Mobilizing

Retrieved from https://aidshistory.nih.gov/mobilizing/index.html

 

How do scientists organize research on a new and deadly disease? In the NIH campus laboratories in Bethesda, Maryland, charting one’s research path and redirecting it was relatively easy: it required only the agreement of the laboratory’s chief scientist and the Institute’s scientific director. This allowed a diverse team of physicians and scientists at NIH—those with expertise in cancer, in immunology, in blood sciences, and in drug development—to quickly form collaborations early on in the AIDS crisis. The AIDS Memorandum, an informal newsletter that fast-tracked unpublished information, circulated among the NIH scientists working on the disease. “My own view is that from the early days we progressed as fast as anyone had a good idea to support,” recalls Dr. Kenneth Sell, then scientific director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. When Dr. Anthony S. Fauci became NIAID director in 1984, he came to the job with a strong personal involvement and interest in AIDS research. In addition to maintaining his own research laboratory and clinical duties devoted to AIDS, he established a special AIDS division within the Institute. NIAID staff oversaw the allocation of most AIDS grants, conducted outreach activities with community groups concerned about AIDS, started long-term studies of people with AIDS, collaborated with the National Cancer Institute to set up a drug discovery process for AIDS drugs, and inaugurated nationwide networks of clinical trial sites to test the most promising drugs and vaccines. In universities and hospitals across the nation, scientists prepared proposals for NIH funding describing the AIDS-related research they wanted to do. After being reviewed by other scientists, those proposals that looked most promising were awarded NIH grants. Although this research grant process could take up to two years, during the early years of AIDS it moved faster, particularly after Congress allocated additional money in 1986.