Washington Blade - July 11, 2003
Lou Chibbaro Jr.

In a July 2 ceremony at the White House, Bush announced he had named pharmaceutical industry executive Randall Tobias to serve as his Global AIDS Coordinator. Bush created the global AIDS position, and Congress approved it, as part of a $15 billion program to assist nations of Africa and the Caribbean in addressing the AIDS epidemic.

The Washington Post, citing an unnamed source, reported that Joseph O'Neill, the openly gay director of the White House Office of National AIDS Policy, was expected to be transferred to the global AIDS program. The program will operate out of the State Department and fall under the control of Secretary of State Colin Powell, Bush said at his announcement ceremony. Tobias, a longtime Republican Party activist and financial contributor, will have the rank of an ambassador, Bush said.

Speculation about O'Neill's possible departure from the White House AIDS office came during the same week that more than 150 local, state and national AIDS organizations sent the president a strongly worded letter criticizing the administration for not devoting enough attention to domestic AIDS issues.

AIDS groups criticize Bush

The groups signing the letter, which included D.C.'s Whitman-Walker Clinic, said they were troubled that federal agencies were making "politically motivated decisions" to dismantle or discredit federally funded HIV prevention programs geared toward sexually active gay and bisexual men and people of color.

"For three years, your administration has recommended essentially flat funding for domestic AIDS treatment and prevention programs, ignoring the increasingly devastating toll this epidemic is taking on Americans," the groups told Bush.

O'Neill was accompanying the president on a trip to Africa this week and could not be reached for comment. A White House spokesperson did not return calls by press time. Presidential press secretary Ari Fleischer has said in the past that the White House never comments on possible appointments or personnel decisions until such appointments are officially announced.

Brent Minor, an openly gay member of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS, who was appointed to the council by President Clinton, said some AIDS activists are concerned that the president may dismantle the White House AIDS office. The White House considered abolishing the office shortly after Bush became president in 2001, but administration officials backed down from that position following criticism from members of Congress and AIDS organizations.

Gay and AIDS activists have praised O'Neill for his knowledge and commitment to the cause of AIDS treatment and prevention. O'Neill, a physician who specialized in treating people with HIV, has moved up the ranks at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in the Clinton and Bush administrations in public health and AIDS-related jobs. He started his position as head of the White House AIDS office or "AIDS Czar" in July 2002.

O'Neill keeps low profile

Bush named O'Neill as his replacement for Scott Evertz, an openly gay Republican activist from Wisconsin, whom the president appointed as his first head of the AIDS office just one year earlier. Bush transferred Evertz to a post at HHS involving international AIDS and public health issues.

Evertz's transfer was widely viewed as an ouster, despite strong denials by the White House. Among other things, it followed a dispute within the administration over his public support for federally funded programs promoting condom use as one of several HIV prevention options, according to sources familiar with the administration. Evertz insisted he supported the administration's call for sexual abstinence until marriage as another AIDS prevention method for individuals and groups where appropriate.

But administration sources said conservative factions in Congress and within the administration were offended by Evertz's outspoken support for AIDS prevention programs that discussed gay sex and condom use.

O'Neill has kept a lower profile than Evertz, refusing interviews with the gay press and preferring to work with AIDS groups behind the scenes. In recent months, he has devoted much of his time to the president's global AIDS proposal.

Administration sources say O'Neill played a key role in helping the president draft the proposal, which seeks to provide life-saving AIDS drugs to thousands of Africans, who, until now, had no hope of gaining access to such drugs.

Religious right activist may be replacement

One administration appointee, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Patricia Ware, a controversial figure aligned with the religious right, may be among those under consideration to replace O'Neill as AIDS office head. Others familiar with the administration dismissed speculation that Ware would be named to the post.

Gay Republican activist Carl Schmid, who worked on the Bush presidential election campaign in 2000, said he has no information on whether O'Neill is under consideration for an appointment to the global AIDS program. But Schmid said some administration observers believe "it's an open question" as to whether the administration will retain the White House AIDS office, abolish it or restructure it.

The joint letter to the president sent by AIDS groups included virtually all of the nation's most prominent national, state and local organizations advocating for people with AIDS. Among the groups signing on to the letter were the National Association of People With AIDS, the New York City-based Gay Men's Health Crisis, the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, AIDS Project Los Angeles, and AIDS service providers in many of the nation's large and medium-size cities.

The groups said they support the president's global AIDS effort but are troubled that insufficient funds and new guidelines on AIDS prevention programs will lead to more, rather than fewer, new cases of HIV infection over the coming years.

"The initiative focuses almost entirely on HIV testing and prevention programs for HIV-positive people," the letter states. "As such, the initiative fails to support targeted comprehensive prevention strategies for at-risk populations, including people of color, especially women of color, as well as injection drug users, gay men, homeless individuals, and sex workers."

AIDS panel to meet next week

Members of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS were scheduled to convene in Washington July 17-18 for a series of closed, standing committee meetings to discuss these and other HIV prevention proposals, members of the panel said. Among the items under consideration is a controversial proposal by PACHA co-chair Tom Coburn, the former GOP congressman from Oklahoma, for mandatory contact tracing and names reporting for people who test positive for HIV.

Bill Hall, an HHS spokesperson, said a federal law that requires government advisory meetings to be open to the public does not apply to subcommittees of advisory panels such as PACHA. Hall said any official proposals or recommendations developed in closed subcommittee meetings must be discussed and approved by the full advisory panels in an open meeting. The full PACHA is scheduled to meet in Washington Aug. 7-8.

MORE INFO

Office of National AIDS Policy

The White House

Washington, DC 20502

202-456-7320

www.whitehouse.gov/onap/aids.html

030711
WB030702

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