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Garance Franke-Ruta
(Photo: Bill Bytsura) |
Garance Franke-Ruta
Born in France and raised by artistic parents in Mexico and New Mexico, Franke-Ruta left high school after two years, eventually finding purpose in New York. She arrived in 1988 and, with fellow activist Derek Link,
co-founded an initiative they called Countdown
18 Months to pressure pharmaceutical companies to test and market drugs for the opportunistic infections that were the actual killers of people with AIDS. “I think
the hardest part was that no matter how hard
you worked, it didn’t make a difference in keeping people alive, because that was beyond human capacity at the time.”