Badpuppy Gay Today

Tuesday, 27 May, 1997

President Clinton invoked the imagery of President Kennedy launching the Apollo Project when he announced the goal of finding an AIDS prevention vaccine within ten years. In his speech before the graduates at Morgan State University, Clinton gave lip service to a long awaited, unfulfilled promise; a national mobilization of research efforts to find an AIDS cure.

The HIV prevention vaccine proposed by Clinton would do nothing to save the lives of the millions already infected. Clinton's announcement does nothing to consolidate or coordinate AIDS research. It merely reassigns a couple dozen researchers, taking them off other projects. Nor does Clinton allocate resources for his Apollo Project beyond $17 million already budgeted, less than the amount it took to develop and market the space drink Tang. Clinton has adopted the rhetoric of ACT UP in its demand to end the AIDS epidemic, but his proposal has all the substance of "I feel your pain."

ACT UP first proposed in 1991 an all-out coordinated research effort to find a cure for AIDS, by mobilizing resources and bringing together researchers from diverse fields. The fast track urgency behind the development of the atomic bomb, or landing an American on the moon, provided a useful precedent for AIDS activists advocating the kind of intensive effort necessary to find a cure for AIDS.

Activists trailed Clinton during the 1992 Presidential primaries urging him to speak out on AIDS issues. From New Hampshire to South Dakota, from Seattle to Little Rock, ACT UP demonstrators displaying "What About AIDS?" signs repeatedly encountered Clinton on the campaign trail, urging him to commit to fighting AIDS.

Clinton finally relented. At a speech before Gay community fund-raisers held on May 12 1992 in Los Angeles, Bill Clinton promised "to make AIDS a top priority" of his administration, and proposed a "Manhattan-type project to develop a cure for AIDS".

Yet Clinton failed to keep that promise once elected. The President's supporters deflected criticism from AIDS activists who demanded action, dismissing the notion of a research project to find an AIDS cure as too radical. In the first term of the Clinton presidency, the number of AIDS deaths exceeded that of twelve year totals under Reagan/Bush. AIDS became, and continues to be, the leading cause of death among all Americans between the ages of 25-44. The excuses followed: give Clinton more time, wait until the 94 elections, wait until the Democrats win back Congress, wait until Clinton's second term, wait until Al Gore is elected. For activists fighting for their very survival, delay equals death.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D, NY) took the ACT UP proposal and introduced it as a bill in Congress, the AIDS Cure Act. Lobbyists representing multi-million dollar AIDS service organizations campaigned against the Nadler AIDS Cure Act, fearful that it might detract from the steady stream of dollars flowing to providers like GMHC and the Whitman Walker Clinic. With only two dozen co-sponsors, the AIDS Cure Act never made it to Congressional hearings. Activists never got the opportunity to testify about the lack of coordination of AIDS research, and the inefficiency at the National Institutes of Health.

AIDS activists worked tirelessly to promote the idea of a Project to Cure AIDS in a grassroots campaign of demonstrations, endorsements, posters, advertisements, and op-ed pieces spanning over four years. A television commercial produced by author Neal Dickerson, who died from AIDS in August, 1996, aired on Manchester's ABC affiliate during the New Hampshire Presidential primary in 1996, featuring footage of Kennedy and the moon landing, accusing the President of being A.W.O.L. on AIDS. Clinton has, apparently, caught on.

The Apollo Project proved a better model for AIDS than the development of a weapon of mass destruction, the Manhattan Project. The moon landing represents a triumph for all humanity, launched by the visionary leadership of a Democratic American President to whom Clinton often compares himself. Yet by likening his meager proposal to the Kennedy Apollo Project, President Clinton is perpetuating a cruel hoax on people living with, and dying from AIDS.

The glaring deficiencies exposed by ACT UP in Washington DC and widely reported, have since been echoed by even the most timid AIDS organizations. Given Clinton's four year record on AIDS as President, and his twelve year record as Governor, activists have every reason to be pessimistic.

The President who promised a cabinet-level AIDS Czar to direct national policy has appointed a series of failed, low-level bureaucrats who serve little more than a public relations role. The president who promised targeted, frank HIV prevention campaigns fired his Surgeon General, under right wing pressure, for stating that masturbation is safe sex. The much-touted funding increases fail to match the rising caseloads, with per person spending on AIDS less under Clinton than under George Bush. The President who supported needle exchange programs in 1992 has since refused to lift the federal funding ban, despite overwhelming evidence that funding such programs would save countless lives.

AIDS activists continue to demand a Manhattan/Apollo project to cure AIDS, pointing to the lack of direction and focus in research, conflicts of interest among grant reviewers, and the ever-present profit motive. In 1995, the Levine Working Group conducted a review of AIDS research efforts at the National Institutes of Health, concluding that there is no coordination, or even communication, among researchers at the NIH. There remains no structure, or incentive, for researchers to work together at the myriad of AIDS research projects in both the public and private sector. Vaccine researchers at the Department of Defense do not communicate, or cooperate with their counterparts at universities. Pharmaceutical corporations only rarely share their data with anyone.

The Office of AIDS Research at the National Institutes of Health serves as little more than a funding conduit for projects, with money being shifted from other Institutes, funneled through the OAR, and then back to the Institutes at the NIH. On paper at least, Clinton's shell game made the recycling of existing resources look like substantial increases for AIDS.

The Clinton announcement has shaken the status quo of what we commonly referred to as the AIDS Industrial Complex. Lobbyists for large AIDS service organizations have long opposed an AIDS Cure Project, fearful that it might jeopardize their organizations' funding. Pharmaceutical companies who promote the myth that AIDS is somehow becoming a chronic manageable illness are fearful that the market may dry up for expensive drug cocktails.

Meanwhile for people with AIDS, who are largely poor and without health insurance, their main concern is for the food stamps they lost under welfare reform, and ever growing waiting lists for medical care, housing, drug treatment, and other survival services, Most important for people with AIDS and HIV is a cure.

President Clinton will leave a legacy far more scandalous than Whitewater or renting out the Lincoln bedroom, as the President who abandoned people with AIDS. For them, the Clinton initiative is too little, too late.

_____________________________________________________________________________ (WayneTurner and Steve Michael are founders of ACT UP, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, in Washington D.C. (202.547.0854)
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