Subject: ACT UP SF Brawl in the Hall
From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 18 Mar 1996 04:16:11 -0500

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
DATE:  March 17, 1996 

CONTACTS:
Michael Bellefountaine:  (415) 487-9954
Michael DeHart:  (510) 419-0374
  
ACT UP SF Questions Turn Drug Company Forum Into Brawl in the Hall
------------------------------------------
AIDS Activists Assaulted for Condemning Community Consortium Promo of
Unproven Therapies

San Francisco - On March 16th, a quiet Saturday morning conference on
anti-AIDS therapies by San Francisco's Community Consortium exploded into
violence after members of the controversial direct action group ACT UP San
Francisco fired questions at organizers and speakers about their financial
ties to the pharmaceutical industry. Angry protestors grilled doctors Donald
Abrams and Paul Volberding about their eagerness to promote potentially
dangerous treatments despite scant scientific data on the compounds' clinical
benefits and amidst preliminary test results that downplay the toxic effects
associated with long-term use.

A half dozen activists from the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, clad in
bright red T-shirts emblazoned with biohazard symbols, distributed referenced
fliers and immunology journal articles by reknown researchers like Jay Levy
to the crowd of 150 practitioners gathered in the Davis Medical Center
auditorium. The articles, which cast serious doubts on the current path of
AIDS research, highlight the ineffectiveness of combination therapy in
extending life; point out the harm these agents pose to the immune system of
HIV-infected individuals and question the use of peripheral blood viral load
counts as markers to gauge disease progression and drug effectiveness.

The conference began with activists aggressively charging Donald Abrams,
chairman of the Consortium and head of the FDA Antiviral Committee, of using
money from Glaxo-Wellcome and Roche pharmaceuticals to fund a promotional
seminar of their products under the guise of an objective medical forum. A
flustered Abrams was driven from the podium as protestors threw fake red
dollar bills imprinted with the words "Glaxo/Roche Blood Money."

ACT UP members then greeted featured speaker Dr. Paul Volberding, Director of
UCSF's AIDS Program, with accusations of conflict of interest for appearing
in an advertising video for AZT. As Volberding launched into his presentation
on the use of viral load testing, activists drowned him out by shouting "what
about HIV-infected cells of the lymph nodes, spleen and mucosal tissues Paul?
Peripheral blood viral load fails to measure these reservoirs of infection!"

Fifteen minutes into the conference, organizers called the police as
activists stepped up their intense barrage of questions. Before authorities
arrived, however, Consortium supporters physically assaulted one of the
activists in an attempt to force the HIV-positive dissenters from the room.
Violence erupted as protestors rushed to the defense of ACT UP member Michael
DeHart who was shoved to the ground and dragged into the hallway by
conference organizers and volunteers. Police stated that they plan to file a
report on the incident Monday, March 18th; no one was arrested.
DeHart, HIV-positive and still weak from recent treatment for non-Hodgkin's
lymphoma, expressed outrage at the violent behavior displayed toward the
questioning AIDS activists.

"It's frightening that these obsessed pill pushers, unable to answer our
questions, would respond with violence. I just got out of the hospital and
these goons want to put me in another one. And, why? Because we refuse to
take another toxic drug or buy into the sensationalism surrounding another
unreliable surrogate marker," he stressed. "Haven't we learned anything in
the last decade? Trying to kill the virus with immune suppressive agents
doesn't work. We demand that researchers focus on strengthening the human
immune system."

To support their position, activists refer to current literature in
immunology that shows that a strong cellular immune response, with elevated
levels of cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CD8s) and natural killer cells (NKs), is
the hallmark of long-term nonprogressive HIV infection. Activists are also
quick to point out that the majority of long-term nonprogressors have
rejected antiviral therapy.

ACT UP members are extremely critical of current pharmaceutical industry
advice that urges the HIV-infected to initiate potent combinations of reverse
transcriptase and protease inhibitors in an effort to reduce peripheral blood
viral loads counts to zero. They assert that this approach to combatting HIV
is flawed for several reasons:

First, the reduction of non-infectious viral RNA in the peripheral blood to
undetectable levels by drugs like AZT or ritonavir does not mean that
actively replicating HIV has been eliminated from the body or that the
patient will experience any definite clinical benefit. Activists assert that
it is the HIV-infected cells of the lymph nodes, spleen and mucosal tissues,
not blood, that are major reservoirs of HIV infection; reservoirs that
antiviral therapy fails to reach and peripheral blood viral load tests fail
to measure.

Second, ACT UP members cite recent articles in the journals AIDS and Lancet
that demonstrate that antiviral therapy interferes with the body's protective
cellular immune response. In addition, activists charge that drug company
reps are downplaying the low bioavailability and consequent threat of severe
liver damage associated with long term use of the new class of protease
inhibitors.

"This game of promoting expensive, harmful drugs by touting their temporarily
effects on dubious surrogate markers like CD4 counts and blood viral load
must stop now," demands ACT UP member Todd Swindell. "We're dying while AIDS
research is held hostage by drug companies and the virologists, clinicians
and so-called AIDS advocates on their payrolls. This isn't science; it's
exploitation of the sick in its most vile form."

ACT UP members say that they will escalate their efforts to expose the
conflict of interest and biased advice inherent in the mainstream AIDS
treatment community while they educate the HIV-infected community about the
protective cellular arm of the immune system.

"Activists in San Francisco have the obligation to provide people with AIDS
objective information on their immune system; how it is negatively impacted
by current antiviral therapies and how it can be strengthened," comments ACT
UP members Michael Bellefountaine. "We will not be intimidated by the SFPD or
the violence directed at us by representatives of the pharmaceutical
industry."

For more information contact Michael Bellefountaine at (415) 487-9954 or
Michael DeHart at (510) 419-0374.

ACT UP San Francisco / AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power
1388 Haight Street, #218; San Francisco, CA 94117
Phone: (415) 522-2907; FAX: (415) 834-0243; Email: [email-masked]

=======================================

What follows is the text of the flier ACT UP members distributed to
conference attendees:

MONEY FOR NOTHING...VOLBERDING'S VIRAL LIES!

Conflict of Interest: Wasted Funds and Lost Lives 

Paul Volberding, The Godfather of AZT, is demanding that the new great hope
of antiviral therapy, the protease inhibitor, be available regardless of the
outrageous price set by the drug industry. Depicting protease inhibitors as
"clearly having a substantial benefit", Volberding contradicts his recent
Lancet article finding that "the maximum suppression with antiviral therapy
is seen after 2-4 weeks."1,2

It is not too difficult to recall Volberding's shameless promotion of the
aggressive use of AZT monotherapy a few years back. Happily appearing in a
promotional video for Burroughs Wellcome, the principal author of ACTG 019
has always been willing and eager to promote a drug company's latest
ineffective AIDS therapy regardless of the cost. 

Volberding describes the debate regarding pharmaceutical industry price
gouging as "an emergency funding issue."1 With the constant threat of slashed
Ryan White AIDS funding and potential collapse of the city's health system,
Volberding's insulting sales pitch plays right into the hands of murderous
homophobes such as Jesse Helms and the Republican Party.

Finally, it seems all to appropriate that Donald Abrams, head of the FDA
antiviral committee, would be serving as moderator for this ghoulish parade
of toxic immunosupressors. With this very presentation being sponsored by an
"unrestricted educational grant from Glaxo-Wellcome Inc. and Roche
Laboratories", it is glaringly obvious that this freakish sideshow of failed
AIDS therapies has traded scientific integrity for the profiteering promotion
of products. 

Combination Therapy: Flogging a Dead Horse 

The rationale for the treatment of AIDS with combination antiviral therapy is
so scientifically unsound and dangerous that these doctors of death could
very well be sued for fraud. There is nothing new to report. The toxic drugs
that make up the arsenal of reverse-transcriptase inhibitors follow the same
pattern set by AZT. Anyone wondering about that drug's effectiveness need
only look to the much cited Concorde study which showed no significant
difference in survival or progression to HIV disease with the use of AZT.3
The virus's ability to rapidly mutate renders the treatment, and others like
it, ineffective.

But in all of the excitement around combo therapy there is little attention
paid to the extremely toxic side effects of these treatments and their
suppressive effect on the cellular immune system.4 It is a robust cellular
immune system with elevated levels of CD8 cells that has been shown to be the
hallmark of those with long-term nonprogressive HIV infection.5 The mantra of
the AIDS establishment, "To Do Nothing Is To Die", flies in the face of these
nonprogressors, a majority of whom choose to do nothing. Nothing, that is,
but let their strong cellular immune response control the virus and its
associated infections.

Protease Inhibitors: A Bitter Pill To Swallow 

The media hype about the hope of this "new" class of potent agents reads more
like a sales brochure for pharmaceutical companies than relevant scientific
information. Here are some important facts that haven't been reported:

1) The major attraction of combining antiviral therapies is to sidestep the
virus's quick mutations. However, in the instance of protease inhibitors, the
evidence is in that HIV resistance is already present in patients who have
not received these agents.6 Recalling the "success" of AZT monotherapy in
slowing viral replication, this new combination of therapies will be
successful for only one thing: the drug companies bank accounts.

2) As with previous antiviral therapies, doctors are again downplaying the
immune suppression that is inherent with their approach towards slowing viral
replication. By inhibiting the cleavage of the protease enzyme, these
inhibitors also interfere with the secretion of an important cellular
cytokine: NF-KB.7 Considering that NF-KB is vital for the secretion of IL-2,
another key stimulator of cellular immunity, the protease inhibitors follow
the lead set by reverse-transcriptase inhibitors: interference with cellular
proliferation. Among the cells whose functions are impaired are cytotoxic T
lymphocytes (CD8s) and antigen-presenting cells (APCs); the same cells that
are responsible for controlling viral replication and the intracellular
infections associated with AIDS.

Viral Load: It Doesn't Measure Up 

The key to the latest sales pitch from these pharmaceutical pimps
masquerading as physicians is a new surrogate marker even more dubious than
the worthless measuring of CD4 cells. The so-called clinical benefit of
protease inhibitors is their reduction of viral RNA within the blood stream.
Fasten your seatbelts; Here we go again:

1) These tests measure viral RNA while ignoring truly infectious proviral
DNA. Measuring proviral DNA in HIV-infected cells is the only accurate way to
gauge actively replicating virus in the body8; the viral RNA in the blood is
only representative of non-infectuous particles mainly due to viral shedding.

2) By focusing on the blood, researchers and doctors are continuing to ignore
the real sites of viral infection: the lymph nodes, spleen and mucosal
membranes.9 It is in these areas which HIV-infected cells reside; areas that
are not measured by viral load and areas upon which antiviral therapy has
little effect.10

The goal of these treatments is to reduce peripheral blood viral load down to
zero yet the clinical benefits for the patient of using these unproven
compounds to do so is still unanswered. Even Volberding has stated in his
recent Lancet article that the data surrounding peripheral blood viral load
is "preliminary".2 This myopic "kill the virus" mentality of putting HIV into
remission is nothing but a profitable smokescreen that suppresses cellular
immunity through the use of toxic and expensive therapies. 

How much longer will AIDS research ignore cell-mediated immunity and be held
hostage by these bought-off butchers?

IT IS TIME FOR PEOPLE WITH AIDS TO REVOLT! 

1. Kingston, T. ADAP Squeezed From All Sides. S.F. Fronteirs, Vol. 14, Issue
23, March 14, 1996.
2. Volberding PA. HIV quantification: clinical applications. The Lancet, Vol.
347, Jan, 13, 1996.
3. Seligmann M et al. Concorde study. The Lancet, Vol. 343, April 9,1994.
4. Cooper et al. Administration of zidovudine during primary HIV-1 infection
may be associated with a less vigorous immune response. AIDS, Vol 7 No 1,
1993.
5. Pantaleo G et al. Studies in subjects with long-term nonprogressive human
immunodeficiency virus infection. NEJM, Vol. 332 No. 4, January 26, 1995.
6. Lech et al. Presence of protease inhibitor- resistant variants in
untreated subjects. J. Virol., 2038-2043, Mar. 1996.
7. Leonardo et al. NF-KB: A pleiotropic mediator of inducible and
tissue-specific control. Cell, Vol. 58, 227-229, July 28, 1989.
8. Levy JA et al. Plasma viral load, CD4 cell counts, and HIV-1 production by
cells. Science, 1996, Feb. 2, 271:670-671.
9. Sei S et al. Quantitative analysis of viral burden in tissues from adults
and children with symptomatic HIV type-1 infection assessed by PCR. J.
Infect. Dis., 1994, 170:325-333.
10. Pantaleo G. et al. The immunopathogenesis of HIV infection. NEJM, 1993,
328:327-335.