Revealed: Nancy Reagan refused Rock Hudson’s last-ditch request for AIDS treatment in France
en-First
Lady Nancy Reagan refused a request from actor Rock Hudson to help him
get experimental treatment just weeks before he died of AIDS in 1985,Buzzfeed reported on Monday.
Hudson’s
publicist, Dale Olson, contacted then-deputy press secretary Mark
Weinberg in July 1985, asking if President Ronald Reagan’s
administration would help Hudson be transferred to a French military
hospital where he could be seen by Dominique Dormant. Dormant had
secretly provided treatment to Hudson for the disease months earlier.
At
the time, Dormant was working on developing HPA-23, an early
experimental drug that led dozens of AIDS patients from the U.S. into
France seeking treatment, believing it could help them bolster their
immune systems against the virus.
“Commanding
general of Percy Hospital has turned down Rock Hudson as a patient
because he is not French,” Olson’s telgram read. “Doctor Dormant in
Paris believes a request from the White House or a high American
official would change his mind.”
Weinberg told Buzzfeed that,
although Hudson was a friend of then-President Ronald Reagan’s from
their days as actors, the first lady was concerned that they “had to be
fair” regarding these types of requests.
“The
view was, ‘Well, we’re so sorry,’” Weinberg said. “And she was, they
were both very sorry for Rock’s condition and felt for him and all the
people. But it just wasn’t something that the White House felt that they
could do something different for him than they would do for anybody
else.”
Weinberg
subsequently wrote a memo to Bill Martin, an assistant for President
Reagan within the National Security Council, explaining his conversation
with the first lady.
“She
did not feel this was something the White House should get into and
agreed to my suggestion that we refer the writer to the U.S. Embassy,
Paris,” Weinberg wrote.
Weinberg
insisted that her response “had nothing to do with AIDS or AIDS
policy.” The Reagan administration was criticized for its early inaction
in response to the virus, which killed more than 6,000 people that year alone.
“In
fairness — and I’m not saying this to you, just to people — remember
where the country was in the ’80s,” Weinberg said. “We talk about it
now: ‘How could he?’ Nobody knew, nobody understood. It was all brand
new back then.”
LGBT
activist Peter Staley, who founded the HIV/AIDS patient advocacy
organization the Treatment Group, took issue with Weinberg’s
explanation, calling it “strange.”
“I’m
sure if it had been Bob Hope in that hospital with some rare, incurable
cancer, Air Force One would have been dispatched to help save him,”
Staley told Buzzfeed.“There’s
no getting around the fact that they left Rock Hudson out to dry. As
soon as he had that frightening homosexual disease, he became as
unwanted and ignored as the rest of us.”
While
Hudson eventually gained access to treatment from Dormant, his
condition — by then publicly revealed as a result of contracting AIDS —
had weakened to the point where HPA-23 could not help him. Hudson
returned to the U.S. that month, as public discussion of the disease
increased with the news he was a victim. He died on Oct. 2.
Almost
two years later, Ronald Reagan addressed the issue in public for the
first time during a speech at a May 1987 fundraiser for the American
Foundation for AIDS Research.
“It’s
also important that America not reject those who have the disease, but
care for them with dignity and kindness,” he said at the time. “Final
judgment is up to God; our part is to ease the suffering and to find a
cure.”
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