History

1990
First Test on Dogs

By December 1989, the Merck scientists finally had developed an experimental protease inhibitor that they were ready to test for safety. A dog study quickly revealed that the substance the team had come up with was toxic. The drug induced vomiting and other common signs of toxicity. Frustrated, the team went back to the drawing board.

In the meantime, word of Merck’s work on a protease inhibitor drug had spread to the well-informed, politically savvy, AIDS activist community. The activists had been a major catalyst in pressuring the federal government to initiate a large-scale research program and speed up drug approval processes, and they had already begun to pressure drug companies to ensure that any treatments developed would be available quickly and priced within the reach of as many patients as possible. Their friends and lovers were dying around them, many of the activists were themselves infected, and now, a decade into the epidemic, the outlook remained bleak.