HIV & AIDS - ACT UP Community Alert

The following full-page ad was placed by ACT UP San Francisco in the Bay Area Reporter, a weekly gay newspaper, as a response to recent industry attempts to silence grassroots AIDS dissent.

"South African Deputy President Jacob Zuma expanded on Mbeki's remarks this week, singling out the group ACT UP San Francisco for praise and comparing its belief that HIV is harmless to Galileo's 17th-Century crusade to prove that the Earth rotates around the sun."

-- New York Newsday, April 23, 2000

Last week a media campaign attacking our organization was orchestrated by executives of the Stop AIDS Project, San Francisco AIDS Foundation (SFAF), Project Inform and the University of California San Francisco (UCSF). It was funded with federal HIV dollars. Before believing the hype it's important to ask: Why should we trust those who made careers cashing in on a crisis?

Since 1984, gay culture has become colonized by a cadre of hypocritical moralists who pledge allegiance to HIV. Community dialogue to determine the role of HIV -- sole cause, possible cofactor, harmless product of immune system activation or dead end lab mistake -- was shut down in a climate of early AIDS fear. Many of the same individuals and groups committed to silencing us stopped all objective community AIDS discourse years ago by selling out to larger financial interests.

These days we're supposed to trust the health department and UCSF to truthfully inform us about HIV and sexually transmitted diseases? No thanks. Remember last year's syphilis scare blamed on gay men who met in chat rooms? An absolute lie. Ditto for claims about increased male rectal gonorrhea rates, where the number of cases per tests given actually declined. And who can forget the bogus surge of HIV to "sub-Saharan African levels?" It's time to admit it -- HIV is being used as an antigay weapon to drum up funding for an elite few. But no lie can live forever.

To make matters worse, we are now faced with the tragic consequences of ACT UP founder Larry Kramer's "drugs into bodies" disaster where he decided to offer up our community as guinea pigs for HIV testing and treatment. Over the past two years we have witnessed a die-off of AIDS treatment poster boys like Bill Thorne, Dick Pabich, Tony Leone, Kiyoshi Kuromiya and now Stephen Gendin. Today Kramer can be found ranting in the pages of POZ that "they used our bodies to create poisons that kill HIV and kill us too. Like most of our best activists, most doctors have been coopted by the drug companies." Of course, Kramer's epiphany comes too late for the countless well-medicated Queers already led to the grave.

In his final column for POZ, AIDS drug activist Stephen Gendin wrote: "These days, my friends and I often mourn the loss of activism. Everyone we know is still doing AIDS work, but our involvement is institutionalized. We aren't volunteers anymore; we're professionals. AIDS is a 9-to-5 job. It disgusts me to see what I've become. It disgusts us too to see poison pushers and career climbers like Pat Christen grab $200,000 each year while our friends, family members and lovers are exterminated by SFAF's treatment advice and refusal to provide basic services.

Liver failure. Kidney damage. Heart attacks. Strokes. Diabetes. Tumor bellies. Hunchbacks. And a growing list of other injuries caused by protease inhibitors -- the deadliest drugs ever fed to fags. Meanwhile, salaried AIDS industry stooges are too compromised to call this sorry state of affairs what it is -- outright murder.

ACT UP San Francisco refuses to shut up when our community is being destroyed as our leaders sit by and play dumb. We'll stop being disruptive when:

3) The government, test manufacturers and drug companies financially compens ate those stigmatized by the HIV-positive label, those damaged by AIDS drugs, and the families of iatrogenic AIDS victims.

4) AIDS funding is redirected into programs with strict oversight that end homelessness and hunger, and provide basic health care and substance abuse solutions to all regardless of HIV antibody status.

To those who promised a cure but instead delivered death, .you do not intimidate us. We have zero tolerance for cheats and liars that exploit and kill for profit. ACT UP! Fight Back! End the AID$ Scam!

ACT UP San Francisco, 1884 Market Street * San Francisco, CA 94102, Phone: (415) 864-6686 * Fax: (415) 864-6687 * www.actupsf.com