speaker 2: I should cancer exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it's just like these people are like making
Speaker 2: they they now just needed to be magic because it
Speaker 2: was it was it was magic before, so why wouldn't
Speaker 2: it be you know, magic now.
Speaker 1: No, And it's such a like even earlier when I
Speaker 1: was like, well, the people a dying, so they'll try anything,
Speaker 1: and you know, almost as this inspirational thing or whatever,
Speaker 1: there's actually like thinking about the cancer comparison. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: just like the Land of Grifters.
Speaker 2: Yeah exactly.
Speaker 1: I like wonder I almost like one or why there
Speaker 1: were I mean I'm sure there were some, but like
Speaker 1: overall you read about this stuff and it is like
Speaker 1: doctors who are serious doing some stuff that would look
Speaker 1: sketchy in other situations.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, like I mean, look that might also
Speaker 2: just be the hindsight of it there. Yeah, as you said,
Speaker 2: there probably were like abject failures in this type of arena.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean one of the things I was
Speaker 1: reading is like basically is like, look, patients are trying anything.
Speaker 1: People are like I grew mushrooms in my refrigerator. I
Speaker 1: literally don't know what that one means, but like that
Speaker 1: was the thing I read. Yeah, I don't know how
Speaker 1: you grow mushrooms and refrigerator seems too cold, but yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, like oh that's not freezer anyway, Like yeah,
Speaker 1: and so I think that the systematizing of this thing
Speaker 1: that's happening, I think that's what makes it DIY or
Speaker 1: non institutional science instead of like land of grifts and
Speaker 1: like yes.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yes, yeah. It's like it's so hard from
Speaker 2: a broad view to like figure out the words to
Speaker 2: differ between this and snake oil.
Speaker 1: Because you're like, totally.
Speaker 2: They share a lot of like nouns and verbs, but.
Speaker 1: They are different languages somehow. Even Yeah, well some of
Speaker 1: the science, I mean Ward five B was not you know,
Speaker 1: that was.
Speaker 2: Institution's part of a hospital. Yeah exactly.
Speaker 1: But then again, the last the folks in Utah who
Speaker 1: were like sneaking people drugs were epidemiologists who worked for
Speaker 1: a hospital too, you know. Yeah, and in Ward five
Speaker 1: B staff were studied extensively to see if they would
Speaker 1: catch aides, right, because they were like, no, we're pretty
Speaker 1: sure we know how this works. Now we're going to
Speaker 1: stare and see. And at least one person did contract
Speaker 1: it after I believe she accidentally pricked herself with a
Speaker 1: used needle, right, But then other people were tested after
Speaker 1: like someone got bodily fluids in an open wound or
Speaker 1: you know, like things happen, right, but like, you know,
Speaker 1: it became a place where people were learning about the disease,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, and so they had this, you know,
Speaker 1: despite people being mad at the homosexual hierarchy or whatever.
Speaker 2: Like.
Speaker 1: Patients were allowed to move around the hospital unless they
Speaker 1: had specific contagious issues, and the care provided at five
Speaker 1: B soon became a model for the rest of the country.
Speaker 1: Like I was saying, one of the nurses there, a
Speaker 1: guy named Guy Vanderberg, said to ABC in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: don't wait for a leader, don't wait for someone to
Speaker 1: show you the way, don't wait for the right presidential
Speaker 1: candidate to show up. It's you and me. It's right now,
Speaker 1: it's right here. You are as prepared as you need
Speaker 1: to be. I really like that. I really like the like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's us, that's we. Yeah, we can do it,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we have to do it. Those things are all
Speaker 2: amith the other shit, Yeah, it has to be us.
Speaker 1: Yeah. It's like a cliche I ran across that I
Speaker 1: liked recently that have been on my mind a lot,
Speaker 1: which is like, we're all we've got and we're all
Speaker 1: we need.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I think the B side, the B side
Speaker 2: helps people because I think the A side really makes
Speaker 2: them scared.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally. No, it's exactly that, Like it's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: we're all we've got, but that's okay, we can do this,
Speaker 1: you know, like yeah, and when we say we it's
Speaker 1: a pretty big wei Like yeah, especially when we remember
Speaker 1: to focus on our solidarity and not our divisions, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: For good reason. Most of the attention around the AIDS
Speaker 1: crisis is focused on gay men, but HIV can spread
Speaker 1: to anybody, and part of the erasure of women from
Speaker 1: AID statistics was based on the CDC's definition of AIDS
Speaker 1: that categorically excluded women. For years, the CDC's definition of
Speaker 1: AIDS didn't include opportunistic infections that often affected and killed
Speaker 1: women with HIV. To quote an old Act Up pamphlet quote,
Speaker 1: for example, thrush in the mouth of an HIV infected
Speaker 1: person is recognized as AIDS, but the same fungus in
Speaker 1: the vagina, chronic candiditis is not as a result of
Speaker 1: the skewed definition, by the time women are diagnosed with AIDS,
Speaker 1: they are almost dead. Pelvic inflammatory disease and cervical cancer
Speaker 1: are killing women with HIV who are never diagnosed with AIDS.
Speaker 1: Sixty five percent of HIV infected women die without having
Speaker 1: ever been diagnosed with AIDS. And again, that's an old
Speaker 1: pamphlet if you're listening, that's not the current statistics. The
Speaker 1: Women's Caucus of act UP got together and worked on
Speaker 1: the issue for years and finally managed to get the
Speaker 1: CDC to change the definition in nineteen ninety three. And
Speaker 1: one of the reasons that this is so important is
Speaker 1: that by this point there is funding available for a
Speaker 1: lot of AIDS related stuff, right, and so you need
Speaker 1: to not be cut out of that. And it was
Speaker 1: made available to more women with AIDS. And that's my
Speaker 1: mutual aid in a time of accidental health war episode.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's I mean, as as you were saying, shoot,
Speaker 2: and I can't remember if it was this episode of
Speaker 2: the previous but like or maybe in the break like
Speaker 2: this idea of like recently settled or like, I mean,
Speaker 2: you know, the E's crisis is like settled, I suppose,
Speaker 2: but not really.
Speaker 1: Globally it's not. Yeah, and in the United States it's
Speaker 1: like ongoing, but there's a lot better treatment and shit
Speaker 1: like that. You know, it's not it's not the same
Speaker 1: thing it was in the yes.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yes, I don't know. I mean it's just
Speaker 2: like like the again not to be too like dark
Speaker 2: time to come in or hear or ben to come in,
Speaker 2: but like, yeah, these these are the times that like
Speaker 2: fucking we can do something and we will. So yeah,
Speaker 2: not like it's gonna be okay because someone will save us.
Speaker 2: It's gonna be okay because we got to do it.
Speaker 1: Totally.
Speaker 2: It's not gonna be fun. Yeah, but we got to
Speaker 2: do it.
Speaker 1: And when we say it's okay, it's like, well it's
Speaker 1: okay in the like larger sense where bad things happen too.
Speaker 1: You know. Yes, it doesn't mean like we're gonna win everything,
Speaker 1: but it's gonna be okay, and that we're like gonna
Speaker 1: do the best we can and we're gonna try and yeah,
Speaker 1: like all this people were saying, you know, it's just like, well,
Speaker 1: you find the way to be useful and you do it,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, yeah, well anything you want to plug
Speaker 1: here at.
Speaker 2: The end, I don't know, I have a podcast. You know,
Speaker 2: it's this is racist. It's pretty depressing too, honestly, but
Speaker 2: what but looking at look you know, as as as
Speaker 2: with uh as here, it's like, it's not about depressing,
Speaker 2: it's about looking for you know what light and connection
Speaker 2: there can be, so you know it ebbs and flows,
Speaker 2: the light and the dark, ebb and flow.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Inversely, yeah, we'll end with that.
Speaker 1: Everyone knows the plugs that I was already gonna plug
Speaker 1: and I will see you all next week with more
Speaker 1: Cool People Do Cool Stuff. Cool People Who Did Cool
Speaker 1: Stuff is a production of cool Zone Media.
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