I also advocated for home testing of HIV in the 1980s, given the stigma surrounding HIV/AIDs, it seemed natural that allowing people to test in the privacy of their homes could dramatically reduce new infections. I met with the research heads for all the major companies – Bristol-Myers Squibb, Pfizer, Roche, Johnson & Johnson, and others – but I heard the same story everywhere: “Sorry, Bill, funds are already fully budgeted for this year.” Likewise, when I approached the chairs of the infectious disease and microbiology departments at the country’s leading universities, I was told that, “It’s scientifically interesting, but we just don’t have the money.” Worse, I was even told that “AIDS will never be an important enough disease.” I was an outlier in believing that heterosexual individuals could be at risk for HIV/AIDs and publicly attacked in a book published by Journalist Michael Fumento, titled “The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS”.Įarly on, I tried to convince major pharmaceutical companies to develop a drug to treat HIV and prevent its spread. Similar to how so many believed that Covid-19 would not have a global impact outside of China. When AIDS emerged, people were content to think of it as a gay man’s disease, something that happened to “them” and not to “us.” While terror and anxiety gripped those in the gay community in the early 1980s, the rest of the country kept on with the status quo. I also have personal experience as an outsider whose warnings about another pandemic went unheeded by public health authorities. When she tries to raise the alarm in January 2020 predicting the exponential growth of Covid-19, she is told to stop referring to Covid-19 as a pandemic. Dean continues to butt heads with CDC and remains an outsider. Despite her track record of success in this and other cases, Dr. Her strategy is listed amongst other best practices in a report by the CDC on how to handle outbreaks of Meningitis on college campuses, published two years later. Dean goes ahead with her plan regardless and the cases cease. The CDC disagrees with her decision and threatens to put their disapproval in writing, citing a lack of evidence for her approach (there is only one case every 4 years) and the fact that if she pursues multiple strategies they won’t know which one works. Knowing how short the window is for administering prophylaxis and how a few cases could spread, she moves quickly to shut down the college fraternities, and sororities and give 1200 students a prophylactic drug.
Charity Dean, Public Health Officer for Santa Barbara County is investigating multiple cases of Meningitis B on the USCB college campus.
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