Born on July 9, 1926, in Como, Italy, Mathilde Galland was educated at the University of Geneva, where she received her doctorate in 1953. That same year she entered into a brief marriage with a Bulgarian medical student; following their divorce, she married Arthur B. Krim, chairman of United Artists, in 1958.
She worked on biomedical research projects at the Weizmann Institute of Science at Rehovot, Israel, from 1953 to 1959, and at Cornell Medical College in New York City until 1962. In that year she began working as a researcher at New York╒s Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, where she eventually became head of the interferon laboratory. From 1986 to 1990 she was a research scientist in the Department of Pediatrics at St. Luke╒s Roosevelt Hospital Center and Columbia University. In 1990 she became adjunct professor of public health and management at Columbia University.
It was while directing Sloan Kettering╒s interferon laboratory in 1980 that Krim learned about AIDS; from then on she devoted her considerable talents and energies as a researcher, fund-raiser, and public health educator to fight against the disease. In 1983 she used more than $100,000 of family monies to found the AIDS Medical Foundation. She set to work raising additional money, much of it from the Hollywood celebrity circles in which she and her husband Arthur, by then chairman of Orion Pictures, traveled. After merging with a similar organization in 1985, Krim╒s group became known as the American Foundation for AIDS Research (AmFAR), which as of 1992 had donated more than $43 million to AIDS causes.
The bulk of AmFAR╒s funds went to research, often supporting short-term financing to allow scientists to pursue ideas that were too new to be able to attract federal money. AmFAR was also instrumental in the development of a network of 45 centers for community-based clinical research trials, which reached out to patients who might not otherwise have participated in research programs. In addition to research, AmFAR was active in education and lobbying efforts, and it played a key role in the passage of the so-called Ryan White Act authorizing health care services for people with AIDS. The organization was also involved in debates on a number of controversial policy issues, including condom distribution in schools and the legal entry of HIV-infected people into the U.S.
As AmFAR╒s founder and cochair, Krim was involved in AIDS issues on the local, national, and international level. She was an advisor to New York City Mayor David Dinkins on AIDS issues, testifying before the New York City Board of Education in favor of school condom distribution in 1991. At the United Nations╒s World AIDS Day Conference in 1990, she stressed the responsibility of affluent nations to work with developing countries in fighting the epidemic, sharing ╥knowledge as well as financial and technical resources.╙
In a 1992 interview, Krim stressed the need for the U.S. to heed the lessons of the AIDS crisis for our health care system, noting ╥long before AIDS, we needed a national health insurance system; we needed better, accelerated drug development; we needed nursing homes for people with chronic diseases and hospices for people with terminal diseases. AIDS has made these needs obvious and acute because of all the suffering it causes and the urgency and costs it entails.╙
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