Nightline Daily E-mail: August 29

ByABC News
August 29, 2001, 4:37 PM

W A S H I N G T O N, August 29 -- A couple of months ago Time Magazine printed an article listing some of the most influential people of the last century or so. The list, a very short list, really, included Gandhi, Susan B. Anthony, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Larry Kramer.

Larry Kramer, who has hurled insults at New York Mayor Ed Koch, PresidentRonald Reagan and virtually every politician, scientist or journalist who has had anything to do with AIDS for the last 20 years. Yes, that Larry Kramer. Right beside MLK and Gandhi.

Why not? Larry Kramer helped found the Gay Men's Health Crisis in New YorkCity in the early 1980s, when most politicians wouldn't utter the word AIDS. And by the time he founded the organization ACT UP in the late 1980s, government-funded medical research still moved at such a glacial pace that drugs in development posed virtually no hope for the thousands of sick and dying.

And while there is still no cure for this deadly virus, and millions will die of AIDS around the world, Larry Kramer and the rest of the early AIDS activists have made an enormous difference. Larry led the charge of AIDS activists who refused to be ignored by politicians and the public. They demanded change from the scientific community and they got it. Larry helped change the way people with AIDS and other illnesses people are treated and considered by the medical community as a whole.

But one thing is for sure. Larry didn't do any of it by being a sweetheart. He has been relentless. And rude. And infuriating. And at times, even mean. Amazingly, he has a flood of admirers and friends. One of his longtime adversaries, Dr. Anthony Fauci, who oversees AIDS research at the National Institutes of Health, now calls Larry one of his closest friends.

In a conversation with Ted Koppel, recorded in Larry's New York City apartment, Larry talks about his anger, his work and all of the work still to be done. You would think that he might have mellowed after so many years of watching his friends die and after so many years of screaming at rallies and writing angry letters, and most of all, after years of struggling with his own HIV and other health problems.