Summary

Part 4, Chapter 1 opens with Michael Callen, who withdrew from regular activist activities to write Surviving AIDS, a form of self-help book that described how he believed he managed to live with the disease for many years without receiving extensive medical treatment. Callen was never fully comfortable as an activist and became depressed as his relationship with his partner Richard Dworkin deteriorated. Unwilling to have sex, Callen had allowed Dworkin to pursue outside affairs, but resented him nonetheless. Callen’s public withdrawal was made even more painful by the sharp criticism he faced from Mark Harrington over his leadership of the Community Research Initiative (CRI). CRI, a New York collaborative of PWAs and doctors, had played an important role in conducting drug trials where the FDA and NIH would not, but Harrington attacked Callen’s supposedly sloppy management. The contemporaneous fall of the...