3 Feb 2015

Nancy Reagan refused to help Rock Hudson get pioneering AIDS treatment

Nancy Reagan refused to help dying Hollywood star Rock Hudson get a bed at a French hospital at the forefront of experimental treatment for AIDS, it has been claimed. Then First Lady Mrs Reagan turned down a request from Hudson's publicist for help getting the actor transferred to a French military hospital where he could be seen by Dr Dominique Dormant.

rock hudson

Dr Dormant, who had treated Hudson for AIDS months earlier, was at the time working on an early experimental drug that promised to help bolster the immune systems of AIDS sufferers. Hudson, who had kept secret his homosexuality and his AIDS, was eventually given a bed at the Percy Military Hospital in Clamart - thanks to strings pulled with French officials. But in the end it transpired that his condition had deteriorated so badly that even Dr Dormant's experimental HPA-23 treatments could not help him. He chose to return to Los Angeles and died just two months later, in October 1985.

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