Vultures in...

THE GLOBAL FUND

Sightings from The Catbird Seat

~ o ~

THE SPIN

About the Global Fund

The Global Fund is a unique global public/private partnership dedicated to attracting and disbursing additional resources to prevent and treat HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. This partnership between governments, civil society, the private sector and affected communities represents a new approach to international health financing. The Global Fund works in close collaboration with other bilateral and multilateral organizations to supplement existing efforts dealing with the three diseases.

Since its creation in 2002, the Global Fund has become the main source of finance for programs to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, with approved funding of US$ 11.4 billion for more than 550 programs in 136 countries. It provides a quarter of all international financing for AIDS globally, two-thirds for tuberculosis and three quarters for malaria.

Global Fund financing is enabling countries to strengthen health systems by, for example, making improvements to infrastructure and providing training to those who deliver services. The Global Fund remains committed to working in partnership to scale up the fight against the diseases and to realize its vision – a world free of the burden of AIDS, TB and malaria.

http://www.theglobalfund.org/en/about/

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November 30, 2007

Bush urges additional
AIDS money

By JENNIFER LOVEN, Associated Press Writer

MOUNT AIRY, Md. - President Bush urged Congress on Friday to approve an additional $30 billion for the global fight against AIDS over the next five years, and announced he would visit Africa early next year to further highlight the need and his administration's efforts.

"We dedicate ourselves to a great purpose: We will turn the tide against HIV/AIDS — once and for all," Bush said. "I look forward to seeing the results of America's generosity."

Bush chose the gymnasium at Calvary United Methodist Church in this tiny western Maryland town to make his remarks. The church supports a Christian group home and school in Namibia for children orphaned by the disease. Before speaking, he met with representatives from churches and other religious groups that have been fighting AIDS, part of his attempt to highlight his belief that faith-based organizations are the best vehicles for such work.

Evangelical Christians, who make up a large and influential portion of Bush's political support, have been key to his policies increasing U.S. involvement in the fight against AIDS, particularly in Africa. Bush has been said to believe that the United States, and his administration, do not get enough credit for the work being done on the issue.

"Every year American taxpayers send billions of their hard-earned dollars overseas to save the lives of people they have never met," he said.

But "in return for this extraordinary generosity, Americans expect results," the president said, adding that his program demands measurable progress, accountability and the involvement of local partners. The result: The number of people in sub-Saharan Africa receiving treatment for AIDS has gone from 50,000 five years ago to nearly 1.4 million now, he said.

"We have pioneered a new model for public health," Bush said. "So far, the results have been striking."

In May, the last time he devoted a speech to the topic, Bush asked Congress to double the $15 billion that the U.S. committed over the program's first five years to therapy, testing and counseling through the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. The program is active in 120 countries, with a concentrated focus on 15, including Namibia, in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and the Caribbean.

As of the end of September, 1.36 million people in those focus countries had received antiretroviral treatment through the program, with a focus on averting infant infections by treating pregnant women. Others receive testing and counseling.

"Some call this remarkable success. I call it a good start," Bush said.

Doubling the funding for PEPFAR would provide treatment for 2.5 million people, the White House said.

In honor of Saturday's World AIDS Day, the White House hung a red ribbon — 28 feet tall and 8 feet wide — in the North Portico of the mansion to symbolize the fight against AIDS....

The White House also said Friday that the Department of Homeland Security will publish a final rule this winter aiming to help reduce discrimination against those living with the virus that causes AIDS. The new rule would establish a categorical waiver for HIV-positive people seeking to enter the United States on short-term visas.

A 1993 law prohibits HIV-positive people from receiving visas to visit the United States without a waiver. A categorical waiver will enable HIV-positive people to enter the United States for short visits through a streamlined process.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071130/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_aids

THE REALITY

November 1, 2007

A rethink of AIDS policies
after string of failures

Some experts are reemphasizing proven,
low-tech prevention methods

By Craig Timberg, Washington Post

DURBAN, South Africa - Few cases of AIDS have been as closely scrutinized as that of a former South African prostitute named Beauty. Scientists know when this 40-year-old woman became infected, how her body responded and what happened as her immune system collapsed.

But when the subject turns to how Beauty might have been protected from the AIDS virus in the first place, scientists have few good leads. This fall, pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co. halted study of one of the most promising possibilities, a genetically engineered vaccine being tested on four continents, because it simply did not work.

After this latest setback, and with billions of dollars spent on research over more than two decades, scientists say they do not know when -- if ever -- a vaccine will be available in the fight against one of the world's most devastating epidemics. The news has been nearly as bad for other technological solutions, including vaginal microbicides, one-a-day prevention pills and diaphragms.

"We are really groping in the dark," said Salim S. Abdool Karim, director of the Center for the AIDS Program of Research in South Africa, in the seaside city of Durban.

The recent string of failures has sent scientists back to the lab, where, by studying the first months of infection in subjects such as Beauty, they hope to unlock some of the most enduring mysteries of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

But as they do, pressure is building from other experts -- some epidemiologists, physicians and scientists -- to shift attention away from technological fixes. They favor devoting more of the world's $10 billion annual AIDS spending to proven, lower-tech strategies against HIV, such as circumcising men, promoting sexual monogamy and making birth control more easily available to infected women.

"It's criminal not to put money into the things that work, and the things that work are relatively inexpensive," said Malcolm Potts, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley and former head of Family Health International, a research group with extensive experience in fighting AIDS. "We're spending money in the wrong places."

A difficult target

Scientists first identified AIDS in 1981. Despite more than 150 trials and steady flows of cash from the National Institutes of Health, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and other major donors, there are few promising vaccine candidates, scientists say. The most anticipated, developed by NIH scientists, somewhat resembles the Merck vaccine and is due to enter trials soon.

HIV has proved a difficult target in part because it hijacks the immune system, turning the body's own defense mechanisms against it. Then the virus mutates so quickly that a tactic that works one week might be obsolete the next. Because nobody has ever been able to rid their body entirely of the virus, scientists say they do not know what a successful immune response would even look like -- making it harder to know how to provoke one with a vaccine.

Vaccines for polio, flu and measles are made from dead or weakened viruses. They generally do not cause disease, instead producing immunities that help vaccinated people battle the pathogens if encountered later at full strength.

Because scientists feared that even a dead or weakened version of the AIDS virus might cause a lethal infection, the Merck vaccine attempted to stimulate an immune response by altering a common, but much less dangerous, virus to include genetic elements of HIV. Though researchers did not expect the vaccine to prevent someone from contracting HIV, they thought it might prepare the immune system to battle a later infection, helping delay its progress to full-blown AIDS.

It didn't. The safety monitoring board for the trial called for it to be stopped Sept. 21 because the vaccine was ineffective.

Here in Durban, one of the most heavily infected cities in the world, researchers at Abdool Karim's center called each of their 53 vaccine trial participants with the grim news.

Bonga Mkhize, 24, who had received a shot in his upper arm over the past few months, said glumly, "I was expecting it to work."

Among a group of nearly 700 subjects worldwide who received two doses of the vaccine, 19 became infected with HIV, compared with 11 for a similarly sized group that received placebos. The finding alarmed some scientists and underscored the tricky ethics of using human subjects to test potential remedies for incurable diseases.

South African researchers last week began warning hundreds of volunteer test subjects that the vaccine might actually have increased their risk of contracting HIV.

Two trials for microbicides -- gels that women insert into their vaginas to prevent infections -- also ended when more women using the experimental substance became infected with HIV than those using placebos. Scientists theorize that vaginal irritation caused by these products may have made it easier, not harder, for the virus to infect women. A study of whether diaphragms might inhibit HIV found that they were also ineffective.

"It's been an appalling year for the biologists," said Francois Venter, president of the Southern African HIV Clinicians Society.

Technology vs. reality

A technology that has worked in highly controlled settings often fails in the context of actual sexual behavior.

Hospitals routinely use antiretroviral drugs, for example, to prevent infections in doctors and nurses stuck by HIV-infected needles. But when researchers asked healthy West African women to take such medicine every day, the difference in infection rates was so small that scientists could not determine whether the medicine worked.

Condoms, meanwhile, can block HIV but are not used routinely enough to reverse the widespread epidemics in sub-Saharan Africa.

Researchers have struggled to prove the effectiveness of other popular and heavily funded strategies. For example, many scientists believe that treating sexually transmitted infections should slow HIV by healing the ulcers that encourage infection.

But five of six large studies so far have ended in failure.

Theories about the ability of HIV testing and counseling to encourage safer sexual behavior also remain unproved. In some studies, those who learned they had the virus reported altering their behavior; those who discovered they were not yet infected did not. But most studies have found that making HIV testing more available does not slow the spread of the virus, and a rigorous new one published recently in the publication JAIDS found the virus spread most swiftly among those with the greatest access to testing and counseling.

For a study of people at high risk for HIV, Beauty came each month to a clinic that had muffins and hot tea at the ready. Researchers tested her for HIV and gave her free condoms, extensive AIDS counseling and a modest stipend.

Yet when one of her regular customers -- a truck driver who paid about $35 per visit, four times the going rate -- insisted on not using condoms, she chose to risk contracting a lethal disease.

"I heard about it, but I didn't think it would happen," she said. "Your heart just tells you, you won't get it."

The unpredictable nature of human behavior helps explain the enduring allure of a vaccine. If one could be found, a single needle stick -- or maybe two or three -- would confer a degree of lifetime protection.

"Without a biomedical instrument to prevent HIV, basically the world will never be able to control HIV because people will never stop having sex," said Glenda Gray, the lead South African researcher on the Merck vaccine trial.

New push in old direction

As efforts to find a vaccine or other new technological tool against AIDS have faltered, the science behind several existing but lower-tech approaches has grown stronger.

Three studies in three African countries have found that circumcising men lowers their chance of contracting HIV by about 60 percent. And like a vaccine, circumcision offers lifelong protection.

Research shows that public campaigns encouraging monogamy also helped reduce the pace of new infections in Uganda, Kenya and perhaps Zimbabwe. In each nation, falling rates of multiple sexual relationships led to declines in HIV infection rates.

Numerous studies have demonstrated that making birth control easily available to women with HIV gives them the power to keep from having babies who might contract the virus. Providing antiretroviral drugs to pregnant women also limits transmission to babies, but the medicine now reaches only one in 10 African women who need it.

These approaches do not attract the money or attention enjoyed by potential technological fixes such as vaccines or microbicides.

A recent U.N. report calling for massive new spending on AIDS projected only about 1 percent of the money funding either circumcision or efforts to change sexual behavior. There was no line item for expanding access to contraception.

Potts, the Berkeley professor, said the time has come to shift priorities toward existing strategies, however imperfect.

"If we're defeated in one area, we pull our troops back and attack somewhere else. That's what we're failing to do," he said. "We need a military response, and we have a bureaucratic response."

© 2007 The Washington Post Company

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21571977/

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February 10, 2003

The truth about George Bush's
anti-AIDS push

The President is returning a favour from the big
US drug companies, writes Kenneth Davidson.

From The Age

Those who pay the piper, call the tune. In campaigning for the 2002 US Congressional elections, the Republicans spent $US527 million (compared with $US343 million for the Democrats) and $US145 million of the total was raised personally by President George Bush.

According to Public Campaign, a non-profit, non-partisan group campaigning for electoral reform in the US, many of Bush's State of the Union messages to Congress last month were designed to satisfy the desires of his largest campaign contributors.

Thus, more than half the benefits of the $US3350 billion income tax cuts will go to Americans earning more than $US104,000 a year. And they make the bulk of personal contributions of $US1000 or more, which have totalled $US1.8 billion since 1999.

Bush said in his address that social security funds for younger workers are to be shifted into "retirement accounts that they will control and they will own", which will generate billions in new commissions for Wall Street, whether the market goes up or down.

He proposes $US33 billion in tax breaks to resource-extraction industries; to shield utilities from mandatory steps to reduce air pollution; and to open more federal land to logging.

These concessions, all of which have dubious economic or social benefits, provide a handsome return on donations to federal parties and candidates since 1989 which, according to Public Campaign, total: $US81 million from securities and investment firms; $US319 million from extraction industries; $US71 million from utilities; and $US31 million from the timber industry.

Missing from the list of rewards was the $US15 billion AIDS relief program for Africa, which seems to have received a good press, even from Bush's traditional opponents.

The proposal caught everyone by surprise. According to the Planned Parent Federation of America, on his first day in office, Bush restored the Reagan-era "global gag rule" on international family planning assistance.

In May 2002, Bush Administration representatives at the UN Children's Summit opposed the use of condoms for HIV/AIDS prevention.

In July, Bush withheld from the UN Population Fund $US34 million in funding for birth control, maternal and child care and HIV/AIDS prevention. In August, he withheld more than $US200 million in funding programs to support women and tackle HIV/AIDS in Afghanistan.

Last month, the US killed a deal agreed to by 143 World Trade Organisation members to allow developing countries without the ability to produce cheaper generic drugs for HIV/AIDS and other diseases to import generic drugs at lower prices from countries such as India, rather than the more expensive patented drugs from the US and Europe.

The US pharmaceutical manufacturing industry is one of the top 10 industry contributors to federal US political campaigns. Prescription drugs cost twice as much in the US as in other developed countries, and the industry makes three times the profit of other industries.

The question is, will the money proposed for the AIDS relief program benefit Africa by being used to buy the drugs from the cheapest source - or, as is more likely, will the money be used to subsidise production by the American pharmaceutical manufacturers, to protect their markets in developing countries?

Bush could do far more to minimise the AIDS epidemic now sweeping the Third World by reversing the infamous "global gag rule", which promotes needless deaths by discouraging safe sex, and unwanted pregnancies, which lead to unsafe abortions.

The International Planned Parenthood Federation calls the policy "Bush's secret war" and says his actions "are a testament to the Bush Administration's war against women and his overall contempt for their fundamental civil and human rights".

Bush's war against women has regional as well as global security implications, implications that the Clinton administration recognised.

At a UN Population Fund meeting in Auckland last week, the New Zealand Health Minister said 40 per cent of the Pacific Islands' contraceptives previously came from donors such as the fund, but that by 2000, partly because of the success of the safe-sex awareness programs, donors met only 27 per cent of the region's estimated needs.

US bullying in international forums and its effort to gut international reproductive health programs was in evidence yet again at the UN Asian and Pacific Regional Population Conference, held last December in Bangkok (and at which the US was represented because of its ownership of the island of Guam).

According to Dr Martha Campbell from the Berkeley School of Public Health, "the Bush delegation was young, pro-life, bright, well trained, legally savvy, deceptive and threatening . . . In the corridor we witnessed the US delegation threatening at least one high-level Asian delegate with his country's loss of US foreign aid and the loss of his own career".

In the wash-up, every country represented at the meeting defied the US, but all their time was taken up, according to Campbell, in "preventing damage by a 500-pound gorilla from Guam".

The US delegation demanded the deletion of a recommendation for "consistent condom use" to fight AIDS, even though a Berkeley study found condom distribution to be astonishingly cost-effective, at $US3.50 a year of life saved. In contrast, antiretroviral therapy costs more than $US1000.

This expensive option is obviously more acceptable to the religious fundamentalists who give the Bush Administration its moral dimension, and to the pharmaceutical manufacturers who want an even bigger return on their political investment in Washington.

Kenneth Davidson is a staff columnist.
Email: dissentmagazine@ozemail.com.au

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/02/09/1044725671018.html

From Online Lawyer Source:

GlaxoSmithKline

GlaxoSmithKline is the second largest pharmaceutical manufacturer and researcher in the world. The company is headquartered in the UK and has operations and offices in the US. GlaxoSmithKline''s worldwide sales make up about 7% of the drug market.

GSK has over 100,000 employees. At least 40,000 of their employees are involved in sales and marketing. That accounts for some 40% of the company''s resources that goes into selling their products.

GSK was formed in 2000 as a merger between Glaxo Wellcome and SmithKline Beecham, two companies formed out of previous mergers themselves.

During the late 1990s, GSK CEO Jean-Pierre Garnier was targeted by groups alleging price gouging in its antiretroviral drug pricing in its AIDS drug sales to African countries. Also, GSK faced controversy for corruption involving patent protection and access to their medications.

In 2004 a widely reported on class action lawsuit was filed in New York on behalf of consumers of GS's drug Paxil. The lawsuit alleges that the company knowingly covered up information about Paxil's links to suicide and suicidal thoughts, especially in young people.

GSK is also the target of controversy by animal rights groups because of the drug company’s affiliation with animal testing company Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS), known in the US as Life Sciences Research, Inc. The animal rights groups allege severe abuse of animals and unprofessional behavior during research...

For more, GO TO > > > The Greedy Ghouls in GlaxoSmithKline

August 25, 2008

AIDS in Nigeria (The Book)

I was given a copy of AIDS in Nigeria; A Nation on the Threshold (Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, 2006) some time ago by a student friend who happened to have been employed with others in the editing and design of this large, expensively produced anthology of twenty-four commissioned HIV/AIDS/antiretroviral drug articles. The book was funded by the Gates Foundation and includes many beautifully reproduced color photographs of dying children.

The Preface announces the book’s purpose as: to help guide the HIV response for Nigeria, a nation of 130 (now 140) million, at a “threshold” that may see “52 million living with HIV.”

The HIV/AIDS pandemic has been the most serious natural disaster to hit the world in recent centuries. In the worst affected regions, notably sub-Saharan Africa, this steadily progressing catastrophe threatens to become a calamity of cataclysmic proportions. [Hence, “stakeholders” need this book], a single, authoritative source on HIV/AIDS in Nigeria. [Foreword]

I read through the book in part because it lacks an index but mainly because it was my first exposure to a voluminous, colorful coffee-table book on a health topic. Here is a fair summary of the book’s main emphasis:

“Although data suggests that Nigeria’s nationwide prevalence has not dramatically increased since 1999” and currently only “one million Nigerians would be considered eligible to receive antiretroviral therapy,” yet “the need remains great to scale these activities up significantly.”

Public health efforts in Nigeria “should be primarily directed against HIV/AIDS.” This is because “HIV/AIDS will diminish any positive effects that might have occurred as a result of other improvements in life standards and health care,” because the epidemic has impacted not only the health sector but the economic and development sectors, and for other reasons by similar logic.

Some chapters are surveys of how the Nigerian health professions and international health organizations have responded to the AIDS epidemic (advances in monitoring, the role of civil society organizations, behavior change programs under George Bush’s PEPFAR initiative). Two other chapters are on epidemic virology and molecular epidemiology. In the main, the argument is to scale up HIV/AIDS industry activities in Nigeria even at the cost of overall public health.

There are two or three brief statements—quoted from health workers low in the health hierarchy—on the harm to Nigerian public health caused by drawing people from the limited pool of trained people into AIDS/HIV/antiretroviral projects because of the Foundation-supported salary opportunities and on the social cost of diverting funds and attention from much-needed rural health (clean water, prevention, out-back clinics, pre-natal care, etc.) toward urban, high-technology, Western-dependent directions. However reasonable these few statements, contributing Nigerian doctors, PhD’s, and health official stick to their guns advocating scaling up antiretroviral clinical trials, vaccine research, and programs using existing antiretroviral drugs, especially when directed at “mother-to-child transmission.”

I wanted to ask “transmission of what?” The simple God’s truth answer is “transmission of poverty.”

NIGERIA – THE COUNTRY

At about 140 million in the standard demographic yearbooks, Nigeria is the eighth most populous country and accounts for 20 percent of the world’s Black people. It is predominantly rural but with some of Africa’s largest cities, huge urban conglomerations marked by the same lack of clean water, sanitation, and infrastructure as the countryside. Nigerians joke that their children are strong because nowhere else in Africa do they have to walk so far to the store and to fetch clean water.*

The U.S. has at least one million people of direct Nigerian ancestry (not counting our slave ancestry population), only the UK and Nigeria itself have larger populations. In the U.S., Nigerians have a significantly higher than average educational level; many serve in the U.S. military—some for accelerated citizenship advantages—and all of them experience some of the disadvantage and exclusion common to all Black people in the U.S. (differential imprisonment, poorer health care and housing, lower salaries).

Nigeria was giving its independence from the UK in 1960 under the influence of the wave of African independence movements. A typical condition of that transition was consolidating—not seeking to limit—divisions in the country. There are regions (Southern, Western and Northern, now in 36 federal states), peoples (Yoruba, Igbo, and others) and religions (Muslim and Christian). Thus disequilibrium, along with continued commercial dominance by the colonizing world, direct military and political interference in Nigerian internal affairs, and the usual corrupt elections and internal conflicts kept Nigeria in turmoil. In that context—called “fishing in troubled waters”—the U.S. and European private corporations continued to control Nigeria’s natural resource wealth (principally oil and gas) and the underpaid labor of its growing population, bringing it firmly into the sphere of influence of these corporations and their committees of government.

The country has remained predominantly rural and in need of clean water, sanitation, sustained national campaigns against malaria and TB, and infrastructure development. Nigeria also needs medical training institutions, city clinics and rural medical services. However, Nigeria is also the sixth largest OPEC oil producer —that is, by January 2007 levels of production, which are set by U.S./Saudi influence to sustain high per barrel prices—and is soon expected to supply a quarter of all U.S. petroleum. In spite of this wealth, none of Nigeria’s health needs are being met. Zero. Nada.

Nigeria also has been made into one of the U.S. government’s sources of men-at-arms (sent to Liberia, Sierra Leone, Darfur, Yugoslavia, East-Timor, DR Congo), a U.S. ally in the “War on Terror,” and its “policeman in Africa.”

Although the IMF literature records a nine percent economic growth (2006), no realistic Nigerian expects even its most rudimentary health needs to be met in the foreseeable future. And yet the facts of life create a considerable pressure for change. We can expect to hear of “conflict,” to see unfavorable press coverage, and to sense dangers ahead for Nigeria.

If you want a foretaste of the dangers you can read a bit about Nigeria’s “Civil War” from 1967-1970 (Biafra) or current detail from the Niger Delta, or look into Cabinda in Angola, or Doba in Chad. These are oil enclaves, all of considerable importance to the world’s private billionaires.

http://nightingaleatlarge.com/?p=333

May 31, 2007

Ex-CIA Doctor:

AIDS Is Man-Made Pentagon Conspiracy

by DR. ALAN CANTWELL & DR. SUE ARRIGO

To all persons interested in the man-made origin of AIDS...

I am a physician and AIDS researcher who has authored two books on the man-made origin of HIV/AIDS ("AIDS & THE DOCTORS OF DEATH: AN INQUIRY INTO THE ORIGIN OF THE AIDS EPIDEMIC" and "QUEER BLOOD: THE SECRET AIDS GENOCIDE PLOT.").

On the eve of the Blue Moon of May 31, 2007, I was sent the most explosive email I have ever received concerning possible insider evidence pertaining to the man-made epidemic of AIDS.

The communication was sent by Sue Arrigo, M.D., who claimed she was a physician licensed in California (G50197). Because her email (attached below) was so mind-blowing, I immediately googled Arrigo and found several entries including a note on one website in which Arrigo claimed to have been kidnapped, raped and threatened with death in 2004 (this was NOT mentioned in her email to me).

In addition, I checked online and verified that she was indeed a licensed CA physician, although her license expired in December, 2006, and her current residence is in Canada.

In her email Dr. Arrigo asked if I would help her get the word out to interested persons. I would ask that anyone who receives this communication to do all they can to spread the word regarding her accusations that AIDS is a man-made disease.

Over the past two decades there have been only a handful of other physicians and health professionals who have had the courage to alert the public to evidence that AIDS is man-made, namely Robert Strecker MD, William Campbell Douglass MD, Eva Snead MD, and Leonard G Horowitz DDS.

In general, their research (books, videos, internet communications) have been ignored by the CDC, the NIH, the AIDS establishment, the major media, etc. -- and merely passed over as "conspiracy theory" and "paranoia."

Dr. Arrigo has a long association with the CIA as an expert on biological warfare, and also has apparent ties to the highest powers (and presidents) in the U.S. government.

Thus, her insider status makes her an extremely valuable witness to the truth about AIDS and its man-made origin.

Please do all you can to confirm or deny the truth of Dr. Arrigo's accusations -- and to publicize her plight -- and to air her plea on behalf of the abominations of secret biological warfare experimentation and use against human beings.

I have attached the google references to "sue arrigo", her email to me in it's entirety, proof of her CA medical credentials, and a website note of her rape and torture.

In truth and justice,

Alan Cantwell M.D.

alancantwell@sbcglobal.net

On May 31, 2007, at 8:32 PM, Sue Arrigo wrote:

Dear Dr. Cantwell,

Thank you for your courage and integrity in speaking the truth.

As an ex- CIA physician with high level access, I wrote a report for DCI Webster in about 1991 arguing for closure of all the US Bio-Warfare Labs. I did that after reviewing the Ft. Detrick and the CIA's Langley Bio-Warfare Labs's research, looking at their own documents.

That review was authorized because Bush, Sr. had sold dangerous Bio-Warfare agents to Hussein, which I ended up having to recover from Iraq. Webster, as a former judge, willing to evaluate the evidence, allowed me to research the field and write a report for him of close to 100 pages and 1000 pages of supporting documents.

Although the focus of my report was why the Bio-Warfare Labs should be closed, the issue of the HIV virus developed by the Ft. Detrick lab formed about 18 pages of my report.

At the time I wrote that report, the vaccine for HIV that had been developed in 6 months of work, had already been used by the Cabal since 1983.

It was a crime against humanity that the virus was unleashed on the world, and it continues to be a crime that the vaccine has been kept secret and for private use only. Meanwhile, the outer research to get to a vaccine is an exercise in how not to arrive at a solution before millions more die.

The initial "hopes" for HIV per its designers was to be able to walk into Africa and take the resources from a ghost continent. They had hyped it as killing everyone there within a year, in their pre-release reports.

The research at the Labs addressed the fastest way to make vaccines to Bio-warfare agents, both in labs, at a front, and impromptu on a battlefield. That was a pressing concern and one that was researched using millions and millions of dollars.

Briefly, the consensus at the time was that

1) Any agent from a sick soldier left in a Waring Blender for 8 hours would be broken down well enough to not be infective in small doses ( ie. less than a 100 germs).

The Labs had made an IgM set of antibodies to sediment out the human HLA antigens by centrifuging it. That allowed the supernatant to be used as a vaccine with little serum sickness problems.

A physician in a war zone equipped with a Waring Blender, a blood specimen centrifuge, and a vial of the IgM could make a fast "fresh" vaccine and start inoculating soldiers.

The labs tested that using a variety of agents and common cold agents. It was only if one wanted to store the vaccine in vials that one got into the problem of denaturing the proteins of the agent due to heat, chemicals,etc. That was where most of the problems of loss of effectiveness crop up.

2) The Labs found that causing a 1cm by 1cm abrasion until one got lymph and applying a drop of the "fresh vaccine" and a band aid, worked almost as well as an injection. The abrasion could be caused by three fast firm strokes of very fine sand paper over a template with a square of skin bulging through it.

This method had much less serum sickness problem. The major problem was occasion keloid and scar formation and superficial infections.

3) The Labs also showed that it was possible to make a crude live vaccine as an emergency directly on the battlefield. The principle was that infection occurs when the body's defenses are overwhelmed but that the body can usually fend off 10 to 50 organisms even of Bio-warfare agents. It was a simple dilution to get the agent into the right ballpark, starting with a secretion of a sick person.

Then a drop of that dilute live agent would be placed on an abrasion. That was also tested during war games with colds etc. The diluted material can't be stored for longer than an hour due to the risk of multiplying the agent.

It was assumed that in the field it would not be known whether the agent was a virus or a bacteria. A bacteria that divided every 20 minutes could be 8 fold in quantity after an hour and risk causing the infection one was attempting to prevent. Of course, such a live agent could be extremely dangerous and except in an extreme emergency would not be used.

4) The issue of how to quickly sterilize a make-shift vaccine was also addressed in the research. The best method was to dry the agent, if time permitted. Second best was to preserve the agent in Vodka (40%), not gin, etc., and then to dilute it down to less than 2% alcohol before applying it to the abrasion.

That means that a simple vaccine for HIV can be made by virtually anyone in the world in a short period of time, though it would likely need to be repeated periodically to get and keep the titers up. But repeating it is a good idea anyway as that helps address the mutation problem. So, suppose one took 1 cc of secretions from each of 10 HIV patients in an area (without fungal infections preferably) and mixed them together to have a range of HIV agents. Then one could add 250 cc of Vodka and let it sit a week. Then one could remove a cc of that and add 20 cc of clean water to get a less than 2% alcohol solution. A drop of that could be applied to an abrasion. That, I believe, would give you about 60% protection.

Repeating that at intervals of about 2 weeks to a month for 6 months and using new HIV secretions every 6 to 12 months, I think would give one fairly good protection in a person with a normal immune system to start with. Of course, that is a crude method and should be tested for efficacy etc. But it is simple enough to test on sex workers, if they were willing to volunteer.

They are at such high risk that the likely benefits almost certainly outweigh the risks. The chief risk would still be sensitization with human HLA proteins. The beauty of using abrasions is that one can wash the vaccine off as soon as any untoward reaction is noticed.

If you know of people doing HIV research who are not controlled by the US govt, could you please pass this information on to them?

It would be good to get it out to those who could investigate this information with the intention of saving lives with it. Bio- warfare research is immoral and illegal. Unfortunately the US govt is accelerating that research and production of secret private vaccines.

Sincerely, Sue Arrigo, MD

(the below is from: http://www.alternet.org/rights/27771/ )

An American Already Tortured By Cheney's Team in the US

Posted by: kunzangwangmo on Nov 11, 2005 10:16 PM

As a coerced CIA asset, I was asked by Cheney in Aug. 2004 to frame Iran as developing nuclear weapons. Because Cheney was afraid of CIA leaks, he gave me the assignment at a Chinese restaurant in DC after hours. It was not the first meeting that I have ever had privately with him as I acted as a negotiator between him and Tenet.

Within the CIA I had been an outspoken critic of US wars of aggression, its nuclear first strike plans, and its breaking of nuclear arms control treaties. I spent most of my life as an operative risking my life as a remote viewing spy monitoring and recovering lost WMD.

I am a doctor and the assignment Cheney gave me was to go to Iran as a physician. Once in Iran, a camera crew would be filming when an Iranian agent would rush in to say that he knew a secret bunker where the Iranian govt. was developing nuclear weapons.

Cheney admitted that the rest of the filming would occur in Hollywood with a mock up of said lab. Clearly, this was an immoral assignment. There was no way that I was going to have the blood of innocent Iranian women and children on my hands, so I refused. When I did so, Cheney threatened the life of my mother. Since my mother had recently told me she would rather die than have me be emotionally blackmailed in this way, I held to my no.

During the course of our about 40 minute talk, one of his secret service officers interrupted us twice. The next week when I was kidnapped in Virginia, raped and tortured for 4 days, I recognized the voice of that officer as one of the rapists.

It is an outrage that Cheney is advocating torture. He has already shown by his actions, that he will stop at nothing, not even the torture of American born CIA personnel in order to get his way. He has a clear conflict of interest in making money off these wars.

Are we, as Americans, going to torture people just so that corrupt officials can line their pockets with oil and war profiteering revenues?

Please write your congresspersons to prevent others being tortured as I was. Cheney and Bush should be impeached for lying to force us into war. We are not winning the war on terrorism, torture is terrorism as anyone who had been through it knows. I was raped and subjected to three mock executions, when will this US reign of terror end?

Sincerely,

Sue Arrigo, MD

California medical license G 50197

~ ~ ~

http://www.mindcontrolforums.com/radio/ckln-hm.htm

http://www.usafa.af.mil/jscope/JSCOPE01/Arrigo01.html

http://www.conspiracyplanet.com/channel.cfm?ChannelID=34

http://www.comspiracyplanet.com

See also: Nests in The Pentagon; Of Vampires and Daisies; The Kissinger of Death; The Secret Nests: The CIA; Uncle Sam’s Guinea Pigs; AIDS in Nigeria: The Book

March 26, 2007

AMERICAN IDOL GIVES BACK

"Idol Gives Back" is a two-night special to benefit children and young people in need in American and Africa airing Tuesday, April 24 and Wednesday, April 25 on FOX.

Gwen Stefani, Josh Groban, Pink, Michael Bublé, Annie Lennox, Il Divo and Borat Sagdiyev among many world-renowned artists are scheduled to appear and the Ford Motor Company leads corporate sponsors.

During tonight’s live broadcast of AMERICAN IDOL, it will be announced that FOX, AMERICAN IDOL and the Charity Projects Entertainment Fund (CPEF) have partnered on an historic television event – IDOL GIVES BACK – a two-night special raising awareness and funds for organizations that provide relief programs to help children and young people in extreme poverty in America and Africa....

In keeping with the IDOL GIVES BACK theme, all the songs performed will be about compassion and hope. After the performance show, viewers will vote for their favorite contestants via toll-free numbers and text messages, as usual. On this special night, however, viewers will also help change the lives of the truly needy. For every vote cast, AMERICAN IDOL sponsors Coca-Cola and AT&T, along with a range of additional partners, will donate money to the charity....

During the Wednesday event, adding to the corporate contributions, viewers will be able to make their own donations via toll-free lines and the Internet.

The money raised by the two shows will equally benefit the U.S. and Africa. In the U.S., the money will be distributed via CPEF to Save the Children and other U.S. organizations working to deliver programs to children living in extreme conditions in some of the most disadvantaged areas of the country. To find out more about poverty here in America, please visit http://www.savethechildren.org .

In Africa, the money will be dedicated to delivering health and education programs and will be distributed via CPEF to a number of organizations, including U.S. Fund for UNICEF, The Global Fund, Save the Children, Nothing but Nets and Malaria No More....

April 27, 2007

Senior Official Linked to
Escort Service Resigns

ABC NEWS

Brian Ross and Justin Rood Report:

Deputy Secretary of State Randall L. Tobias submitted his resignation Friday, one day after confirming to ABC News that he had been a customer of a Washington, D.C. escort service whose owner has been charged by federal prosecutors with running a prostitution operation.

Tobias, 65, director of U.S. Foreign Assistance and administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), had previously served as the ambassador for the President's Emergency Fund for AIDS Relief.

A State Department press release late Friday afternoon said only he was leaving for "personal reasons."

On Thursday, Tobias told ABC News he had several times called the "Pamela Martin and Associates" escort service "to have gals come over to the condo to give me a massage." Tobias, who is married, said there had been "no sex," [ala Bill Clinton’s definition???] and that recently he had been using another service "with Central Americans" to provide massages.

Tobias' private cell number was among thousands of numbers listed in the telephone records provided to ABC News by Jeane Palfrey, the woman dubbed the "D.C. Madam," who is facing the federal charges. In an interview to be broadcast on "20/20" next Friday, Palfrey says she intends to call Tobias and a number of her other prominent D.C. clients to testify at her trial.

"I'm sure as heck not going to be going to federal prison for one day, let alone, four to eight years, because I'm shy about bringing in the deputy secretary of whatever," Palfrey told ABC News.

Palfrey maintains she ran a sexual fantasy business that was legal and that if any of the women who were working for her had sex, they did so in violation of her rules and without her knowledge. She says there are a number of other prominent Washington, D.C. men who will be on her witness list. "I'll bring every last one of them in if necessary," Palfrey said.

As the Bush administration's so-called "AIDS czar," Tobias was criticized by some for emphasizing faithfulness and abstinence over condom use to prevent the spread of AIDS.

In a 2004 interview, Tobias explained his approach as "A and B and C. . . Abstinence works. 'Be faithful' works. Condoms work. They all have a role. But it's not a multiple choice, where there is only one answer."

As a top official overseeing global AIDS funding to other countries, Tobias was responsible for enforcing a U.S. policy, enacted during the Bush administration, that requires recipients to swear they oppose prostitution and sex trafficking. USAID adopted a similar policy in 2004.

At an April 18 speech, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice praised Tobias' work. "Randy Tobias has indeed had many roles in his life, but none more important than the roles he's played in government, where he has been someone who has been most involved in organizing America's compassion to the world."

A biography of Tobias was removed from the USAID Web site, but an archived version shows that before joining the State Department, Tobias had been CEO of drug manufacturer Eli Lilly Co. and AT&T Communications, and served on the board of trustees for Duke University, including three years as its chair.

In 2003, he co-wrote a book on leadership lessons with his son, Todd, entitled, "Put the Moose on the Table." Indiana University, whose publishing arm produced the volume, is also home to the Randall L. Tobias Center for Leadership Excellence.

Along with his wife, Marianne, Tobias donated over $100,000 to Republican candidates and political committees, according to the campaign finance Web site http://www.opensecrets.org.

Tobias is the second prominent man to be identified as a customer of the Palfrey’s "sexual fantasy service." Two weeks ago, Palfrey alleged that military strategist Harlan K. Ullman, creator of the "shock and awe" combat theory and now a scholar with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, was also a customer. Ullman has said that the claim was "beneath the dignity of comment."

Palfrey is expected to appear in court on Monday, to request permission to replace her criminal defense attorney, currently a federal public defender.

ABC News

http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/04/senior_official.html

How IMF policies block the Global Fund

Maputo, Dec (by Gorik Ooms*) - “It is very genocidal for one part of the world to have the cure for the AIDS disease while millions of people in another part are dying from the same. The developed world is challenged to make antiretroviral drugs available”, declared Uganda’s President Museveni (New Vision, 11 Dec 02).

But only weeks before this declaration, Uganda’s Ministry of Finance made it virtually impossible for the Ministry of Health to accept a grant from the Global Fund to fight AIDS, TB and Malaria, a grant that could help to make antiretroviral drugs available.

“Any new donor monies absorbed into a government sector must be accompanied by a similar reduction within the sector in order to keep the expenditure limit,” said Francis Tumuheirwe, director of budget in Uganda’s ministry of finance (The Lancet, 7 Dec 02).

In other words, if Uganda gets the $ 52 million it asked from the Global Fund, it will simply reduce its own contribution to the health budget, which will remain the same, with or without Global Fund monies. Obviously, the Global Fund will never accept this, since it can only give money for additional activities, not to replace Uganda’s contribution to a fixed health budget.

The solution proposed by Uganda’s Ministry of Finance - to cut into other parts of the health budget to “make way” for the interventions approved by the Global Fund - is clearly not acceptable.

For, this means that President Museveni can call for as much international financial support for antiretroviral therapy as he wants: as long as his own Ministry of Finance is firmly committed to a public health budget that doesn’t exceed $ 9 per person per year, “no matter how much donors are willing to provide”, the inaccessibility of antiretroviral therapy - described as a ‘genocide’ by the President himself - will continue. It makes you wonder who the real decision-maker in Uganda is; the President or the Minister of Finance? Or is it someone working for the IMF?

Like Uganda, Mozambique has a public health budget of $ 9 per person per year. Like Uganda, Mozambique wants to provide antiretroviral therapy to the people who need it. Like Uganda, Mozambique is counting very much on the Global Fund to keep its people alive. Mozambique and Uganda have poor public health budgets not only because they are poor countries, but also because they have accepted - or, at least in the case of Mozambique, was obliged - to adopt the IMF and World Bank economic and development doctrine, in the form of a Structural Adjustment Program (or SAP.)

This doctrine is quite simple: it is based on the assumption that real development and economic growth can only occur when governments limit public spending to a percentage of their gross domestic product. In very poor countries, this has resulted in ridiculously low public health and education budgets. Less than 50% of children of school age attend school in Mozambique, less than 50% of the population has access to poor public health services.

But this would be just a temporary problem, assured the IMF and the World Bank. Soon there will be economic growth, they promised. Economic growth will increase state budgets for public social services, and many people will become rich enough to buy private social services. Very conveniently, this doctrine provided an excellent excuse for reducing international aid. It was not only permitted to give less, rich countries were actually doing poor countries a favour by giving less (and thus stimulating their economic growth).

In the ‘90s, international aid levels dropped dramatically. Fifteen years later, the ‘temporary problem’ has been solved for less than 3% of Mozambicans. They can afford private schools and private clinics; 47% have access to poor public services, badly equipped and run by underpaid civil servants. The other 50% don’t send their children to school and don’t go to health centers.

IMF and World Bank no longer promote SAPs, they invented a new game and called it ‘poverty reduction.’ In theory, Poverty Reduction Strategic Papers (or PRSPs) are meant to ensure that the benefits of debt cancellation are invested directly in poverty reduction. In reality, they just protect the core of the old SAPs, ensuring that public spending remains capped. While HIV infects more and more Africans, the IMF and the World Bank ensure that African countries are not able to provide enough education to their children to protect them against HIV, let alone provide lifesaving treatment.

When African leaders, gathered in Abuja in April 2001, promised to substantially increase their public health budgets, I wondered if they realized they were defying IMF and World Bank policies. I felt relieved when I read the ‘Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS’ that came out of the UNGASS meeting in June 2001. The international community was actually supporting increased public spending to fight AIDS and other infectious diseases! The fulfilment of this commitment would require improved health and education services!

Then came the report of the WHO Commission on Macroeconomics and Health; an implicit but clear condemnation of IMF and World Bank policies, arguing that increased spending on health would not harm but rather stimulate economic growth. When the Global Fund announced its first approved proposals in April 2002, I was saddened that the Mozambican proposal was not included, but satisfied to see that similarly poor countries would receive substantial amounts, amounts that would obviously make their health budgets break through the ceilings foreseen in their respective PRSPs.

I should have been completely convinced when the World Bank Multi-sectoral AIDS Plan (MAP) team visited Mozambique for the third or the fourth time in October 2002, announcing that the MAP would be funded with a grant, not a loan, and that the World Bank had secured $ 1 billion for several MAPs.

Surely, if this $1 billion went to the countries that need it most, it would lift their budgets well over the PRSP ceilings. Surely, if the World Bank supports such a strategy, the IMF would not challenge it. The door was open for a rights-based approach to health care and education.

Suspicious as I am, I questioned the World Bank MAP team about this. Did their macroeconomists agree with this? Because if not, that $1 billion was useless, it would only replace national contributions or contributions from other donors, but not increase the budgets. The answers were vague and evasive. One said that PRSP budgets were targets, not ceilings. The other admitted that there might be a problem.

I guess we have the real answer now. No matter how much donors are willing to provide, no matter how much the Global Fund is willing to provide, Uganda will not increase its health budget and therefore it will not provide anti-retroviral therapy (unless President Museveni has the courage to intervene directly.) The arguments used by Uganda’s Ministry of Finance are pure IMF doctrine arguments: increasing the health budget with the Global Fund grant would destabilize Uganda’s economy, the way to increase expenditure on health is through sustained economic growth, Uganda must reduce its dependence on donors. This is probably why the chairwoman of the parliamentary committee on social services wondered whether the ministry of finance or the IMF was the architect of the low ceiling.

Does it really matter? Does it really matter if the decision to sacrifice thousands of people living with AIDS on the altar of a development doctrine that has proven to be ineffective came from an office in Washington or from an office in Kampala? Does it really matter if the South African form of structural adjustment - GEAR - was voluntarily adopted by President Mbeki, strongly encouraged by the IMF and the World Bank or even imposed by them?

It doesn’t make any difference to South Africans, many of whom died of cholera in October 2000 because they suddenly had to pay for water and couldn’t; they don’t get antiretroviral treatment when they need it because of ‘financial discipline’ in a vain pursuit of economic growth. Does it really matter if NEPAD - the New Partnership for African Development that hardly mentions AIDS at all, let alone AIDS treatment - is the fruit of African Renaissance or the result of 20 years of indoctrination by Washington-based macroeconomists?

The result is the same: poor health care and poor education for poor people.

I believe the Global Fund has met its worst enemy in Kampala. Raising the funds needed to fight AIDS, TB and Malaria remains important, but it is not enough. It must also promote a rights-based approach to social services, one that legitimises public budgets that are in accordance with real needs, not limited to a percentage of gross domestic product. Otherwise the Global Fund will end up channelling funds to relatively well-performing countries only, while refusing agreements with the countries that really need it, because their budgets are capped and Global Fund money would only replace national contributions or contributions from other donors and would not create additional services.

Both objectives, to raise more money and to create a climate that allows spending it where it is needed most, go hand in hand. Both require a new development vision. Both require a genuine understanding that only a healthy and well-educated population can create real and sustainable economic growth. Both require a genuine understanding that access to treatment is a human right! - SUNS5260

[* The author, Gorik Ooms is a Mozambique-based health activist. This is taken with acknowledgement from the list-server, ‘Stop the IMF’]

http://www.twnside.org.sg/title/5260c.htm

# # #

See also: Vultures in the International Monetary Fund

< < < FLASHBACKS < < <

For Immediate Release:
29 September 2003

AIDS ORGANIZATIONS RAISE GRAVE CONCERNS IN ANTICIPATION OF EX-PHARMA CEO'S CONFIRMATION AS HEAD OF BUSH AIDS PLAN

A coalition of AIDS advocacy organizations including Health GAP, Global AIDS Alliance, Africa Action, Student Global AIDS Campaign and the Washington Office on Africa, demanded answers today to critical questions regarding the confirmation of Randall ("Randy") Tobias as head of the Bush global AIDS program. Tobias, who will begin confirmation hearings September 30 in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is the recently retired CEO of U.S. pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and influential Republican campaign donor.

Recent battles at the World Trade Organization (WTO) over providing access to affordable generic medicines make clear that such access is not in the interest of the pharmaceutical industry--an industry that held the allegiance of Tobias for many years.

"It would be one thing if Tobias could boast experience in the field of AIDS or public health," said Rene Shen of Student global AIDS Campaign. "But being poorly qualified and having questionable priorities on access to affordable life-saving drugs is bad medicine for people living with AIDS," continued Shen. "Bush is already breaking his promise to uphold the Doha Declaration by continuing to obstruct poor countries' access to affordable generics. Will Tobias break that promise too?"

Announcements of the president's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (EPAR) have indicated that the plan calls for use of affordable generic medicines, utilizing triple combinations of antiviral drugs available at $300 or less per person per year. This price is currently only available through generic manufacturers. Even with the price reductions offered by branded pharmaceuticals to some sectors of some developing countries, no combinations of brand name antiretrovirals approach the $300 target.

The coalition of advocates closely scrutinizing Tobias's confirmation is reluctant to believe that the retired drug company executive will make good on this promise. "The 40 million people with AIDS facing death without access to affordable treatment need experienced public health leadership to direct this program," said Salih Booker of Africa Action. "Tobias has some tough questions to answer," continued Booker.

"It is highly problematic that the person chosen by Bush to lead the fight against AIDS on behalf of the U.S. brings up concerns of experience and independence before even being put into the position, and it is perfectly reasonable to object to this nomination. There must be an adequate firewall between important public health policy decisions like this one, and the conflicting commercial interests of political appointees."

The coalition also criticized the fact that the White House has not released clinical or programmatic details about the Bush AIDS Plan, which is already nearly one year old. "More than one and a half million people have died of AIDS since Bush's announcement," said Brook Baker of Health GAP. "The clock is ticking--a detailed plan setting out how the White House expects to achieve the clinical goals of its AIDS program is long overdue."

Bush's five-year AIDS plan has also come under attack for sidestepping the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (Global Fund), a multilateral program that is already operating and functional. The Global Fund is facing an immediate fiscal shortfall of $3 billion, because the U.S. and other donors have not committed their fair share.

"The lack of genuine leadership by Bush in stating AIDS as an 'emergency,' but then refusing to adequately fund the sole existing mechanism that could save millions of lives is indefensible," said Paul Zeitz of Global AIDS Alliance. "Bush's White House argues that poor countries cannot absorb the $3 billion promised in the global AIDS bill he signed. That is simply a lie. To show good faith, Bush and the head of his AIDS program should express their will by fully funding the U.S. share for the Global Fund at not less than $1 billion for 2004."

Despite a recent agreement made at the WTO, Bush's bilateral trade agenda has focused on increasing patent rights for drug companies, even in poor countries, where patent monopolies result in higher cost and decreased access. The emerging free trade agreement between the U.S. and the Southern African Customs Union, for example, would inhibit access to low cost generic versions of important patented medicines.

In Nigeria and Uganda the U.S. has pressured local officials to enact national patent policies that exceed the strict rules of the WTO and would restrict countries' rights to break patent monopolies to reduce medicines cost. Upcoming talks in Miami in November around the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) represents another example of the ongoing trade interests of Bush and the pharmaceutical industry....

http://www.cptech.org/ip/health/politics/ngos09292003.html

December 2, 2006

Number of poor on AIDS treatment up

Figures: Spending has extended lives of 1 million people

By John Donnelly, Boston Globe

LAKE FOREST, Calif. -- The number of poor people on AIDS treatment around the world has roughly doubled in the last year, which officials say is dramatic proof that billions of US dollars spent fighting the deadly virus in Africa and elsewhere has extended the lives of more than 1 million people, according to figures released yesterday.

In Washington, President Bush marked World AIDS Day by hailing the progress of worldwide efforts to fight AIDS -- both through his own $15 billion program and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, which combines private donations and government grants.

"This country is committed . . . in helping solve this problem by dedicating a lot of resources to the battle against HIV/AIDS," he said at a meeting with AIDS activists.

Three years ago, only 50,000 Africans received treatment; now, Bush's US government program alone is helping treat 822,000 people, nearly all of them in Africa.

"We thank those who are on the ground in the countries around the world who are using taxpayers' money to save lives," the president said. "We believe that it's one thing to spend money, we also believe it's another thing to say that we expect there to be results."

Bush also ended a 13-year-old ban on visas for HIV-positive people to travel to the United States without a waiver. Now, those infected with the virus will be able to receive short-term tourist visas or 60-day business visas in a "streamlined" process, according to a White House statement.

In this southern California community, meanwhile, two senators, Barack Obama, the Illinois Democrat, and Sam Brownback, the Kansas Republican, each publicly took an HIV test to encouraging others to do the same. Both are considered presidential hopefuls. Joining them was Rick Warren , the best-selling author of "Purpose Driven Life" and founding pastor of Lake Forest's influential Saddleback Church, which hosted a two-day Global Summit on AIDS and the Church this week.

Several conservative Christians had objected to Warren's invitation of Obama because of the senator's pro-choice stance on abortion. Obama said he offered to skip the conference, but Warren insisted that he come.

Obama, who had taken an HIV test on a trip to his ancestral homeland of Kenya earlier this year, said that politicians, church leaders, and others could respectfully disagree on some issues, but should unite in fighting AIDS. In particular, he said, it was critical to enlist the help of evangelical churches such as Saddleback as well as other churches around the country....

Government statistics released yesterday showed that programs are starting to have a major impact on AIDS treatment around the world. A year ago, the US and Global Fund programs combined to treat 600,000 infected people; now, they are treating about 1.2 million. In low- and middle-income countries overall, about 2 million AIDS patients are receiving life-extending anti-retroviral drugs, almost twice as many people as last year, officials said.

Nevertheless, several activist groups this week criticized the pace of global treatment, saying it can't meet the goal set by the most powerful countries two years ago: near-universal treatment by 2010.

"Anybody who criticizes treatment progress hasn't been paying attention," said Richard Feachem , executive director of the Global Fund. "We started four years ago with nobody on treatment in the developing world -- zero, nothing, zilch. We've taken a big step forward."

There's still more work ahead, Feachem said; he estimated that 10 million people in the developing world may need treatment by 2010. Ambassador Mark R. Dybul , head of the US global AIDS programs, said the US program was "on the upswing" and on target to treat 2 million infected people by the end of 2008.

The Global Fund said it was supporting the treatment of 770,000 people; it counts among them some of the same people who are also helped by the US treatment programs.

On visas for HIV-positive people, students and others seeking longer stays in America still need a waiver to travel. Leonard S. Rubenstein , executive director of Physicians for Human Rights, a Cambridge-based advocacy group, applauded the decision but said it didn't go far enough.

"This is a step away from a very repressive and regressive policy, but it doesn't truly represent ending the discrimination against HIV" patients, he said.

August 7, 2006

Thais Protest Patent Bid for AIDS Drug

By Tanny Chia

BANGKOK (Reuters) Aug 07 - Hundreds of Thais living with HIV/AIDS rallied against drug maker GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) on Monday to protest a patent application they say would raise the cost of a key life-saving drug.

Waving placards and shouting slogans outside GSK's office in Bangkok, the demonstrators demanded the company withdraw a nine-year-old patent bid for its anti-retroviral Combid, which is made in a generic version by Thailand's state drug company.

The patent would force the Government Pharmaceutical Organization (GPO) to stop producing its version, Zilarvir, which costs about 1,500 baht ($40) per month, activists said.

Combid sells in Thailand at almost six times the price of the generic version, and would likely rise further if there was no competition, said Wirat Purahong, chairman of the Thai Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS.

"This international drug company is being selfish, greedy and unethical. It doesn't care about the health and welfare of the people," Wirat told Reuters.

Some 80,000 people with HIV/AIDS are receiving anti-retroviral drugs under a programme expanded last year and covered by Thailand's public healthcare plan.

Granting the patent would drive up drug costs and threaten the government's ambitious treatment programme, said Achara Ekasengsri, GPO's deputy chief of research and development.

"We disagree with the patent because there is no new discovery or invention," she said of Combid, which combines two existing drugs, lamivudine and zidovudine, and is also known as Combivir.

London-based GSK, which is not dropping its patent request, said Thailand could negotiate for a voluntary licence to produce a generic version of the drug.

GSK also offered preferential pricing for middle-income nations such as Thailand, said GSK spokeswoman Alice Hunt.

"If somebody legitimately wants to manufacture and sell Combivir, all they need to do is pick up a phone and talk to us about getting a voluntary licence," she said.

In 2000, an alliance of HIV/AIDS groups, lawyers, academics and pharmacists asked the Department of Intellectual Property to reject GSK's request, arguing that Combid was not a new entity but just a combination of two widely-used drugs.

The challenge was dismissed in 2005 but an appeal is pending.

The government has not said when it will make a decision on the patent request.

Thai activists say they will take their fight to the International AIDS Conference in Toronto later this month.

During the 2004 AIDS conference in Bangkok, protesters besieged the company's booth and accused GSK of not doing enough to fight the pandemic in the developing world.

October 17, 2005

 AIDS Drug Maker to Pay $700M in Settlement

- By MARK SHERMAN, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON, (AP) -- The Swiss manufacturer of the AIDS treatment drug Serostim has agreed to pay more than $700 million to settle allegations that it offered kickbacks to doctors to write prescriptions to boost sagging sales, government and company officials said Monday.

The Justice Department settlement with Serono Laboratories of Switzerland was to be announced later Monday by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case publicly in advance of the announcement.

The settlement would be the second largest for prescription drug fraud, according to Patrick Burns, spokesman for Taxpayers Against Fraud, a group which tracks whistleblower claims under the federal False Claims Act.

Serostim, which contains the human growth hormone Somatropin, was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1996 to treat AIDS wasting, an often-fatal condition involving severe weight loss.

At about the time the FDA approved the drug, protease inhibitor drugs came on the market. Those drugs, when used in combinations or "cocktails," sharply curtailed the AIDS virus in patients, making them less prone to AIDS wasting.

Four former Serono executives were indicted in April, charged with offering the kickbacks to doctors.

Monday's settlement is the latest in a series of whistleblower claims that have resulted in more than $3 billion in payments from drug companies in recent years.

Last month, GlaxoSmithKline PLC said it will pay $150 million to settle claims it overcharged the government for two anti-nausea drugs.

Federal and state officials are looking into 150 price and marketing fraud cases involving more than 500 drugs, according to Peter Keisler, assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department's Civil Division.

August 31, 2005

Uganda Appoints Panel To Investigate Global Fund's Allegations of Grant Mismanagement; Outside Auditors To Manage Funds

The Ugandan government has appointed a four-member commission to investigate alleged mismanagement that prompted the Global Fund To Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria to temporarily suspend its grants to the country, Uganda's Monitor reports (Walulya/Mulondo, Monitor, 8/30).

The Global Fund last week announced its suspension of five grants worth more than $200 million after an audit of one of the grants by PricewaterhouseCoopers found evidence of "serious mismanagement" by the Ugandan Ministry of Health's Project Management Unit, which was established to implement the grants.

The audit showed discrepancies in exchange rates when grants in dollar amounts were converted into Ugandan shillings, according to news reports. In addition, funds were not properly accounted for and invoices or receipts were missing for some expenditures.

The audit found no firm evidence of corruption or fraud, and the Global Fund said it has not yet begun a full investigation, which will require a review of bank records and other personal information.

The fund has requested that the Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development, which serves as the principal recipient for the five grants, implement a new method of effectively managing the grants by the end of October (Kaiser Daily HIV/AIDS Report, 8/26).

The government also has announced plans to have the international accounting and auditing firm Ernst & Young temporarily take over management of the country's AIDS funding from the PMU (BBC News, 8/31).

Ernst & Young primarily will be in charge of the procurement of drugs and condoms, Mike Mukula, the state minister of health, said. He added that Global Fund officials have said they "still have a lot of confidence and expect to lift the suspension very soon" (Nyakairu, Reuters, 8/30).

MPs Question Need for Commission

Some Ugandan members of Parliament expressed skepticism about the need for the commission, saying there is nothing to investigate. "Why do you appoint a commission of inquiry yet a professionally qualified firm has revealed the information?" MP Aggrey Awori asked, adding, "It is clear that the money was misused." MP Martin Wandera said that the commission "will only serve public relations value" (Monitor, 8/30).

Suspension Implications

Officials from the health ministry on Monday met to discuss the implications of the Global Fund suspension. According to an internal memo from the ministry, the country's supply of antiretroviral drugs for children has run out, medication for TB is expected to be depleted by September and medication to treat malaria among children younger than age five is expected to run out in the next two months.

In addition, a government program to procure two million insecticide-treated bednets to distribute at no cost to children, pregnant women and displaced persons has been affected by the suspension, and a program to buy three hundred motorcycles to help widen the community-based management of TB also could be put on hold, according to news reports (Xinhua News Agency, 8/30).

August 3, 2005

Global Fund Asks Outside Investigator to Probe Mismanagement Allegations Brought by Two Employees

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has asked the World Health Organization's Office of Internal Oversight Services to investigate charges of mismanagement within the fund, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The accusations were brought last month by two Global Fund employees and include allegations that officials awarded contracts without adhering to established procedures, hired a mid-level manager without proper screening and allowed the wife of Global Fund Executive Director Richard Feachem to work on the organization's procurement system (Phillips, Wall Street Journal, 8/3).

In a memo to the Global Fund board of directors, Feachem said he is calling for the investigation to "ensure that in [the] future there are very clear guidelines as to due process and accountability."

He also said he has requested that Global Fund Deputy Executive Director Helen Evans look into the separate issues of "staff turnover and organizational culture" (Jack, Financial Times, 8/2).

Jon Liden, a Global Fund spokesperson, said that the fund's managers believe the accusations are "overblown" and that no charges of corruption have been brought. He said officials frequently use single-source contracts to accelerate the delivery of money to developing countries.

In addition, Liden said that Neelam Sekhri, Feachem's wife and a health specialist, offered "unpaid, voluntary advice" on a computerized procurement system but stopped working on the system after questions were raised about her involvement in the organization run by her husband (Wall Street Journal, 8/3).

Feachem on Tuesday said, "These are strictly internal, routine matters," adding, "Certain allegations have been made which concern processes and do not in any way imply fraud" (Financial Times, 8/2)....

www.kaisernetwork.org/daily_reports/rep_hiv.cfm

Officers of
Kamehameha Schools

Dee Jay Mailer

Dee Jay Mailer’s professional experience has spanned the globe, but her work has always been focused on helping others. Named Chief Executive Officer effective on January 19, 2004, she now focuses her energies on educating children of Hawaiian ancestry, through the Kamehameha Schools, from which she graduated in 1970.

As the former Chief Operating Officer of The Global Fund, a private Swiss foundation created by the world’s top developed countries, Mailer, along with the Geneva based team, raised and distributed funds to support the fight against AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria in developing countries. She created and managed the fund’s administrative operations in collaboration with international partners, including the World Bank and World Health Organization. During her tenure, some $3.4 billion was raised from international donors, $33 million of which was disbursed in grant funds to 92 countries.

Mailer’s healthcare career spans 27 years, and includes serving as Chief Executive Officer of Kaiser Permanente Hawai‘i where she implemented a service-oriented culture, which improved health plan member satisfaction and retention rates to the highest levels in the State and within the national Kaiser program.

She left Kaiser in 1999 to become Chief Administrative and Operating Officer of Health Net, Inc., a health insurance program serving 2 million members in the State of California. Mailer later served as Senior Vice President of National Contracting and Claims Best Practices for the company.

Mailer earned her Bachelor of Science degree in Nursing and her Masters in Business Administration (MBA) from the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa. She is also a graduate of the Kaiser Permanente Executive Program, a business program for national healthcare executives offered in partnership with Stanford University.

Her past community contributions include being a board member and chairman elect of the Hawai`i Business Roundtable, chairman of the board of the Institute for Human Services Homeless Shelter.

She is also a member of several other boards, including the Pacific Research Institute, the Hawai`i Community Foundation, Aloha United Way, and the Junior Achievement School Mentoring Program....

www.ksbe.edu/about/chiefs/ceo.php

For more, GO TO > > > Arbitrate This!; Broken Trust: Greed, Mismanagement & Political Manipulation; Confessions of a Whistleblower; Dirty Money, Dirty Politics & Bishop Estate; The Harmon Arbitration; Office of the U.S. Trustee vs. Harmon: Witness: Dee Jay Mailer; Witness: James B. Nicholson; RICO in Paradise

March 19, 2004

AIDS drug's high cost
spurs doctors' boycott

By Stephen Smith, Boston Globe Staff

In an unusually combative display of physician anger, AIDS specialists in Boston and elsewhere across the nation are protesting a drug maker's steep price increase by boycotting that company's medicines, shunning its sales representatives, and severing research relationships.

Organizers say that 250 doctors and other health care workers in the United States are participating in the action that targets Abbott Laboratories, which in December boosted the wholesale price of a month's supply of the AIDS drug Norvir from about $50 for a daily 100-milligram pill to more than $250.

The protest includes physicians from some of the best-known HIV practices in the country, including Fenway Community Health Center in Boston and AIDS Healthcare Foundation, based in Los Angeles. Doctors championing the boycott contend that Abbott increased the price of Norvir, among the first members of a class of drugs known as protease inhibitors, in part to persuade doctors to prescribe a newer AIDS pill made by the company.

Abbott executives respond that they are attempting to derive a fair return on a medicine originally designed to be taken many times daily but now typically used only once or twice a day to enhance the effectiveness of other companies' drugs.

The action comes amid intensifying opposition to high drug prices by patients and nsurers and, industry analysts said, could signal a new brand of militancy among doctors who have been loath to use tools of protest more commonly associated with political and social activists.

"If this is an effective mechanism, I suspect there's going to be a move of many more physicians across the country to use this kind of mechanism to attempt to control drug prices," said Kenneth Kaitin, director of the Tufts University Center for the Study of Drug Development. "To not carry Abbott drugs and not allow Abbott sales reps in, if that catches on, that's going to send shudders through the industry."

The protest is of sufficient concern to Abbott that the firm sent a vice president from its Illinois headquarters to Boston to meet with Fenway physicians after the protest began.

Dr. Stephen L. Boswell, Fenway's executive director, said he does not begrudge Abbott a reasonable profit. "But this is beyond any reasonable, justifiable increase," he said. "People depend on these drugs for their lives. We're going to object whenever we think what drug companies are doing is unreasonable and not in the best interest of the patients we're caring for."

Physicians at Fenway and other clinics involved in the protest are refusing to prescribe Abbott's products whenever possible, so long as equally effective options exist from other companies. The impact, so far, of the drug boycott is unclear, with industry analysts saying that it is too early to assess.

Another part of the protest involves refusing to collaborate with Abbott on studies of new drugs, a decision that could potentially deprive the company of access to thousands of patients for clinical trials. The price increase has not been felt by most patients so far. Those with insurance generally are charged a set copayment, and AIDS patients who are uninsured typically get their medicines through state assistance programs. In some states, though not in Massachusetts, those programs have waiting lists...

As originally designed, 12 pills of Norvir were to be taken by patients each day. But at such high dosages, the drug turned out to produce significant side effects, notably nausea and other gastrointestinal problems.

As the drug fell out of favor as a stand-alone treatment, researchers and doctors discovered that it could play a powerful role at a far lower dose in combination with other AIDS medicines. Norvir, it turned out, slowed the body from metabolizing those other drugs, an unexpected bonanza that allowed those drugs to stay in the bloodstream longer, making them more effective. In the language of the drug world, Norvir became a "booster" drug.

"It turned out to be a product that clogged up the molecular drain for lots of other drugs," said Dr. John Leonard, vice president of global pharmaceutical development for Abbott. At its zenith, Norvir produced $250 million in annual sales for Abbott. But as the use of the drug shifted, with patients taking just a pill or two a day, revenue fell sharply. Company figures show that 22,000 US patients now take Norvir.

"For us at Abbott Labs, this product that has become very important for propping up other drugs has declined to one-twelfth of its original dose," Leonard said. "From a revenue standpoint, Norvir dropped to $50 million a year....

The development of AIDS drugs is among the hottest fields in the pharmaceutical business. The transformation of AIDS from an almost-certain death sentence to a chronic condition created a population of patients who will need expensive drugs for decades.

Competition for their business is intense. Along with the older-generation Norvir, Abbott makes a drug called Kaletra that combines Norvir with another medicine. In effect, Kaletra does in a single pill what Norvir had been doing in tandem with medicines made by Abbott's competitors.

Clinic doctors and attorneys involved with the protest said they believe that Abbott hiked the price on Norvir as a way of steering patients to Kaletra. "They're leveraging their market on Norvir to get a monopoly in the whole protease inhibitor booster market," said Tom Myers, general counsel for AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which has sued Abbott in federal court in Los Angeles, accusing it of antitrust violations.

The drug company denies the antitrust allegations, and even as its executives pledged not to bow to pressure to reduce the price of Norvir, they said they have adopted a series of measures to ensure that the Norvir price increase causes as little pain as possible. Among those steps: The company said that it has permanently frozen at the earlier lower price what it charges government programs that provide Norvir to AIDS patients lacking health insurance.

Not all AIDS physicians have joined the protest. Leading scientists such as Dr. Calvin Cohen, research director of Community Research Initiative of New England, continue to collaborate with Abbott. Cohen, whose Boston institute studies HIV drugs, said he believes the company will direct any increase in profits to the development of new drugs.

Still, even Cohen acknowledged that cynicism about the price hike is predictable. "There's good reason we should be skeptical of companies pleading poverty," he said. "I think the harder question is how do we tell real dedication from abuse."

June 8, 2001

Bristol-Myers Squibb Agrees to
Purchase DuPont's Drug Business

Associated Press, www.afronets.org

Drug manufacturer Bristol-Myers Squibb agreed yesterday to purchase DuPont Co.'s drug business for $7.8 billion, a deal that would boost Bristol-Myers' line of AIDS drugs, the Washington Post reports.

Among other drugs, Bristol-Myers will acquire DuPont's best-selling AIDS drug Sustiva -- a component of some triple-combination drug therapies -- which garnered $386 million in sales last year for DuPont (Washington Post, 6/8).

In addition, DuPont has three AIDS drugs in development. Bristol-Myers manufactures the AIDS drugs Zerit and Videx -- both also drugs used in some three-drug therapies -- and also has new AIDS therapies under development.

AIDS advocates, who plan to file a protest of the consolidation with the FTC, say it will lead to decreased competition and fuel higher AIDS drug prices.

However, Bristol-Myers spokesperson Charles Borgognoni said the company believes the AIDS drug production market will remain equally competitive following the consolidation. "Our perspective going into the deal is we don't expect there will be any overt regulatory problems," he said.

The deal still requires regulatory approval, and is expected to be completed by the end of the year...

www.afronets.org/archive/200106/msg00056.php

March, 1999

The Other War on Drugs

Skyrocketing drug prices fuel a new wave of activism

By Stanya Kahn

"GREED KILLS" was the slogan on World Aids Day in Wilmington, Delaware, where activists from ACT UP-Philadelphia and other groups stormed the headquarters of DuPont Pharmaceuticals to protest the high price of Sustiva, its new once-a-day anti-HIV wonder drug.

A potent non-nucleoside drug, Sustiva was speedily approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in September, after early studies showed it worked as well as or better than pricey protease inhibitors.

Then came the first big blow. DuPont priced Sustiva at a cost close to that of the protease inhibitors, with an annual wholesale price of $3,920 -- nearly twice that of other drugs in its class. But activists who crunched the numbers said that price applied only to major institutional buyers; the price for consumers would be 20 percent higher -- closer to $5,000 a year. Since all HIV drugs must be taken in multidrug combinations, a Sustiva cocktail with protease inhibitors boosted the cost to about $17,000 a year per person.

Furious, activists argued that Sustiva's high price tag put it out of reach for most people with HIV, who rely on cash-strapped government programs like ADAP, the AIDS Drug Assistance Program. They also worried that DuPont's action could set a dangerous standard for other drugs entering the market. Two new HIV drugs -- Glaxo Wellcome's Ziagen and Agenerase -- were heading for approval and several others are close behind.

While some activists took to the streets, others began behind-the-scenes lobbying of DuPont and other drug giants, arguing that state ADAPs would be bankrupted in trying to pay for Sustiva. A coalition effort by the ADAP working group brought together veteran community organizers, government officials, and drug manufacturers who began publicly debating the issue of fair pricing. "We're looking at a long-term struggle -- one that goes beyond any one drug or company," said one ADAP insider. "We need to form wider coalitions," he added, which include international AIDS networks. otherwise it will be difficult to levy the needs of people over the appetite of capital.

The Sustiva battle has set the tone for the current debate and flexed the community's newfound muscle. Facing a barrage of bad publicity, DuPont agreed to offer ADAPs an additional five percent discount off the average wholesale price (AWP) for Sustiva, on top of the standard 15 percent usually granted to ADAPs. Medicaid pays an "AWP minus 12 percent," while the Veterans Affairs Department pays a lower federal supply price (FSP). ADAP officials who met with DuPont president Nicolas Teti had hoped a lower price might be extended to ADAPs.

Within the ADAPs, there was considerable debate about what to do. Most of the smaller ADAP programs, with less funding, had little choice but to add Sustiva. For them, it seemed more cost-effective to start treatment-naive patients on a protease-sparing regimen and save protease inhibitors for later. But in an unprecedented move, six of the largest ADAPs -- California, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Puerto Rico, and Texas -- held out for a better price. Because these states have the highest number of ADAP recipients in the country, accounting for 30,000 of the 47,000 national total, the impact of the decision was significant. Although activists and ADAP officials felt that this strategy was far from perfect -- no one wanted to limit access -- it was a matter of choosing the lesser of two evils, and using their only bit of leverage.

The risk has paid off. DuPont came back with a five-year guarantee of their original five percent discount for Sustiva, as well as a three-year price freeze. While activists have been quick to claim victory, embattled DuPont has been given credit by some advocates for its willingness to reconsider the community's needs. In December, Sustiva became the first non-protease drug added to the "A" list of drugs recommended for first-line HIV combination therapy (see "Federal Guidelines"). By mid-January almost all state ADAP and Medicaid programs had added Sustiva to their formularies. "This rapid acceptance...is good news for the underinsured or uninsured living with HIV and AIDS in those states," said DuPont's Teti.

As the smoke cleared, it was evident that the arguments in favor of fair pricing have been compelling and warrant more serious consideration by drug executives, politicians, and the community. The fight for access just took a big leap forward with these recent price negotiations, and all sides can expect the pace to stay high.

The issue has global implications. While we scramble for meds in the United States, 90 percent of the world's HIV population are going almost entirely without any of the new treatments.

Long-Term Planning

Since the development of the new anti-HIV drugs in the early '90s, there have been significant changes in medical spending that health care programs, both private and public, are still trying to integrate. While hospital costs have gone down because people are staying healthier, the demand for medications has skyrocketed. Which means price increases, however small, can tip the scales for a system barely able to provide for patients as it is.

Some argue that the market for drug companies has already expanded -- the longer people live, the longer they will be buying medicine. Activists claim that to raise drug prices now doesn't make sense for a long-term marketing strategy and points to "outright profiteering". The drug companies reply that they are trying to "recoup costs of research and manufacturing."

In fact, a key debate centers on the actual cost of developing these drugs. Manufacturers claim they are justifiably regaining their huge investments in crucial new research. While no one is denying the importance of new medical breakthroughs, the drug prices remain suspect, prompting even Congress, in a recent legislative move, to hold drug companies using federal funds for research accountable to "reasonable pricing."

According to Linda Grinberg of the nascent Fair Price Working Group, "It is hard to imagine that the development costs of these [new] drugs were not comparable to the first generation of protease inhibitors." Grinberg also states that, "because of the efficacy of the new drugs, far fewer pills and much less physical product is required for dosing." That means there should be more incentive, not less, to set lower, more stable prices that would bring them adequate profit return. Grinberg also asserts that the market for Sustiva is further widened by the fact that, if affordable, the drug could be used by both patients new to combination therapy as well as those adding to protease cocktails.

Right now, combination HIV therapy is so expensive, it's still basically a treatment for people with health insurance. Susan Dooha, Director of Healthcare Access at New York's Gay Men's Health Crisis, says that, "Short of universal coverage in the U.S., it is not clear at this point how health programs can sustain the cost of new treatments. If the system doesn't adapt to include the new [pharmaceutical] technologies, we are held back and unable to really reap the benefits of modern medicine."

Recently, even those with managed care plans have experienced limited availability. More people are becoming uninsured as premium costs rise due to skyrocketing prescription drug costs.

Meanwhile, programs serving the uninsured are on the verge of collapse with the weight of the coming generation of HIV patients. The virus has spread quickly over the past five years in poor communities and communities of color in the U.S. -- who are predominantly uninsured -- while declining in the white, gay male population. Last year President Clinton proposed to cut $22 billion over five years in federal spending on Medicaid. Medicare doesn't cover prescriptions at all. And the ADAPs are already struggling to pick up the slack.

Last year, AIDS Action, in conjunction with other AIDS advocacy groups, did manage to help secure record AIDS funding for the Ryan White CARE Act and the National Institutes of Health, as well as for prevention. The 1999 fiscal year agreement raised AIDS funding by $4.9 million. An additional $100 million was secured by the Congressional Black Caucus for badly needed outreach to the African-American community.

While this is incredibly encouraging and will hopefully set new standards for government AIDS spending, most ADAPs continue to operate at the edge of their budgets, with long waiting lists. The more they have to spend on drugs, the fewer applicants they can take.

There is also a limited government pie for HIV care. As one ADAP official pointed out, "It is vital to pressure the federal government for more ADAP funds, but we can't funnel all these funds into the pockets of the pharmaceutical companies, while other titles in Ryan White need attention as well -- like ambulatory care, adherence, testing, and so forth."

A slightly bitter irony for activists is the fact that the same companies accused of lining their pockets with AIDS drug profits also collaborate in the national ADAP Working Group that helps secure more government funding for the ADAPs to buy their drugs. It is a very squeaky wheel of supply and demand, whose delicate alignment is at stake -- along with the lives of thousands....

# # #

MORE TO COME

And, for more ways to pluck a non-profit
GO TO

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The Biotech Birds

Birds in the Halls: The University of Hawaii

Broken Trusts

Catch a Falling C.V. Starr

Confessions of a Whistleblower

Dirty Money, Dirty Politics & Bishop Estate

The Deadly Brew at DuPont

How to Pluck a Non-Profit

The Office of Hawaiian Affairs

The Consuelo Zobel Alger Foundation

The Greedy Ghouls of GlaxoSmithKline

The Indonesian Connection

The Nature Conservancy

The Peregrine Fund

The Queen Emma Foundation

The Queen Liliuokalani Trust

RICO in Paradise

Uncle Sam’s Guinea Pigs

Vultures in the International Monetary Fund

Vultures in the World Bank

The World Trade Organization

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