Word: normalizer
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...chose 20 volunteers whose T cells had dropped from a normal level of about 1,000 cells per ml of blood to fewer than 500. The newest PCR tests showed that the viral load of these patients was holding steady at about 100,000 copies per ml of blood. Ho started treating his subjects with one of the new protease inhibitors being developed by Abbott Laboratories. As expected, the amount of virus that could be measured in the patients' blood practically disappeared. The treadmill had been stopped. But no one was ready for what happened next...
Year after year, Schwartz looked handsome and sturdy. All the while, his T cells ticked downward. In 1992, when they dipped below 500--the normal level is around 1,000--Schwartz's doctor put him on AZT, one of the few drugs then available that attack the virus directly. Both understood that it would fail after a while. Later Schwartz added 3TC, another antiviral. AIDS took a first cuff at him anyway. He began experiencing memory loss and having difficulty concentrating. Every few weeks, something that felt like the flu would send him to bed for days. In the summer...
...spread through poppers, that it was deliberate government genocide, that it was carried in swine flu; I remember thinking that the ultimate gay plague would be contracted over the phone. Soon, however, compassion and terror galvanized the gay community. Anxious mobs attended Larry Kramer's landmark AIDS drama, The Normal Heart, in which medical statistics were painted on the walls of the set and constantly updated. Theater suddenly performed an unheard-of function: at its opening in 1985, The Normal Heart was one of the few sources of data on the epidemic anywhere...
...trend for med school admittance has been to recommend a year or two off after college, and me applying even earlier than normal...it means I go in with a strike against me," he says...
...basic research, especially cancer research. Medicine can eliminate few diseases completely with a magic bullet as it did polio (which the World Health Organization believes has been eliminated through vaccines.) But it can significantly improve the prognosis for patients, as it does for diabetics who can lead a near-normal lifestyle without a cure. In this war against cancer, we do not have to decimate the enemy to win. Each small achievement is a victory...