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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).

 

 

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