In March 1987, zidovudine, widely known as AZT, became the first approved antiretroviral drug for treating HIV/AIDS. It was not a cure and later proved limited when used alone, but it marked the first major pharmaceutical response to the epidemic. Its approval also exposed tensions over drug access, pricing, trial design, and the urgency of dying patients.

AZT entered AIDS poetry and memoir as both hope and burden: a medicine taken against time, side effects, poverty, and fear. The drug belongs to the historical context behind works by Paul Monette, Thom Gunn, and Mark Doty, where survival is measured in pills, hospital visits, elegies, and activist anger.