Subject: final version: Tuskegee: Apology rings Hollow
From: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 17 May 1997 08:06:49 -0400 (EDT)

ACT UP Washington Media Alert

Group calls failure to support needle exchange programs, Clinton's modern day
Tuskegee
Apology rings hollow
for AIDS activists

 The Clinton Administration's 'apology' for the Tuskegee syphilis experiments
rings hollow for AIDS activists who have been long demanding that President
Clinton lift the federal funding ban for clean needle exchange programs to
prevent the spread of AIDS.  The AIDS advocacy group ACT UP in Washington DC
calls the Administration's refusal to support needle exchange programs
"Shameful and unethical.  Bill Clinton's own modern-day Tuskegee."

 A mountain of studies including the US Centers of Disease Control and
Prevention have established the efficacy of needle exchange programs to
reduce HIV infection among injection drug users.  Yet President Clinton has
steadfastly refused to lift the funding ban on clean needle programs even
though Congress has given him the authority to do so.  Tens of thousands of
new HIV infections could be prevented if the funding ban were lifted,
according to Dr. Peter Lurie, a leading researcher who released his findings
last July.  

 "The Clinton Administration continues to withhold the proven medical
intervention of needle exchange because he considers the lives of injection
drug users expendable.  Needle exchange is Clinton's own modern day Tuskegee.
 What future president will apologize for Bill Clinton's failed AIDS record?"
states ACT UP Washington spokesperson Steve Michael, who is HIV positive.

DELAY=DEATH!
 Clinton's calls for bio-ethical standards and the greater participation of
minorities in studies sound hollow to AIDS activists.  "Delays equal death.
 The Clinton Administration's lack of action on needle exchange is nothing
short of genocide," adds Michael.

 The Clinton Administration's failure to support needle exchange programs has
drawn harsh criticism from his own HIV/AIDS Advisory Panel in reports leaked
by ACT UP Washington.  Congress gave the authority to lift the ongoing
federal funding ban for needle exchange in a clause included in the annual
appropriations for the Department of Health and Human Services.  Top
administration officials have long been delaying action on the needle
exchange funding ban, repudiating a 1992 Clinton campaign promises to support
such programs, and stating that more studies were needed.

contact ACT UP Washington 202.547.0854