Essay Questions

Why does Ron file a lawsuit against the FDA?

Woodruff has been taking Peptide T, an experimental drug to help prolong the life of AIDS patients. It has yet to be approved by the FDA and is non lethal; therefore, being denied his right to take it by the FDA, Ron is left only with the option to file a lawsuit against them in order to allow him to take it in hopes of living longer. In the end, Woodward loses his case against the FDA, although they eventually allow him to take Peptide T.

What stereotype and prejudice does Ron experience in the film?

Ron has contracted AIDS from having unprotected sex with an intravenous drug user two years prior. Yet when he tells his friends and family that he has the lethal disease they believe he got it from having homosexual sex. This is a stereotype that was perpetrated, particularly in the United States, against the gay community as being the source of the disease when in fact that is not the truth. The playwright Larry Kramer wrote The Normal Heart in response to this prejudice as he witnessed it first hand in the 1980s.

What exactly is the Dallas Buyer's Club?

Ron Woodroof created the Dallas Buyer's Club in the 1980s in order to allow people diagnosed with AIDS to have access to drugs that would actually help them prolong their life, rather than being guinea pigs in experimental trials to determine if a drug could be found. The Club was created in response to AIDS patients dying from trials and not being given the full picture of hope through all methods of healing alternative drugs available to them.