Subject: AIDS Forum Fecal Fiasco!
From: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 19 Oct 1996 08:50:55 -0400

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, 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].

==========

(ACT UP SF flier distributed to audience at disrupted SFAF forum.)

About-face on new AIDS drugs by antiviral kingpin signals trouble; prompts
urgent reconsideration of flawed chemotherapeutic treatment paradigm!
--------------------
ACT UP SF demands immediate public debate on merits and dangers of antiviral
therapy; calls for an end to premature, drug company funded hype!

Members of ACT UP San Francisco are here tonight to sound the alarm and send
a strong message to city government and people with AIDS discouraging the use
of experimental anti-HIV drugs called protease inhibitors. These compounds,
which have been on the market for only a matter of months,  were rushed
through the FDA approval process at the behest of drug company front groups
like Project Inform and San Francisco AIDS Foundation, tonight's forum
sponsor.

Despite the relentless barrage of scientifically unsubstantiated hype by pill
pushers like SFAF about combination therapy with protease inhibitors,
startling news reports in the Wall Street Journal and New York Native are
emerging about these agents's life-threatening dangers and harmful long-term
effects.

This week Donald Abrams, Head of the FDA Antiviral Committee, Director of the
AIDS Program at San Francisco General Hospital and Chairperson of the
pharmaceutical industry promotional vehicle Community Consortium spoke out
against antiviral therapy with protease inhibitors.

In the October 10, 1996 Synapse article entitled "Abrams Cautions On Use of
New AIDS Drugs" the prominent drug researcher questioned "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."

Furthermore, he stated that a large percentage of his patients "have watched
all of their friends go on the antiviral bandwagon and die so they've chosen
not to take any antiretrovirals."

Abrams, who has previously stated that he believes protease inhibitors were
not studied sufficiently enough to be approved, concluded by admitting that
he warns his patients to wait and avoid antiviral therapy.

Such foreboding news hasn't stopped representatives of the drug industry from
attributing wild claims of efficacy to this unproven class of potent agents.
However, the evidence is clear that these drugs simply interfere with vital
metabolic processes to merely manipulate blood borne "markers" like viral
load and CD4 counts; which have recently come under fire as having no
relation to immune system improvement (Annals of Internal Medicine, Oct. 10,
1996, "Surrogate End Points in Clinical Trials: Are We Being Misled?")

Clinicians ignorant of immunology have asserted, without a shred of
scientific evidence, that protease inhibitors  "reduce the infectiousness of
AIDS patients." Pharmaceutical puppet groups like ACT UP Golden Gate have
worked diligently to increase the market share of antivirals by touting them
as potential "morning after pills" for the HIV-negative. Most frightening of
all, SF Public Health Director Sandra Hernandez has proposed drastic legal
measures to force people with HIV to consume these dubious and dangerous
products. Meanwhile, so-called AIDS advocates are forcing federal programs to
pay the $15,000 a year price tag for these poisons thereby transforming
potentially lifesaving relief efforts like the AIDS Drug Assistance Program
(ADAP) into a murderous federal subsidy for the pharmaceutical industry.

It's time to stop this greedy genocidal game of "exploit the sick" and demand
that AIDS research focus on strengthening the body's protective cellular
immune response to stop deadly AIDS infections!

ACT UP SF members vow to escalate our disruptions of mainstream AIDS forums
until Direct Observation Therapy is resoundingly opposed by city officials.
We challenge politicians and HIV-negative AIDS dictators like Pat Christen
and Martin Delaney to an immediate public debate about the toxic products of
death they promote. We won't stop screaming until we drown out the unethical,
unfounded drug company financed hype about these violent products.