Activism Change

AIDS Forum Fecal Fiasco!

Question:

Antiviral Party Poopers! ACT UP SF Turns San Francisco AIDS Foundation Candidate Forum Into Feline Fecal Free-For-All. It’s really nice to have bozzo’s like the group calling themselves "ACT-UP SF" (not to be confused with the real ACT-UP)  reminding me where my $$$s will be put to best use.

What is the "real" ACT UP other than the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Pharmaceuticals? and, by the way, check your "bozzo’s" spelling….

Response:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE MEDIA CONTACTS: Ronnie Burk: (415) 864-0731 Michael Bellefountaine: (415) 487-9954 Antiviral Party Poopers! ACT UP SF Turns San Francisco AIDS Foundation Candidate Forum Into Feline Fecal Free-For-All. Angry AIDS activists dump used kitty litter on Executive Director "Fat Cat" Pat Christen to protest organization’s promotion of toxic, experimental AIDS drugs…

I have seen animals in the zoo throw their excrement at patrons they didn’t like. You remind me of them. It is only a matter of time before Grubor joins ACT UP SF.              james m. scutero, original proponent of misc.health.aids                      the newsgroup of acquired immune deficiency syndromes                                     o_) *                              ”    _/                                       /(        misc.health.aids homepage`- http://www.panix.com/~jscutero surfin’ with aids.                                    * (hot ascii surfer)

Response:

- Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE MEDIA CONTACTS: Ronnie Burk: (415) 864-0731 Michael Bellefountaine: (415) 487-9954 Antiviral Party Poopers! ACT UP SF Turns San Francisco AIDS Foundation Candidate Forum Into Feline Fecal Free-For-All. Angry AIDS activists dump used kitty litter on Executive Director "Fat Cat" Pat Christen to protest organization’s promotion of toxic, experimental AIDS drugs… I have seen animals in the zoo throw their excrement at patrons they didn’t like. You remind me of them.

It’s really nice to have bozzo’s like the group calling themselves "ACT-UP SF" (not to be confused with the real ACT-UP)  reminding me where my $$$s will be put to best use. http://www.geocities.com/HotSprings/1290

Response:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE MEDIA CONTACTS: Ronnie Burk: (415) 864-0731 Michael Bellefountaine: (415) 487-9954 Antiviral Party Poopers! ACT UP SF Turns San Francisco AIDS Foundation Candidate Forum Into Feline Fecal Free-For-All. Angry AIDS activists dump used kitty litter on Executive Director "Fat Cat" Pat Christen to protest organization’s promotion of toxic, experimental AIDS drugs. San Francisco – A poorly attended October 17th candidate forum of prospective city supervisors organized by the San Francisco AIDS Foundation (SFAF) deteriorated into a fiasco after a dozen outraged members of the controversial direct action AIDS group ACT UP SF staged a raucous demonstration to protest the sponsoring organization’s heavy promotion of protease inhibitors, a new class of AIDS drugs. These potent compounds have recently come under fire by a prominent San Francisco AIDS doctor and are the centerpiece of a proposed AIDS prevention plan by City health officials to track and forcibly medicate the HIV-positive through a drastic dosing scheme called Direct Observational Therapy (DOT). Nine men and three women distributed fliers and scientific articles, blew whistles, and shouted down forum moderator and SFAF Executive Director Pat Christen, whom they referred to as "Fat Cat Pat" due to her generous salary that exceeds $120,000 a year. Stealth activists posing as audience members set off stink bombs as others chanted "Protease Inhibitors Are Toxic Crap! D.O.T.’s An AIDS Death Trap!" Chaos then ensued as a member of the ACT UP affinity group S.H.I.T.T. (Stop Hyping Immunosuppressive Toxic Treatments) stormed the stage and dumped 25 pounds of foul-smelling, used kitty litter over Christen’s head. Shocked political candidates, many of whom were forced to cut their presentations short, choked, gagged and darted for the door as the pungent stench of 14-week-old feline fecal matter filled the auditorium. Two affinity group demonstrators, Ronnie Burk and Todd Swindell, were arrested, charged with assault and released. "Pat Christen and other high-paid bureaucrats are nothing but greedy parasites that leech the life out of the AIDS community," charged dissident Ronnie Burk who is an HIV-positive, Latino gay man. "SFAF, through their treatment publication BETA, is paid by the pharmaceutical industry to whip up a feeding frenzy for dangerous, expensive pills that cure nothing but sluggish drug company profits. Such premature, unethical hyping of these deadly chemical concoctions is violently exploitative of our community." ACT UP members said the protest was to shatter the "relentless barrage" of scientifically unsubstantiated sensationalism by drug company funded AIDS groups of protease inhibitors, AIDS drugs that have been on the market for less than a year. They cited recent scientific articles and news reports in the Annals of Internal Medicine, Wall Street Journal and New York Native that expose the life-threatening dangers and harmful long-term effects of the agents. Specifically, ACT UP members pointed to an October 10th news report in the University of California publication Synapse where Donald Abrams, Head of the Food and Drug Administration’s Antiviral Committee and Director of the AIDS Program at San Francisco General Hospital, spoke out strongly against antiviral therapy with protease inhibitors. This is Abrams’ second public statement that directly contradicts his long standing support of AIDS drugs that suppress HIV. Months ago the prominent drug researcher publicly proclaimed that he felt protease inhibitors were not sufficiently studied to be approved. Abrams revealed in the Synapse article that "In contrast with many of my colleagues at SFGH in the AIDS program, I am not necessarily a cheerleader for anti-retroviral therapy. I have been one of the people who’s questioned, from the beginning, whether or not we’re really making an impact with HIV drugs and, if we are making an impact, if it’s going in the right direction." The report concluded with Abrams admitting, "I have a large population of people who have chosen not to take any antiretrovirals since I’ve been following them-since the very beginning. They’ve watched all of their friends go on the antiviral bandwagon and die, so they’ve chosen to remain naive to therapy. More and more, however, are succumbing to the pressure that protease inhibitors are ‘it’. We are in the middle of the honeymoon period, and whether or not this is going to be an enduring marriage is unclear to me at this time, so I’m advising my patients, if they still have time, to wait." ACT UP activists assert that Abrams’ about-face on the efficacy of antiviral therapy signals trouble. "The fact is that protease inhibitors were rushed through the FDA approval process so that they could be heavily marketed to clinicians and patients during the July International AIDS conference. These agents are experimental and can kill," warned ACT UP demonstrator Medea Lopez. "The discovery of long-term harmful effects caused by protease inhibitors will spell disaster for thousands of HIV-positive people who would have otherwise been healthy had they not been lured into taking them by the drug company financed lies of puppet groups like SFAF." Even more frightening, say AIDS activists, are ideas being entertained by San Francisco Health Director Sandra Hernandez to require all HIV-infected individuals to consume protease inhibitors in order to "reduce their infectiousness" and to use the medications as "morning after pills" in HIV-negative persons who practice unsafe sex. In order to implement such a proposal, all patients with HIV would need to be tracked and forced to take medication through a policy known as Direct Observational Therapy (DOT)-currently used in the treatment of communicable diseases such as tuberculosis. ACT UP members counter that such notions are fascist and scientifically indefensible. "Let’s get real here. AIDS isn’t a communicable disease like tuberculosis. Protease inhibitors aren’t a cure for AIDS; they are poison. And forcing citizens to consume poisons through D.O.T. is murder," explained Burk. "ACT UP San Francisco will not be silent in the face of murder." Activists demanded that city officials resoundingly oppose D.O.T. and reiterated their challenge to San Francisco’s Health Director and community leaders to publicly debate the alleged merits and known dangers of antiviral therapy. In addition, they vowed to continue their disruptions of all mainstream AIDS forums to counteract pharmaceutical funded drug hype. ### Press photos (digital & paper) and video of the "Feline Fecal Free-For-All" are available. For more information on this or other ACT UP SF actions contact us at (415) 522-2907. Our mailing address is 1388 Haight Street, #218, San Francisco, CA 94117 * Fax: (415) 834-0243 * (ACT UP SF flier distributed to audience at disrupted SFAF forum.) About-face on new AIDS drugs by antiviral kingpin signals trouble; prompts urgent reconsideration of flawed chemotherapeutic treatment paradigm! ACT UP SF demands immediate public debate on merits and dangers of antiviral therapy; calls for an end to premature, drug company funded hype! Members of ACT UP San Francisco are here tonight to sound the alarm and send a strong message to city government and people with AIDS discouraging the use of experimental anti-HIV drugs called protease inhibitors. These compounds, which have been on the market for only a matter of months, were rushed through the FDA approval process at the behest of drug company front groups like Project Inform and San Francisco AIDS Foundation, tonight’s forum sponsor. Despite the relentless barrage of scientifically unsubstantiated hype by pill pushers like SFAF about combination therapy with protease inhibitors, startling news reports in the Wall Street Journal and New York Native are emerging about these agents’s life-threatening dangers and harmful long-term effects. This week Donald Abrams, Head of the FDA Antiviral Committee, Director of the AIDS Program at San Francisco General Hospital and Chairperson of the pharmaceutical industry promotional vehicle Community Consortium spoke out against antiviral therapy with protease inhibitors. In the October 10, 1996 Synapse article entitled "Abrams Cautions On Use of New AIDS Drugs" the prominent drug researcher questioned "whether or not we’re really making an impact with HIV drugs and, if we are making an impact, if it’s going in the right direction." Furthermore, he stated that a large percentage of his patients "have watched all of their friends go on the antiviral bandwagon and die so they’ve chosen not to take any antiretrovirals." Abrams, who has previously stated that he believes protease inhibitors were not studied sufficiently enough to be approved, concluded by admitting that he warns his patients to wait and avoid antiviral therapy. Such foreboding news hasn’t stopped representatives of the drug industry from attributing wild claims of efficacy to this unproven class of potent agents. However, the evidence is clear that these drugs simply interfere with vital metabolic processes to merely manipulate blood borne "markers" like viral load and CD4 counts; which have recently come under fire as having no relation to immune system improvement (Annals of Internal Medicine, Oct. 10, 1996, "Surrogate End Points in Clinical Trials: Are We Being Misled?") Clinicians ignorant of immunology have asserted, without a shred of scientific evidence, that protease inhibitors  "reduce the infectiousness of AIDS patients." Pharmaceutical puppet groups like ACT UP Golden Gate have worked diligently to increase the market share of antivirals by touting them as potential "morning after pills" for the HIV-negative. Most frightening of all, SF Public Health Director Sandra Hernandez has proposed drastic … read more »

Response:

Filed under: Protest Demonstration

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