Larry Kramer, trailblazing AIDS activist, dies at 84

(CNN)In the early 1980s, a little understood disease called AIDS was stigmatized as society turned its head away from the hundreds of gay men it was killing. But then Larry Kramer published his essay "1,112 and Counting." "If this article doesn't rouse you to anger, fury, rage and action, gay men have no future on this earth," Kramer wrote. "Unless we fight for our lives we shall die." With that one essay, Kramer helped shift the nation's attention to the spread of HIV, and his continued activism, while often divisive, helped propel the US to respond to the crisis in the way it did. That game changer, who many credit as saving thousands of lives affected by HIV and AIDS, died Wednesday in...