The Dallas Buyers Club By Ron Woodroof

The Dallas Buyers’ Club is based on a real life story of Ron Woodroof. He is a wealthy Texas cowboy whose heavy smoking, drinking, and drug use life is disrupted in 1985 when he was diagnosed as HIV positive and given 30 days to live. After being rejected from many of his old friends and bereft of government approved medicines, he decides to come up with an alternative for his treatments. His pathway leads him to Mexico, where an American medical doctor who had his license revoked prescribes him with ddC and protein peptide T. He begins to export it over the border not only for selfish reasons, but for sale for other HIV people. He becomes business partners with a transgender woman named Rayon for better access to the gay community. As the

He reads up on the drug at the library. At Burroughs Wellcome Pharmaceutical Headquarters in North Carolina, Dr. Sam Broder from the National Cancer Institute meets with David Berry, VP of research, who thinks AZT is too dangerous and untested without enough market potential. Broder’s impassioned speech convinces Berry to change his mind. Ron does more research at home. Berry meets some executives to push forward on the AZT trials, as they’ll get a tax break from the government. The underfunded FDA research lab, headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci turn their entire attention to the drug. Ron, suffering from an assortment of ailments, goes to the hospital. When he starts to get rowdy, Eve puts him in his place. Later, she sits with him and explains that Sevard works for Burroughs Wellcome, who pays the hospital to run the trials. Protocol dictates that not all those accepted into the programs would receive AZT, but a placebo instead. “You give dying people sugar pills? He brings up other options available in foreign countries that work and are non-toxic. Unfortunately, they’re not FDA-approved. “Screw the FDA, I’m going to be DOA.” After his anger subsides he tells the doctor, “You sure are easy to look

The truth is that the long-game of dealing with how HIV/AIDS affected the United States medically and economically is much more complex and naturally, can’t be told in a two hour movie. While there have been movies that have dealt with AIDS, they have mostly been fictional dramas about the emotional toll on one or a few characters and their friends and family, like Longtime Companion and Philadelphia, not really the fight to how the U.S. has got to a place where it has managed the disease and perhaps come close to finding a cure, and the grassroots movement that help make it happen. In fact, there really hasn’t been anything outside the documentary world; the recent We Were Here and How to Survive a Plague come to mind. So, it goes without saying that this film will ruffle the feathers of some of the activist segment of the gay population. It will also be courting controversy with its hardline stance against AZT, as well as perhaps its portrayal of Burroughs Wellcome, the research firm behind the drug which greatly benefitted from it