Early AIDS activism

He formed Positively Healthy, which was the only charity for HIV positive gay men. He also campaigned against the use of the AIDS drug AZT

Zidovudine

Zidovudine or azidothymidine is a nucleoside analog reverse-transcriptase inhibitor , a type of antiretroviral drug used for the treatment of HIV/AIDS. It is an analog of thymidine....

, sometimes known as Retrovir, due to the toxicity

Toxicity

Toxicity is the degree to which a substance can damage a living or non-living organisms. Toxicity can refer to the effect on a whole organism, such as an animal, bacterium, or plant, as well as the effect on a substructure of the organism, such as a cell or an organ , such as the liver...

. He used himself as an example of someone who can live a healthy life after testing positive and argued that the fact that he could live over twenty years without taking any drugs.

Positively Healthy

Positively Healthy, founded by Cass Mann, was an organisation that provided advocacy for gay men infected with HIV and AIDS. Positively Healthy favoured a holistic approach encouraging a healthy lifestyle, diet and nutritional supplements over medicine.

Deadly Counsels

His article, "Deadly Counsels: The Necrophiliacs of AIDS", was a chapter in the book edited by John Lauritsen and Ian Young: The AIDS Cult: Essays on the gay health crisis (1997). He wrote:

I declare that the greatest danger to people living with "HIV" and "AIDS" is the wholesale pollution of "AIDS" counselling by the death-promoting and life-negating philosophy of such counsellors as Kübler-Ross, whose disciples have been placed in practically all the major UK "AIDS" counselling agencies, with tragic consequences. When people come to them for advice, the Kübler-Ross counsellors tell them to prepare for their own imminent death, which, they unscientifically claim, inevitably follows a diagnosis of being HIV-antibody positive.
…'Don't accept that having HIV or AIDS is a death sentence'; 'Question the medical knowledge and scientific accuracy of all AIDS data you have been presented with'; 'Find out what people living healthily with HIV/AIDS are doing with their lives'; 'Only have in your life that which supports and celebrates your aims and purposes, and detach immediately from everything that doesn't.' He concluded the essay by saying, 'for all those who have condemned us to die, the following message: LIVING IS THE BEST REVENGE!'

A year before his death Cass was commissioned by AIDS Videos to make a number of short films encapsulating Positively Healthy's message. The videos went live on YouTube in March 2008.

Final years and death

Cass remained faithful to this ethos both in his work at Positively Healthy and in his own life. Following his HIV diagnosis in 1985, he lived a full and active life until his health began to decline 23 years later.