Millions of people: Martin Delaney and AIDS Activism

In the early 1980s, several of his friends became infected with HIV, and died of AIDS. Though he himself was never HIV-positive, their deaths drew Martin Delaney into the AIDS movement.

When he heard about a cold remedy, ribavirin, that was being smuggled from Mexico because it had been found to strengthen the immune system, Martin made several runs to Tijuana to get some. Soon after, he decided he could be more effective by taking political action.

He launched Project Inform, which started "medically supervised guerilla trials" – community-based studies of the safety and efficacy of drugs that did not have federal approval. It sponsored town-hall-style informational meetings around the country, and set up a national AIDS-treatment hot line.

He "challenged the research and pharmaceutical community in the earliest years of the AIDS epidemic to consult with HIV-positive patients and their advocates" about treatment options, in the words of Project Inform's current executive director, Dana Van Gorder.

Martin died on Friday at age 63, of liver cancer. Just before he died, he received the Director's Special Recognition Award for "extraordinary contributions to framing the HIV research agenda" from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a division of the National Institutes of Health.

NIH Director Antony Fauci, MD, said, "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."

Advice: Like Martin, live a life of political action to help your sick friends.

Read a very different activist’s story.

Thanks to Dennis Hevesi for the source article in yesterday's issue of the New York Times.

A fire-spotter to stop conflagrations in human lives: Chad Varah of the Samaritans

Edward Varah, founder of the Samaritans suicide prevention group, died this month near London, at age 95.

He grew up in England, the son of a minister in the Church of England. Just before he was ordained as a young man, he had presided over the funeral of a 13-year-old who killed herself because she mistook menstruation for a symptom of venereal disease.

This was a pivotal experience in his life, as his parish experience showed him that sexual problems drove many to contemplate suicide. He enlisted parishioners to help him field calls to prevent suicides. He started the Samaritans with a newspaper ad pleading for volunteers who would come to his historic London church and use "active listening therapy" to help the hundreds of people who contemplated suicide each day. After formalizing the Samaritans organization, he wrote a guidebook and became a spokesman for the group.

He said he once thought of the Samaritans as fire spotters who "keep watch for the conflagrations that break out in human lives."

Samaritans now operate in more than 40 countries, where it is also known as Befrienders Worldwide. Father Varah was widely recognized for having pioneered the phone help line for those threatening suicide, and he received honors from the American Association of Suicidology and Queen Elizabeth II.

Advice: Volunteer, and help stop the conflagrations in human lives.

Browse the index at the very bottom of this page for related stories, or read another suicide prevention story. Thanks to Adam Bernstein, who wrote the source story in the Nov. 15 issue of the Boston Globe.

She opened a laundry to support her hotline: Recovery from addiction

Wu Xuemin, a 40-year-old woman in Baotou City, in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, was sent to a local agency to have treatment for her drug addiction.

Three years later, she has been successfully running a special hotline to help other addicts.

"When I was first in the anti-addiction clinic, my whole body ached, and I seemed to have a thousands ants crawling over me," she recalled.

Wu conquered her addiction with the help of the police officers and her roommates at the center. Afterward, she pledged to start a new life by helping other drug addicts to cure their habit.

The former addict opened a hotline called "Xuemin Chat Room" to talk with addicts and their relatives. The hotline received hundreds of calls in the first year.

When the local authorities heard that Wu had run into financial difficulties in running the hotline, they helped her by providing a new office and a computer. Wu has also opened a laundry to support her hotline and to give former addicts a job.

"I hope more and more brothers and sisters who want to give up their addiction will get in touch with me," she said, "I will spare no effort to help them."

Advice: Spare no effort to help your friends struggling with addiction, like Wu Xuemin has.

Read one of our addiction recovery stories, or read more from the source article from the Xinhua News Agency.