Subject: ACT UP Washington shuns DC Pride
From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 29 May 1996 12:50:34 -0400

ACT UP Washington Ashamed of 'Pride'
Opposes decision to let opponents of AIDS research to profit at Gay Pride
event

For immediate release      May 28,1996

contact Steve Michael at 202.462.0104

 The AIDS advocacy and protest group ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power)
in Washington DC is angered and disgusted that PETA (People for the Ethical
Treatment of Animals) will be a prominent vendor at the Lesbian and Gay
Freedom Festival.  PETA's national director Ingrid Newkirk has stated that
even if animal research resulted in a cure for AIDS, "we'd be against it."
 Recently, PETA appealed to the Food and Drug Administration to block an
experimental AIDS treatment in which ACT UP Golden Gate member Jeff Getty
received a bone marrow transplant from a baboon.  
 "It is unconscionable that Pride organizers would allow PETA to profit off
the Gay community.  People with AIDS are more important than lab rats."
states ACT UP's Steve Michael.  "We're simply not at the point whereby
computer models are sufficient."
 Michael continues, "We are calling on One in Ten (pride organizers) to
terminate their food vending agreement with PETA.  To allow an organization
that opposes a cure to compete with organizations that work every day to keep
people alive for the cure, is unacceptable."  The Whitman-Walker Clinic will
also operate a food concession at the event. 
 Pride events are traditionally places where community-based activist groups
generate most of their operating cash.  ACT UP, for example collects about
$5,000 from button, sticker, and  t-shirt sales each year.  Michael
indicates, "ACT UP will shun this year's event if PETA is allowed to profit
from a community they are willing to let die to save rodents."
 AIDS reporter for the Baltimore Gay Paper, Bruce Mirken, writes in the May
17 issue, "Animal testing isn't perfect, but it's a vital safety net that
makes human testing of new drugs far safer than it would be other wise.  And
it is absolutely critical to AIDS research.  It's PETA that is guilty of
fraud."
   In a recent article in San Francisco's Bay Area Reporter, Getty said, "
And like I said several times right from the start, I feel that I'm sad that
the first baboon had to be sacrificed, but I'm much sadder that I've lost 100
of my firends.  I put my life on the line too.  I've been called a human
guinea pig, so I'm an animal thats being used in research.  How come PETA
doesn't come to protect me".
   Getty also obeserved, "There are a couple of interesting things about
animal rights activism that should be noted here...many of the cures for
diseases that are now long gone and out of the way came from animal
research."
   He also obeserved, "If animal rights activists had their way 50 few years
ago, we'd be sitting around talking about all the hundreds of thousands of
people dying from polio..."
 "We're in the middle of an epidemic, struggling to get food, housing, and
health care to people with AIDS.  More of us are dying than ever before.
 Pride organizers should be ashamed of themselves for including an
organization that attacks people with AIDS, undermines AIDS research and is
opposed to finding a cure.  PETA no more belongs at a Gay Pride event than
Pat Buchanan" adds Wayne Turner of ACT UP Washington.