Experimental treatments changed the course of the AIDS epidemic; we need the same approach to mental illness today

In 1988, at the height of the AIDS pandemic, playwright Larry Kramer exposed the Centers for Disease Control for slow-walking AIDS therapies. In a scathing open letter published in the Village Voice to Dr. Anthony Fauci — who was then, as now, spearheading public health policy — Kramer declared that after three years of effort, Dr. Fauci and the CDC “have established only a system of waste, chaos, and uselessness” and that “there are more AIDS victims dead because you didn’t test drugs on them than because you did.”