Subject: HIV+'s challenge Hollywood "elite" over animal rights
From: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 15 Jun 1996 12:17:44 -0400

Hollywood elite attacks AIDS Research

ACT UPs Fight Back!
for immediate release       June 15, 1996
contact Steve Michael or Wayne Turner at 202.547.6780

Washington, DC - - The AIDS advocacy organization ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to
Unleash Power) in Washington DC is preparing for a week-long campaign to
counter increasing attacks on AIDS research by animal rights extremists, who
will be holding an exposition, rally and Hollywood Gala here June 17-21.  
 A number of animal rights groups, including Peta, are seeking to end the use
of laboratory animals for life-saving medical research.  Even if animal
research develops a cure for AIDS, "we'd be opposed to it anyway because we
always take the animals' side of the case." stated Peta's Linda Lange in a
June 15 article in the Washington Post.
 ACT UP spokesperson Steve Michael, who is HIV positive, comments, "Our lives
are more important than a bunch of lab rats.  People with AIDS need housing,
health care, and nutrition.  We're trying to stay alive until there's a cure.
 These people have too much time on their hands and too many T-cells."
 Many people with AIDS are staying healthy longer because of medications
developed through animal testing.  However, attacks on AIDS research by
animals rights groups have severely hampered efforts:
*  Two laboratories at the University of Arizona were burned and over 1200
rats, rabbits, and mice were stolen by the Animal Liberation Front (Alf),
destroying years of research to develop a treatment and vaccine for
Cryptosporidium, a bacteria that causes deadly diarrhea in people with
damaged immune systems.  An outbreak of Crypto in Milwaukee two years ago
killed over a hundred people with AIDS, and almost wiped out that city's ACT
UP chapter.  There remains no treatment for Crypto.
*  Another animal terrorist group, Paws, shut down a project at the
University of Washington studying mother-to infant transmission of SIV (the
monkey version of HIV).  Researchers are still seeking answers to how HIV is
passed-on from mother to infant.
*  Objections by animal supremacist groups to a groundbreaking experimental
procedure transplanting baboon bone marrow to an AIDS patient caused
expensive delays and came close to derailing the project altogether.  The
patient, ACT UP's Jeff Getty, is alive and well, and scientists are learning
invaluable information about the immune system.
 ACT UP will be joining researchers, scientists, and other patient advocates
(such as breast cancer and diabetes) in several events, including press
conferences, pickets, and acts of civil disobedience.  In particular, ACT UP
will be targeting the celebrity fund-raisers of animal rights groups.  "The
Hollywood crowd needs to realize that by supporting groups like Peta, they
are killing people with AIDS." adds Michael.  "They can't wear a red ribbon
and support groups that oppose our efforts for a world without AIDS."
 ACT UP members will be targeting the hypocrisy of those entertainment
figures that support and fund organizations like Peta, Alf and Paws.  Michael
concludes, "It makes me sick to see the likes of Rue McClanahan (Golden
Girls), Linda Blair (The Exorcist), Tippi Hendron (The Birds), Earl Holliman
(Police Woman) and Chrissie Hynde (The Pretenders) participating in a
fund-raiser for organizations proudly proclaim their opposition to the use of
current technology to save the lives of two million HIV positive Americans.
 Their actions play into the very hands of right-wing extremists.  The Pat
Robertsons, Pat Buchanans and Ralph Reeds of the world relish the message of
Hollywood's 'politically correct' liberal establishment: Lab rats and mice
are more important to the world than Gay men, people of color, injection drug
users and Lesbians.
 ACT UP Washington vows to do whatever it takes to expose this killing
hypocrisy.

For more information or to
arrange interviews contact
ACT UP Washington at 202.547.6780.  

ACT UP!
Fight Back! Fight AIDS!
NOT
AIDS Research!