Subject: AIDS czar "Fat Cat Pat"?! (1 of 2)
From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 4 Dec 1996 23:54:22 -0500

Scary reports out of Washington D.C. that embattled San Francisco AIDS
Foundation Exec "Fat Cat" Pat Christen is being considered by President
Clinton for the position of National AIDS Policy Director.

For years the controversial, HIV-negative Christen has been the focus of
continual criticism by San Francisco activists. People of color, those with
HIV/AIDS and labor representatives charge her with union-busting, receiving
an inflated salary and executive budget, fostering a racist and hostile work
environment and permitting pharmaceutical company interests to corrupt SFAF's
treatment information.

Members of ACT UP San Francisco point out that it was under Christen's
leadership that the Foundation began to accept drug company dollars to run
ads in local gay newpapers encouraging the community to get tested for HIV.
These pharmaceutical financed testing ads slowly metamorphosized into
announcements urging HIV-positives to partake in "early intervention" with
AZT and other toxic chemotherapies. It is now realized that AZT monotherapy
was an ill-advised treatment strategy that benefitted AZT's manufacturer,
Glaxo-Wellcome, but poisoned thousands of San Franciscans with AIDS.

SFAF has blood on its hands and Pat Christen is responsible!

ACT UP San Francisco urges you to PROTEST Fat Cat Pat's nomination to the
position of AIDS Czar by calling, faxing, writing or emailing the White House
and telling them that she is nothing more than an AIDS parasite and
HIV-negative career opportunist.

President Bill Clinton
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, D.C. 20500
Phone: (202) 456-1414
Fax: (202) 456-2883
Email: [email-masked]
Web: http://www.whitehouse.gov/WH/Mail/html/Mail_President.html

==========

San Francisco Examiner
December 4, 1996
Page A-1

AIDS czar finalists emerge
----------
List includes head of S.F. foundation

By Stewart M. Powell
Examiner Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- The head of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation is one of two
Californians on President Clinton's short list to replace departing AIDS czar
Patricia Fleming.

Pat Christen, executive director of the AIDS Foundation, and Phill Wilson,
co-founder of Los Angeles' National Black Gay and Lesbian Leadership Forum
who spoke about AIDS at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago last
August, are among the top candidates for the presidential post that
coordinates federal AIDS policies.

According to a report in Wednesday's Washington Times, President Clinton is
leaning toward appointing Wilson, and AIDS patient, but White House officials
cautioned that the decision is weeks away.

Other candidates for the post include Michael Isbell, director of Gay Men's
Health Crisis in New York, and Jim Graham, executive director of the
Whitman-Walker Clinic, and AIDS testing and support center in Washington,
D.C.

Christen, who has been with the San Francisco AIDS Foundation since 1989, has
overseen the overhaul and streamlining of the agency. She's also lobbied
effectively for more federal and state spending on AIDS.

"I have not talked to the White House or to President Clinton," Christen said
Wednesday. "While I'm very flattered to be considered, I don't know at this
point if it's a serious consideration."

Asked if she'd accept the job if offered, she said, "I can't answer honestly
until I have the opportunity to talk to the president because the president's
vision of that position would determine whether I, or anyone else, would take
that job."

AIDS claimed 343,000 lives in the United States through June, according to
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. An estimated
650,000 to 900,000 Americans are infected with HIV, the virus that causes
AIDS.

White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry said Wednesday that presidential
aides have discussed a successor to Fleming, but that the president has not
yet turned his attention to that post.

Clinton is busy weighing candidates to fill seven vacancies in his 14-member
cabinet and is concentrating first on his national security team, including a
secretary of State and a secretary of Defense.

Clinton, noting that this is World AIDS Awareness Week, vowed Tuesday to
"keep pressuring until we have a vaccine and ultimately a cure."

Vice President Al Gore, speaking for the hoarse president during a White
House ceremony on the awareness week, cited Clinton administration actions in
the first term to combat the illness.

Gore noted that the White House has obtained a 40 percent increase in AIDS
research supported by the National Institutes of Health, shortened the time
it takes the Food and Drug Administration to approve new AIDS therapies,
relaxed Social Security disability rules so that AIDS victims could receive
help, created the Office of National AIDS Policy at the White House and
established a federally sponsored forum to map future research.

Clinton's selection will be his third AIDS czar. His first, Kristine Gebbie,
resigned after being criticized by AIDS activists for being ineffectual.

Fleming, a former senior official at the Department of Health and Human
Services and a protege of HHS Secretary Donna Shalala, took over from Gebbie.

Kim Mills, a spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign Fund, said her
organization favored AIDS activists for the post who had the background
offered by Wilson and Christen.

"They certainly sound like excellent candidates," Mills said. "It would send
a powerful signal because these are people from the front lines."

The Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest gay lobbying group, spent
$2.5 million helping Clinton win re-election.

Mills, noting that some AIDS activists have urged cabinet rank for the new
AIDS czar, said that was less important than the selection of someone who has
the president's ear.

Mills emphasized: "We want this person to have access, and we want the
president to take seriously the recommendations that he or she makes."

Mills said the Clinton administration has performed pretty well in its
efforts to intensify federal efforts against AIDS. But she added, "There's
always room for improvement."

Mills said the GOP-led 105th Congress will offer a crucial test for the
federal commitment to AIDS research.

"It's critical for Congress and the administration to recognize that the
(anti-AIDS drug) cocktails are amazing steps forward, but we still do not
have a cure," Mills said. "We cannot shy away from the quest to find a
vaccine and cure that will end this epidemic forever."

Carol Ness of The Examiner staff contributed to this report.

==========

October 1996 ACT UP San Francisco press release condemning Fat Cat Pat
Christen and the conflict of interest in which SFAF is embroiled. The
organization, under her guidance, now accepts large donations from drug
companies to uncritically hype their toxic products in the pages of the
Foundation newsletter BETA (Bulletin of Experimental Treatments for AIDS).
Activists dumped 25 pounds of used cat litter on her head.

----------

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
DATE: October 18, 1996

MEDIA CONTACTS:
Ronnie Burk: (415) 864-0731
Michael Bellefountaine: (415) 487-9954

Antiviral Party Poopers! ACT UP SF Turns San Francisco AIDS Foundation
Candidate Forum Into Feline Fecal Free-For-All.
----------
Angry AIDS activists dump used kitty litter on Executive Director "Fat Cat"
Pat Christen to protest organization's promotion of toxic, experimental AIDS
drugs.

San Francisco - A poorly attended October 17th candidate forum of prospective
city supervisors organized by the San Francisco AIDS Foundation (SFAF)
deteriorated into a fiasco after a dozen outraged members of the
controversial direct action AIDS group ACT UP SF staged a raucous
demonstration to protest the sponsoring organization's heavy promotion of
protease inhibitors, a new class of AIDS drugs. These potent compounds have
recently come under fire by a prominent San Francisco AIDS doctor and are the
centerpiece of a proposed AIDS prevention plan by City health officials to
track and forcibly medicate the HIV-positive through a drastic dosing scheme
called Direct Observational Therapy (DOT).

Nine men and three women distributed fliers and scientific articles, blew
whistles, and shouted down forum moderator and SFAF Executive Director Pat
Christen, whom they referred to as "Fat Cat Pat" due to her generous salary
that exceeds $120,000 a year. Stealth activists posing as audience members
set off stink bombs as others chanted "Protease Inhibitors Are Toxic Crap!
D.O.T.'s An AIDS Death Trap!" Chaos then ensued as a member of the ACT UP
affinity group S.H.I.T.T. (Stop Hyping Immunosuppressive Toxic Treatments)
stormed the stage and dumped 25 pounds of foul-smelling, used kitty litter
over Christen's head. Shocked political candidates, many of whom were forced
to cut their presentations short, choked, gagged and darted for the door as
the pungent stench of 14-week-old feline fecal matter filled the auditorium.
Two affinity group demonstrators, Ronnie Burk and Todd Swindell, were
arrested, charged with assault and released.

"Pat Christen and other high-paid bureaucrats are nothing but greedy
parasites that leech the life out of the AIDS community," charged dissident
Ronnie Burk who is an HIV-positive, Latino gay man. "SFAF, through their
treatment publication BETA (Bulletin of Experimental Treatments for AIDS), is
paid by the pharmaceutical industry to whip up a feeding frenzy for
dangerous, expensive pills that cure nothing but sluggish drug company
profits. Such premature, unethical hyping of these deadly chemical
concoctions is violently exploitative of our community."

ACT UP members said the protest was to shatter the "relentless barrage" of
scientifically unsubstantiated sensationalism by drug company funded AIDS
groups of protease inhibitors, AIDS drugs that have been on the market for
less than a year. They cited recent scientific articles and news reports in
the Annals of Internal Medicine, Wall Street Journal and New York Native that
expose the life-threatening dangers and harmful long-term effects of the
agents.

Specifically, ACT UP members pointed to an October 10th news report in the
University of California publication Synapse where Donald Abrams, Head of the
Food and Drug Administration's Antiviral Committee and Director of the AIDS
Program at San Francisco General Hospital, spoke out strongly against
antiviral therapy with protease inhibitors. This is Abrams' second public
statement that directly contradicts his long standing support of AIDS drugs
that suppress HIV. Months ago the prominent drug researcher publicly
proclaimed that he felt protease inhibitors were not sufficiently studied to
be approved.

Abrams revealed in the Synapse article that "In contrast with many of my
colleagues at SFGH in the AIDS program, I am not necessarily a cheerleader
for anti-retroviral therapy. I have been one of the people who's questioned,
from the beginning, whether or not we're really making an impact with HIV
drugs and, if we are making an impact, if it's going in the right direction."

The report concluded with Abrams admitting, "I have a large population of
people who have chosen not to take any antiretrovirals since I've been
following them-since the very beginning. They've watched all of their friends
go on the antiviral bandwagon and die, so they've chosen to remain naive to
therapy. More and more, however, are succumbing to the pressure that protease
inhibitors are 'it'. We are in the middle of the honeymoon period, and
whether or not this is going to be an enduring marriage is unclear to me at
this time, so I'm advising my patients, if they still have time, to wait."

ACT UP activists assert that Abrams' about-face on the efficacy of antiviral
therapy signals trouble.

"The fact is that protease inhibitors were rushed through the FDA approval
process so that they could be heavily marketed to clinicians and patients
during the July International AIDS conference. These agents are experimental
and can kill," warned ACT UP demonstrator Medea Lopez. "The discovery of
long-term harmful effects caused by protease inhibitors will spell disaster
for thousands of HIV-positive people who would have otherwise been healthy
had they not been lured into taking them by the drug company financed lies of
puppet groups like SFAF."

Even more frightening, say AIDS activists, are ideas being entertained by San
Francisco Health Director Sandra Hernandez to require all HIV-infected
individuals to consume protease inhibitors in order to "reduce their
infectiousness" and to use the medications as "morning after pills" in
HIV-negative persons who practice unsafe sex. In order to implement such a
proposal, all patients with HIV would need to be tracked and forced to take
medication through a policy known as Direct Observational Therapy
(DOT)-currently used in the treatment of communicable diseases such as
tuberculosis. ACT UP members counter that such notions are fascist and
scientifically indefensible.

"Let's get real here. AIDS isn't a communicable disease like tuberculosis.
Protease inhibitors aren't a cure for AIDS; they are poison. And forcing
citizens to consume poisons through D.O.T. is murder," explained Burk. "ACT
UP San Francisco will not be silent in the face of murder."

Activists demanded that city officials resoundingly oppose D.O.T. and
reiterated their challenge to San Francisco's Health Director and community
leaders to publicly debate the alleged merits and known dangers of antiviral
therapy. In addition, they vowed to continue their disruptions of all
mainstream AIDS forums to counteract pharmaceutical funded drug hype.

###

Press photos (digital & paper) and video of the "Feline Fecal Free-For-All"
are available. For more information on this or other ACT UP SF actions
contact us at (415) 522-2907. Our mailing address is 1388 Haight Street,
#218, San Francisco, CA 94117 * Fax: (415) 834-0243 * Email: [email-masked].

(continued in next email...)
From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 5 Dec 1996 00:02:28 -0500
Subject: AIDS czar "Fat Cat Pat"?! (2 of 2)

(continued from last email...)

November 1995 flier distributed by SFAF union members (SEIU Local 790) at a
San Francisco awards ceremony honoring Fat Cat Pat Christen. Employees
criticized Christen's bloated salary, union busting practices and overt
racism.

----------

What do you get when you call people with AIDS "consumers" of social
services?
--> An award for community service.

What do you get for attacking union activists and basic human rights?
--> A $120,000 salary.

What do you get for maintaining institutionalized racism?
--> An executive budget worth more than a quarter of a million dollars.

What do you get for keeping the gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender community in
the closet?
--> A free hand to do it again for another year.

SAN FRANCISCO SAYS NO!

Pat Christen, the Executive Director of SFAF, will receive a recognition
award from AIDS Health Project-UCSF for her work in the AIDS service
community. In the City, there are many people who are on the front line
battling AIDS for the gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender (GLBT) community,
women and children, African-Americans, Latinos, Asians, or other members of
our community with special needs, who do not receive a penny. Pat Christen
receives $120,000 plus an executive budget in excess of a quarter of a
million dollars.

To date the Foundation has had Unfair Labor Practices charges filed against
it, EEOC charges filed for race and gender discrimination, lawsuits, and
internal grievances involving, once again, primarily people of color. She
continues to portray herself as an innocent victim of criticism.

UNION BUSTING. This executive director followed a union busting protocol to
stop unionization.

INSTITUTIONALIZED RACISM AND DISCRIMINATION. Almost all union members of the
San Francisco AIDS Foundation are people of color or women. SFAF will be
required to go to litigation to answer all charges of race and gender
discrimination. Jobs that require bicultural skills are being systematically
eliminated.

G/L/B/T INSENSITIVITY. It took almost 4 years for the San Francisco AIDS
Foundation to provide domestic partners coverage for the workforce. The union
contract required SFAF to pay the heterosexual equivalent to its gay and
lesbian workers.

WORKER INTIMIDATION. Only union members and activists of the Foundation have
been fired, restructured out of jobs, or "investigated" in an attempt to
quiet any dissention.

LATINO BASHING. A majority of Latinos at SFAF have joined the union to help
stop this violation of human rights. To date, Latinos have been accused of
threatening to kill other coworkers, sexually molesting coworkers, criticized
for speaking with accents and for being "too aggressive."

BAD MANAGEMENT OF SERVICES. It took almost one and a half years to hire a
Client Services Director. The employee turnover in this department is very
high, and it's not because of the stress in working with people who have
AIDS. This department is going through its fourth restructuring in two years,
but SFAF maintains that the services are exceptional.

Tell the AIDS Health Project - USCF administration that you will not tolerate
this type of AIDS bureaucracy back scratching. Call 476-6430 and speak with
Jim Dilly at AHP.

Demonstrate your dissatisfaction. Call your Board of Supervisors and city
hall representatives. Ask them not to attend this event.

Better yet, go to 5 Embarcadero, the Hyatt Regency Grand Ballroom on November
27th at 5:30 p.m., the site of the awards banquet. Let those attending that
San Francisco is not happy!

Need more info? Call (415) 575-1740, ext. 132.

=========

November 1995 ACT UP San Francisco press release describing direct action at
San Francisco award ceremony honoring Fat Cat Pat Christen. Activists set off
stink bombs in the Hyatt lobby and criticized Christen for fostering a
hostile work environment at SFAF and being nothing more than an AIDS
careerist.

----------

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 27, 1995

MEDIA CONTACTS
Michael Bellefountaine: (415) 487-9954
Elsa Lee: (415) 441-9452

Riot at the Hyatt 2: ACT UP San Francisco Raises A Stink at AIDS Event
----------
Activists Disrupt Gala Fund-raiser Honoring San Francisco AIDS Foundation
Exec Pat Christen

San Francisco - Twenty activists from ACT UP San Francisco, the AIDS
Coalition To Unleash Power, crashed a pricey AIDS fund-raiser at the Hyatt
Regency Embarcadero on Monday, November 27th. Angry protesters blew whistles,
chanted, threw fliers, blocked the entrance with "red tape" and set off stink
bombs inside the hotel's lobby. The event, a $75.00 per person "Gala Cabaret
To Honor San Francisco AIDS Foundation Executive Director Pat Christen" was a
fund-raiser for the University of California at San Francisco's AIDS Health
Project (AHP).

ACT UP S.F. members charge that the AHP displayed a "complete lack of
respect" toward the gay and lesbian community by holding their gala
fund-raiser on the evening of November 27, the day that marks the 17th
anniversary of the assassination of openly gay City Supervisor Harvey Milk.
In response to pressure from AIDS activists and the community, City
Supervisors Susan Leal and Tom Ammiano, who were listed on the AHP invitation
as Honorary Committee Members, have stated they will draft a letter critical
of AHP's decision to schedule the festive money-making cabaret at the same
time as the traditional candlelight march to remember the life and mourn the
death of Milk.

AIDS activists say they are also outraged that AHP chose to honor Christen,
an executive director of an organization that for years has been steeped in
controversy and bitter battles with employees and community members alike.
ACT UP S.F. accuses Christen of fostering a hostile work environment and
employing union busting tactics to drive out her critics, receiving a salary
in excess of $120,000 and guaranteeing that openly gay and HIV-positive
members of her management team and the Board of Directors remain at a
minimum. ACT UP San Francisco called for the ouster of Christen earlier this
year, in May of 1995.

"Pat Christen shouldn't be honored; she should be fired. Immediately."
asserts ACT UP member Todd Swindell. "Her tenure at the Foundation has been
nothing but an exercise in contempt toward Queers, people of color and the
HIV-infected. She's got to go and the Foundation needs to be overhauled from
the ground up."

To demonstrate their disapproval of Christen, AIDS activists waved placards
reiterating their demand that the AIDS Foundation "Dump Fat Cat Pat" and
ensure that its Board of Directors be comprised of a majority of HIV-positive
members. They also urged assurances from the Foundation that in this time of
shrinking AIDS budgets, vanishing entitlement programs and cuts in Ryan White
CARE funding that management salaries and staffing, not client services, be
cut.

In addition, HIV-positive protesters were very vocal over what they say is
the AIDS Foundation's inability to provide unbiased, objective treatment
information to clients because they accept large financial contributions from
pharmaceutical companies. ACT UP members point to a 1995 promotional video by
Burroughs Wellcome entitled "Is AZT Right For Me" in which San Francisco AIDS
Foundation representatives advertise the use of AZT, a toxic chemotherapy
with severe side effects that has not been shown to extend the life of people
with AIDS. Coincidentally, Burroughs Wellcome is listed as a top financial
contributor to the AIDS Foundation in their 1994 annual report.

"SFAF cannot be trusted by the AIDS community to tell the truth about the
safety and efficacy of HIV treatments when they are on the payrolls of the
manufacturers of those treatments," comments HIV-positive demonstrator Dave
Pasquarelli. "This blatant conflict of interest is hampering the progress of
AIDS research, corrupting HIV-treatment information sources, and killing PWAs
by hyping drugs that have virtually no value in keeping us alive and
healthy."

At the conclusion of the fund-raising event members of an ACT UP affinity
group called SPITT (Stop Promoting Ineffective Toxic Therapies) set off stink
bombs in the lobby of the hotel sending guests racing out the doors holding
their noses and gasping for air. Demonstrators outside met the fleeing
attendees with chants of "conflict of interest stinks, the drugs don't work!"

Activists assert that AHP's botched AIDS fundraiser is yet another example of
a mainstream AIDS organization more concerned about career opportunities and
finances than the communities it supposedly serves. ACT UP San Francisco
members say that they will continue their campaign to expose the corruption
and conflict of interest in the AIDS industry and demand more community
involvement in curing this disease.

###

For more information on this or other ACT UP SF actions contact us at (415)
522-2907. Our mailing address is 1388 Haight Street, #218, San Francisco, CA
94117 * Fax: (415) 834-0243 * Email: [email-masked].

==========

Original May 1995 ACT UP San Francisco press release calling for the ouster
of HIV-negative Fat Cat Pat Christen from her position at SFAF. Activists
expose a series of AIDSphobic lies Christen fed to the media to justify
locking out members of the press from SFAF's 8th Annual Leadership
Recognition Dinner.

----------

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
DATE: 5-31-95

MEDIA CONTACT:
Michael Bellefountaine: (415) 522-2907

ACT UP San Francisco calls for SFAF Director's Ouster
----------
Insensitive comments and press lockout the latest in a series of problems for
AIDS service organization.

San Francisco -- On Wednesday, May 31st activists from the AIDS Coalition to
Unleash Power (ACT UP San Francisco) delivered letters to the San Francisco
Board of Supervisors condemning remarks made by Pat Christen, Executive
Director of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. ACT UP is urging members of
the Board to issue statements requesting that she resign from her position
immediately.

ACT UP's actions were prompted by comments Christen made in an article in the
May 25 issue of Frontiers magazine. In the news story "Press Lockout Imposed
at AIDS Foundation Dinner", Christen defends her decision to exclude media
from the 8th annual Leadership Recognition Dinner by stating it was needed to
protect the "anonymity" of the leaders and attendees. Christen was quoted as
saying that "for some of these people, this is the first time that they've
been to an AIDS-related event or out in public at all." She added that "many
of our guests are coming with their families, and they're anxious that in no
way would their families end up appearing in photographs or that their faces
will be seen or their names used in the press."

When questioned further by Frontiers, Christen denied that any irregular
security measures were taken to protect the event from a potential zap by
AIDS activists. Activists from ACT UP say they are angered at the corruption
and lack of urgency among mainstream AIDS organizations. A week earlier, ACT
UP San Francisco disrupted a fundraising dinner held by Project Inform.

ACT UP recently received a memo leaked from the AIDS Foundation that proves
that press was kept out and security heightened because of the fear that the
Recognition Dinner would be disrupted by AIDS activists. In addition,
outraged members charge that the "lies" Christen gave Frontiers for excluding
the press cater to the harmful fears and intolerance surrounding AIDS.

"Pat Christian is not just a liar, she's an AIDSphobic liar. It is impossible
to believe that in San Francisco in 1995, the director of one of the
country's largest AIDS organizations would claim that its leaders are afraid
to be seen at their own recognition dinner," commented activist Michael
Bellefountaine, "The truth of the matter is that she's afraid that AIDS
activists, sick of seeing their friends die as SFAF becomes more bureaucratic
and lethargic, would turn her self-congratulatory lovefest into a public
relations disaster."

ACT UP members said that they are appalled by the dangerous implications of
Christen's excuse for barring the media from the event. They believe that the
veil of secrecy which shrouded the dinner ultimately served to stigmatize
people with AIDS and AIDS-related events as shameful and to be hidden away.

"It is unacceptable that Pat Christen excluded the media from attending this
event because she didn't want bad publicity and then played upon peoples'
fears of being associated with AIDS to justify her inappropriate actions. She
should be confronting AIDSphobia; not reinforcing it. What a scary message
for a so-called leader in the AIDS community to be broadcasting to America;
especially conservative rural America," said ACT UP member Dave Pasquarelli,
"She has resurrected stereotypes that we thought were long since dead."

ACT UP members say that Pat Christen, an HIV-negative heterosexual, is out of
touch with the AIDS community in San Francisco and should immediately resign
from her position. They cite recent labor disputes, lack of HIV
representation on the Foundation's Board of Directors, refusal to support
federal legislation to find a cure for AIDS and high management salaries as
further proof that SFAF has strayed far from it's community-based roots.

###

For more information on this or other ACT UP SF actions contact us at (415)
522-2907. Our mailing address is 1388 Haight Street, #218, San Francisco, CA
94117 * Fax: (415) 834-0243 * Email: [email-masked].