Medical advances have soared, with researchers identifying different strains of HIV and treating them with cocktails of assorted new anti-virals to prolong the lives of patients. The government, federal and state, has funded HIV medicine assistance programs, and all is good with the world. Or is it?

Twenty five years ago, when the AIDS pandemic was sweeping America, as well as the world, institutionalized discrimination was just beginning to be addressed in this country. HIV was hard enough to address without the stigma of how the virus was contracted being made into a “moral” issue.

In the beginning, addressing the social and political aspects of it was like screaming into the wilderness. Usually, being diagnosed meant a death sentence. An entire political movement grew up around the cruel silence of Ronald Reagan’s White House.

The AIDS activist movement took as its call to action “silence equals death,” because the literal silence of the Reagan administration was resulting in the deaths of thousands and thousands of gay men across the country. By the end of 1983, the number of HIV/AIDS cases reported in the United States had risen to 3,064; of these, 1,292 had died.

Reagan refused to advocate safer sex and condom use, choosing instead to press for a ban on HIV-positive immigrants entering the U.S., and later abstinence, as the keys to preventing the epidemic. But because of his dismissal of the seriousness of the virus, AIDS quickly became a world pandemic.

Many believe this could have been prevented had he shown even a little compassion for those were suffering and dying, instead of refusing to get his hands dirty.

In 1987, playwright and novelist Larry Kramer cofounded ACT-UP, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power. In many cities and towns across the country, local chapters were formed, and members protested and lobbied, staging die-ins, chaining themselves to drug company doors, and, most controversial of all, made history with a massive protest at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in 1989.

Over five thousand people protested the Catholic Archdiocese’s public stand against AIDS education and condom distribution, as well as its opposition to a women’s right to privacy and choice in reproductive services, including birth control and abortion.

“We came to St. Patrick’s ... to repel the church’s destructive intrusion into public policies concerning AIDS education, gay civil rights and women’s reproductive rights,” said Michael Petrelis, a founding member.

Never in a million years did we think we would be thrown back 25 years, especially with the advances in research and medications, and have HIV care funding frozen — so those who are enjoying a happy, healthy life will no longer have access to services.

The AIDS Drug Assistance Program is a federal program with a base rate and a separate supplemental pool of monies. Louisiana, along with 12 other states, is “tapped out” on those funds, as they’ve not changed over the years to reflect the increase in utilization and need (and increased rates of HIV).

Utilization of ADAP in Louisiana, for example, rose by about 35 percent in the past year. Pharmaceutical companies who make HIV meds increased their costs by an average of 15 percent in the same period, while still posting record multi-billion-dollar profits. Big Pharma’s patient assistance programs have been relatively small compared to the need, so profit being placed over people continues to be the underlying theme here.

“It’s no accident that the groups at the lowest rungs of the social and economic ladder,” writes HIV Prevention Justice, “also have the highest rates of HIV, including African-Americans, Latina women, gay men and other men who have sex with men, transgender people, undocumented immigrants, and people residing in the Deep South.”

In light of this, a reactivated ACT-UP that is based in and fights for those “at the lowest rungs” is needed. Action equals life.