Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2009. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
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Wall Street Journal Blog - January 27, 2009
Posted by Jacob Goldstein
Delaney never had HIV himself. In 1978, he was diagnosed with hepatitis B and told that he had only months to live, the Los Angeles Times says in its obit. But he was able to enroll in a clinical trial of interferon, which put him into remission.
When his friends started dying of AIDS a few years later, Delaney launched a nonprofit called Project Inform that pushed for clinical trials of the largely untested drugs many AIDS patients were taking.
That kind of activism ultimately transformed the relationship between dying patients and the drug research establishment, opening the door for more patients to get access to experimental drugs. "A lot of activists were promoting" wider access, Tony Fauci, who now heads the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told the LAT. "But it was Marty who convinced me by bringing me face to face with people who actually needed it."
As the establishment shifted toward Delaney's views, Delaney moved into the mainstream and served on NIH AIDS research advisory panels. By the early 1990s, volunteers at Project Inform's HIV information hotline were answering 100,000 calls a year, the San Francisco Chronicle says. Delaney stepped down from his role at the group last year.
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