Mark Harrington (left) with the WHO's Haileyesus Getahun.

For a liberal arts graduate with no formal science background, Mark Harrington has a lot of influence on research for AIDS and tuberculosis (TB).

We're not going to get to where we need to be without a massive investment into basic science. Mark Harrington, Treatment Action Group

The head of the New York–based activist organization Treatment Action Group (TAG), Harrington commands respect from even the most senior AIDS and TB researchers. Last year, the group published a comprehensive analysis of funding for TB—showing, for example, that TB gets less than five percent of the amount spent on AIDS—that has quickly become a must-have resource in the community.

Harrington himself sits on the advisory boards of powerful agencies, including the US National Institutes of Health and the World Health Organization. With a four-year, $4.7 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, he is trying to strengthen support for TB by training AIDS activists on the issues, coordinating outreach with African activist groups, educating advocates and policy makers in Washington, DC, and pushing for more funds.

“We need to have strong activists in the countries most affected by HIV and TB so they can raise the awareness of the governments,” he says.

Harrington is no stranger to advocacy. In 1988, during the early days of the AIDS movement, he joined the famous ACT UP group in New York. He launched TAG four years later. Though still heavily involved in AIDS activism, Harrington in 2002 began campaigning for TB, a neglected disease with far fewer advocates.

“TB is a disease of the poor and the excluded and there's never going to be a worldwide movement of TB activists the way there is with HIV,” says Harrington. “We're not going to get to where we need to be without a massive investment into basic science.”