4.7 • 8K Ratings
🗓️ 28 January 2023
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Dr. Gary Davis, an Ivy League-trained Black physician from Tulsa, Oklahoma, had a literal dream that the cure for AIDS would come from a goat. In the new podcast Serum, a reporting team at WHYY and Local Trance Media delve into the unusual story of a Davis’ quest to develop the cure.
At the height of the AIDS epidemic in the early ’90s, Davis derived a serum from goat blood that he believed could help cure HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. He brought his research to the FDA to start a clinical trial – but just hours before it was supposed to start, it was shut down. Davis had powerful critics and ardent supporters. Some sued in court to be allowed to try Davis’ treatment, while others chose to ask for forgiveness rather than permission to get their hands on it.
What was the true potential of Davis’ serum – and who are the people who say it saved their lives?
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0:00.0 | From the Center for Investigative Reporting in PRX, this is Reveal. I'm Al Letson. |
0:07.0 | There's a poison. It's the most borrower in our side to see the ocean possible. |
0:11.0 | In September of 2019, reporter Grant Hill gets into a lift. The driver likes to talk. |
0:18.0 | He said that's the future, that's what we really wanted to do. But he wanted to clean a cup of ice. |
0:23.0 | His name is Clyde Ashley Sherman, and he says the lift gig is only temporary. He really works in the entertainment industry. |
0:31.0 | Used to be Jamie Foxx's assistant, hung around movie sets all the time, played chess with Tom Cruise. |
0:37.0 | Needless to say, Grant is a little skeptical. Sherman keeps talking and eventually asks Grant what he does. |
0:44.0 | When Grant tells him he's a journalist, Sherman cocks his head towards the backseat, raises his eyes, |
0:50.0 | and says he has a really big story if Grant wants to hear it. |
0:55.0 | But Sherman warns that it's old testament kind of stuff. |
0:59.0 | Grant pulls out his phone and starts to record. |
1:06.0 | And Sherman tells Grant about his reason for living. |
1:09.0 | I knew my reason for living, my race on debt should per se. |
1:12.0 | To fulfill a promise to a scientist. |
1:15.0 | Get this message, because the scientist kind of made me promise. Because even when he pulled over, |
1:20.0 | so why don't you say I'm a bringing a message to him, you're going to be the one to bring the message to the world. |
1:23.0 | Not me. It's when he first called. |
1:25.0 | The scientist, he says, was a brilliant black doctor from Tulsa, Oklahoma named Gary Davis. |
1:30.0 | According to Sherman in the early 90s, Davis discovered a cure for AIDS. |
1:35.0 | But I think I'm supposed to do a blunt out talk. God use or an happy little doctor on anything. |
1:42.0 | And God will find someone who will know exactly what he's doing. |
1:45.0 | Of course, by this point, Grant is way more than skeptical. I mean, it sounds crazy. |
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