Author Larry Kramer, whose early advocacy for a national response to AIDS as the disease first emerged in the 1980s helped raise awareness and shape healthcare policy into the 1990s, died on Wednesday at 84.
Kramer, who co-founded the ACT UP movement that made AIDS a national issue, died of pneumonia after enduring illness for much of his life, including his own battle with AIDS, his close friend, Will Schwalbe, said by phone.
Schwalbe, who was also Kramer’s literary executor, stressed that his friend’s death was not related to the COVID-19 pandemic.