THE WEEKLY REVEAL

Hello! In this issue:

• The doctor who believed he found a cure for AIDS in goat blood.
   
• Watch “The Grab” at festivals in California and Montana.
   
• Our After Ayotzinapa series is on another best-of list.

THIS WEEK’S PODCAST

A Miracle Cure for AIDS or Snake Oil?

At the height of the AIDS epidemic in the early 1990s, Dr. Gary Davis, a physician from Tulsa, Oklahoma, created a serum from goat blood that he believed could cure AIDS.

He brought his research to the FDA, but it failed to win approval. And without approval from the federal agency, Davis couldn’t get trials going for patients. At the same time, the FDA was fast-tracking other potential treatments because of the urgency to deal with the infection. Davis’ supporters believed he wasn’t taken seriously because he’s Black, even though he has Ivy League credentials.

But word started to spread about his serum and people started coming to Davis to seek treatment. The serum was a miracle to some who were desperate and sick. And it was snake oil to federal regulators, who insisted it did not work.

This week on Reveal, with the podcast Serum from WHYY’s The Pulse and Local Trance Media, we go back to the ’90s to try to understand the true potential of Davis’ serum.

INSIDE THE NEWSROOM

Watch ‘The Grab’ at Two Upcoming Festivals

Investigative journalists Nathan Halverson, Emma Schwartz and Mallory Newman in a still from “The Grab” documentary. Credit: Jonathan Ingalls

Our new documentary “The Grab” reveals how governments and corporations around the world are taking drastic measures to control access to food and water.

Here are two opportunities to catch the film in-person at festivals:

• Santa Barbara International Film Festival, Feb. 8-18, 2023
   
• Big Sky Documentary Film Festival in Missoula, Montana, Feb. 17-26, 2023.

After Ayotzinapa Makes Another Best of 2022 List

Credit: Illustration by Dante Aguilera

The Global Investigative Journalism Network has named our After Ayotzinapa series, produced in partnership with the National Security Archive, as one of its favorite investigative podcasts of 2022.

The team described it as “a moving podcast, with impeccable production values and a talented, bilingual female investigative reporter.”

In 2014, 43 students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College in Guerrero, Mexico, were taken by armed men in the middle of the night. They were never seen again. Their disappearance sparked mass protests, as the 43 became symbols of Mexico’s unchecked human rights abuses. The After Ayotzinapa series exposes corruption at the highest levels of the Mexican government and an unsettling connection to America’s war on drugs. Add it to your listening list.

A Quote to Remember

“We’re just getting started, baby. I can’t let my state become one where we condone high-tech sweatshops.”

— New York Senate Labor Committee Chair Jessica Ramos, who sponsored the Warehouse Worker Protection Act. The new law says warehouse workers can’t be forced to hit work quotas that would prevent them from taking meal and rest breaks and using the bathroom.

As we reported in 2019, Amazon workers felt such pressure to achieve productivity targets and escape discipline that some delayed bathroom trips and even developed urinary tract infections. New York’s law also says employers must provide written notice of quotas and provide productivity data to workers who request it. It’s the latest example of government officials taking action after years of mounting injuries from Amazon’s relentless drive for speed.

Read the full story: New York Passes Law to Protect Amazon Warehouse Workers

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