Subject: Flier from ACT UP SF Delaney Zap
From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 12 Jan 1996 08:02:17 -0500

On January 11, 1996 seven members of the direct action AIDS organization ACT
UP San Francisco disrupted the Project Inform Town Hall Meeting held in San
Francisco that featured speakers Martin Delaney, Dr. Steven Deeks and Dr.
Thomas Merigan. 

The disruption was the first in a planned series of attacks on mainstream
AIDS organizations in San Francisco that ACT UP SF has identified as
embroiled in conflict of interest through their acceptance of pharmaceutical
industry contributions. What follows is the text of a flier distributed to
HIV-infected attendees seeking treatment advice from Project Inform at the
town hall meeting.

WARNING TO THOSE WITH HIV & AIDS!

Project Inform receives drug company money. The information they dispense is
not objective. Following their treatment advice can be hazardous to your
health and can cause serious damage to your already weakened immune system.
Here are some points to keep in mind:

Project Inform uses research findings from outdated and flawed clinical
trials to support their assertion that people with HIV and AIDS initiate
therapy with antiretrovirals or protease inhibitors. For example, in their
AZT Fact Sheet, seven of the ten studies they reference as support for
antiviral intervention are at least five years old. Several of these cited
studies, like the widely denounced initial AZT trial by Maragret Fischl,
tested their respective agents for less than 6 months and gave no indication
of compounds' long-term harmful effects on people with AIDS. In fact, early
results from a clinical trial (ACTG 019) by San Francisco's Paul Volberding
was cited as proof  in 1990 by Project Inform that the HIV-infected should
immediately take AZT. However, final results of this trial in 1995 found that
although AZT did "slow the decline in laboratory markers like CD4 counts, it
did not prolong either AIDS-free or overall survival." The study's
researchers then admitted that "these results do not encourage the use of
AZT" in asymptomatic, HIV-infected adults. (NEJM, August 17, 1995)

Project Inform consistently misrepresents CD4 counts as indicators of disease
progression, survival time and quality of life for those with HIV despite
scientific evidence to the contrary ("Concorde Study", The Lancet, April
1994). Martin Delaney, in cooperation with pharmaceutical industry insiders,
was a key player in convincing government officials early in the course of
the AIDS crisis to elevate T-cell counts to the status of a "standard" in
determining the supposed effectiveness of antiviral drugs. Project Inform now
uses lab markers like CD4 counts and the equally unreliable peripheral blood
viral load counts as weapons to intimidate the AIDS community into taking
it's pharmaceutical employer's profitable, unproven therapies.

Project Inform continues to ignore the characteristics virtually universal
among long-term survivors of AIDS: that these HIV-infected individuals
refrain from using antivirals and that they have elevated levels of CD8 cells
("Long-Term Nonprogressive HIV Infection", NEJM, Jan. 26, 1995). Despite this
important evidence, Project Inform reps continue to urge PWAs to dose
themselves with combination antiviral therapy that temporarily increases CD4
counts but in the long run destroys patients' CD8 cells ("Administration of
zidovudine during primary HIV-1 infection may be associated with a less
vigorous immune response", AIDS 1993, Vol. 7, No. 1)

Project Inform, as paid drug company representatives, has shown incredible
contempt for the health and well-being of people with AIDS. They prey on a
frightened, desperate community by attempting to pressure HIV-infected
individuals into initiating toxic antiviral therapy. If adverse side effects
arise in the HIV-infected from use of these compounds, Project Inform blames
the patient by attributing it to "patient anxiety". P.I. authors state in one
antiviral Fact Sheet that "no one should underestimate the power of belief in
evaluating side effects. A positive mental experience can contribute to an
easier time with the drug."

Project Inform has been pushing unproven therapies for years with little
regard to the detrimental consequences these compounds may have on our bodies
or the suffering that they may cause us. Their mantra of "access to
therapies" is extremely suspect given Delaney's outspoken stance on
deregulation and the conflict of interest in which his organization is
steeped. Project Inform repeatedly touts as "promising" potentially harmful
treatments and encourages those with HIV and AIDS to take them despite scant
scientific proof of effectiveness and/or warnings of toxicity. Bitter Melon,
TAT inhibitor, Compound Q, and Hypericin are all piled high on P.I.'s scrap
heap of dashed hopes after receiving much hype from the organization.

Project Inform's relentless promotion of pharmaceutical industry agents to
kill HIV has led the AIDS community down a dead end. People with AIDS need to
be concerned about strengthening, not weakening, their immune systems. ACT UP
San Francisco urges the newly infected to educate themselves on recent
treatment developments. Check out the resources at UCSF medical library. Do
not feel pressured to panic and plunge into dubious therapies promoted by a
small handful of so-called treatment activists who have made the AIDS crisis
a career opportunity.

ACT UP San Francisco
1388 Haight Street, #218
San Francisco, CA 94117
(415) 522-2907
(415) 834-0243 FAX
[email-masked]