OK, who is watching Angels in America Part II right now???

[La_Serpiente]

or has watched it already?

What do you think?

[Liberal Veteran]

1. I watched it and I enjoyed it thoroughly.....

Great drama, but it also had some interesting hindsight issues that were interesting. The one being the AZT. AZT as a monotherapy and in the doses they were taking them at during that period was not a very useful treatment at all. The high doses caused a lot of bad side effects and the benefits were so transitory as to be considered non-existant when weighed against the quality of life. It did make sense for the time period it was written, however.

It also reminded me of how far we have come in a lot of ways. We have learned so much and entire new fields of pharmacology have made dramatic headway, as well as some changes to the approval process of a new drug. Back in the "bad old days" there was no fast track approval or compassionate use protocols. The FDA was bogged down in bureaucracy and protocols that strike me as bizarre. People were dropping like flies from AIDS and the FDA was like "we can't let people take this drug until it has gone through years and years of double blind testing". We organized and changed that. In the final analysis, more good than harm was done by saying "Hey! We aren't one hundred percent sure of this drugs efficacy or long term effects, but if it furthers science and brings hope to those without hope, let's give people the damn drug." Any number of people right now are still alive today because of some of those successes, but they did have some costs. The most vulnerable and hopeless of people put their lives on the line before halfway successful antiviral therapy made it's breakthrough in 1995.

So yeah. It brought a lot back for me. The desire to live and the will to see what tomorrow brings makes us special and unique and thank my lucky stars every day that is given to me because if I had been a little less fortunate I would not be around to see tomorrow. I think maybe when I start feeling a little bit sorry for myself over having this virus (and I must admit there are days when it gets me down), I can look back on this movie and remember that every day is a gift and I have it so much better than people a decade back.