Bio:
James Driscoll grew up in Oregon and received a Ph.D. in English from the University of Wisconsin. He has published five academic books, Identity in Shakespearean Drama, The Unfolding God of Jung and Milton, Shakespeare and Jung: The God in Time, Shakespeare’s Identities and Jung’s Cartography of the Psyche (due out in September 2020) in addition to a memoire and history, How AIDS Activists Challenged America, and many academic and journalistic articles.
In 1988, living in San Francisco in the grip of the AIDS epidemic, Dr. Driscoll became an AIDS activist on behalf of friends. His compelling opinion pieces on AIDS in major papers like The Wall Street Journal and his organizing ACT UP demonstrations against FDA soon made him the most outspoken AIDS activist for FDA reform. In 1991 he wrote the draft for Congressman Tom Campbell’s bill to speed FDA approval of drugs for life-threatening conditions.
In 1995 Driscoll joined with other activist leaders to rally the national AIDS community against the FDA’s plan to require lengthy trials for new drugs. Behind the scenes, he aligned crucial support from Republicans, led by House Speaker Newt Gingrich, and from the media and AIDS researchers. The FDA caved to the mounting pressure. With the new drug cocktails approval, AIDS ceased to be a death sentence. Had FDA succeeded in delaying approval, that delay would have cost more than 86,000 lives.
How AIDS Activism Challenged America, recounts the dramatic struggles of Dr. Driscoll’s activist years, particularly how he and a few other determined activists marshalled nationwide opposition to FDA’s plan to delay for three years approval of the life-saving AIDS drug cocktails. It also relates stories of great suffering and heroism by the AIDS patients, along with accounts of the frustrating behind the scenes political maneuvering needed to get each party to put aside politics and do the right things.

Dr. Driscoll became deeply involved in the passage of the FDA reform bill of 1997. He served on the Presidential Advisory Council for HIV-AIDS, and worked on implementing domestic and foreign AIDS treatment programs until 2016, when he returned to writing. His latest book, How AIDS Activism Challenged America, concludes by exposing how much remains to be done to make FDA more responsive to patients and to alleviate the severe stigma that still impedes the fight against AIDS and denies LGBT people their full human rights. Dr. Driscoll documents for the first time a crucial chapter in the dual fight for HIV treatments and for LGBT rights.

“A disturbing story of a risk-averse bureaucracy delaying lifesaving medical innovation. The FDA insisted that approval of AIDS drugs required huge, expensive, multiyear efficacy studies to see if they substantially prolonged life. Activists countered that those standards should be relaxed for a fatal disease with no good treatment, and that quicker testing for safety and performance metrics—like reduction of viral load—was sufficient. (Driscoll and his allies won the battle and were proven right in 1996 when the expedited approval of protease inhibitors dramatically reduced death tolls.) At his best, the author offers a shrewd, engrossing primer on effective activism as he recollects how he coordinated street protests, punchy PR, and backroom lobbying. In one masterful maneuver, he got Quayle’s aides to summon FDA officials to the vice presidential office and confront them with anguished AIDS patients desperate for new drugs. Driscoll is also affecting when he recalls the loss of friends and loved ones. . . A rambling, rancorous but often gripping account of a crucial chapter in the war against AIDS.”
– Kirkus Reviews