VIRUSMYTH HOMEPAGE

PROTESTERS ROCK CONGRESSIONAL HEARING ON AIDS
Panel focuses on public complacency about the disease

By Justino Aguila

SF Examiner 15 Feb. 2000

A congressional hearing to explore why the American public is growing complacent about AIDS was interrupted by angry members of the militant gay group ACT UP, who demanded to know how federal funds were being spent on the disease.

"Why do you keep funding AIDS?" about a half dozen ACT UP members shouted as they barged into Monday's hearing inside the Hiram Johnson Office building at 455 Golden Gate Ave. holding signs that read, "Stop funding AIDS terror!"

The joint House-Senate hearing was sponsored by the health subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee, chaired by Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., who insisted on giving the activists an opportunity to speak.

"AIDS is over," shouted Ronnie Burk, 45, who said he's HIV-positive. Others chanted similar phrases.

Outside, Burk and his counterparts said they want a better accountability of federal HIV and AIDS funding. Too often, they added, money ends up in salaries instead providing people with basic services like food, housing and clothing.

U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., who was part of the hearing, said the protesters are sending the wrong message.

"Anyone that goes around saying there's no AIDS is doing a disservice," Boxer said during the hearing. She added that she was hopeful that future federally funded programs would reverse the nation's growing complacency about

AIDS

Dorothy Mann, a board member of AIDS Alliance for Children, Youth & Families, called for new strategies and funding as a way to focus attention again on the disease.

"We have focused HIV prevention efforts almost exclusively on uninfected people," Mann said. "We have largely ignored those who are already infected."

Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, who has pushed for increased federal funding for AIDS and HIV prevention, told the panel that one way to get people's attention again is to talk explicitly about sex.

"We (in San Francisco) have been a model for responding to this epidemic," Pelosi said. "Prevention has to be very frank."

Statistics from the San Francisco Department of Public Health's AIDS Office show The City has the highest rate of total AIDS cases per 100,000 residents in the United States. More than 15,000 people in San Francisco have the HIV virus, according to recent reports.

Assemblywoman Carol Migden pointed to the need to keep interest high in fighting AIDS.

"We have gone a long way over the last decade in educating some segments of society about AIDS, but recently we have come to understand that new and differing populations of people are becoming high risk for HIV infection," she said.

VIRUSMYTH HOMEPAGE