Martin Delaney,
the founder and longtime director of the HIV advocacy and
education organization Project Inform, and long-time
contributor to The Advocate, died Friday of liver
cancer at his home in San Rafael, Calif. He was 63.
In 1985, Delaney
founded Project Inform, a national HIV treatment and
public policy information and advocacy organization based in
San Francisco, serving as its director until 2008.
Delaney was involved in the development of today's
widely used Accelerated Approval regulations and the
Parallel Track system for providing experimental drugs to
seriously ill people prior to formal Food and Drug
Administration approval.
Delaney recently
received the National Institute of Allergy and
Infectious Diseases Director's Special Recognition Award for
his achievements in the field of AIDS. Upon receiving
the award, NIAID director Anthony S. Fauci, MD,
released the following statement: "Millions of
people are now receiving life-saving antiretroviral
medications from a treatment pipeline that Marty Delaney
played a key role in opening and expanding. Without
his tireless work and vision, many more people would
have perished from HIV/AIDS. He is a formidable
activist and a dear friend. It is without hyperbole that I
call Marty Delaney a public health hero."
In a statement,
Human Rights Campaign president Joe Solmonese said,
"Martin Delaney was one of the pioneers of AIDS
activism. While not HIV-positive himself, Delaney
dedicated much of his life to shaping our
nation's public policy on HIV/AIDS legislation and
worked on the local level to promote education and a
greater understanding of HIV/AIDS issues. He worked
with the drive and hope to one day find a cure for
HIV/AIDS, and while it did not happen in his lifetime,
we'll continue the important work of lobbying
Congress for additional HIV/AIDS funding to find a
cure." (Neal Broverman, Advocate.com)