How to Survive a Plague (NR)

synopsis

This is the story of how activism and innovation turned AIDS from a death sentence into a manageable condition. Despite having no scientific training, these self made activists infiltrated the pharmaceutical industry and helped identify promising new drugs, moving them from experimental trials to patients in record time. Faced with their own mortality, an improbable group of mostly HIV---positive young men and women broke the mould as radical warriors taking on Washington and the medical establishment. With unfettered access to a treasure trove of never-before--seen archival footage from the 1980s and '90s, filmmaker David France puts the viewer smack in the middle of the controversial actions, the heated meetings, the heartbreaking failures, and the exultant breakthroughs of heroes in the making