AIDS Authority

Media Matters
Dec 19 India is all the rage in the world of AIDS lately.
Dec 17 A Reuters report titled, "AIDS Spreading Among Wives in India," has nothing to do with an increase in AIDS among Indian wives.
Dec 17 Being a US senator is a good career move.
Articles
Dec 24 An Informed Public
Dec 22 Conspiracies and Big Business
Dec 19 Dismantling Dreams [part 2]
Dec 17 Biological Markers
Dec 15 AIDS For Profit
Other
Manifesto What this site is up to
Site News Recent notices of our slow but steady rebirth
Email for information, comments or feedback.
Dismantling Dreams, part 2
From 'Senate Passes FDA Reform Bill':
"The legislation is critical for the drug industry because it renews an expiring program that has already cut drug review times dramatically."
As Carl Feldbaum, president of the Biotechnology Industry Organization, a Washington-based trade group, put it,
"This may be the most important bill for the biotech industry in its history."
Does anyone imagine that this bill was so important not primarily for financial reasons, but because they think it will allow them to treat AIDS patients more effectively?
But the door is open. Activists were immediately aware that the FDA reform was not in their best interest.
"There are few constituencies who support the concept of FDA reform as strongly as the one million people living with HIV/AIDS in America; but few constituencies will be harmed as greatly by this bill,"
said Daniel Zingale, AIDS Action Executive Director.
"Gradual improvements in the approval process have achieved a balance between increased approval time and the protection of consumer safety; the Senate bill breaks this delicate balance."
"Overhauling the FDA" was never done with the best interest of people with AIDS in mind. It was done with the interest of the pharmaceutical and biotech industry in mind.
Scientists now are to the medical establishment what economists have long been to the banking establishment: advocates for the financial hand that feeds them and the political structures that give them power.
"Despite objections from AIDS activists, who say the value of ddC has not been adequately proven, a panel of scientists is advising the Food and Drug Administration to approve the use of the drug as a treatment for HIV."
Activists have provided the cover needed to further the corporate agenda that propels HIV/AIDS research in the directions that it does. Usually the White House has to apologize for or deny its unflinching service to the corporations that put its occupants in power. With AIDS, though, the White House can brag about those relationships, because they were fostered with the blessing of activists, the very same liberal types who generally serve as watchdogs.
Certainly there are those who see through Clinton's gay-friendly facade, but even these critiques do not explore the larger injustice of how homosexuals have been used as pawns. Not just to further an image, but to provide cover for a corporate coup: the removal of the costly obstacle of safety in the race to getting drugs to the market.
Activists are not determining meaningful policy about drug approval or access; they are simply making it possible for that policy to happen with their blessing. Getting the FDA overhauled was no problem, since it served the larger interests. Getting federally-subsidized needle-exchange programs, which serves no corporate interests but would save lives by minimizing exposure to a number of contaminants that pass on the end of unsterile needles, doesn't get the same warm White House reception.
AIDS lives be damned. If activists want sterile needle programs, they should figure out how to tie such a program to significantly increased corporate profits. They will be amazed at how quickly the White House warms up to the idea.
Activists are pawns, not policy makers.