Washington Blade - March 9, 2007
Lou Chibbaro Jr

During its Feb. 27-28 meeting in Washington, the 20-member advisory panel, known as PACHA, voted unanimously to call on President Bush and Department of Health & Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt to fill the vacant post immediately.

"At the very least, this shows a lack of urgency over domestic AIDS issues," said outgoing PACHA member David Reznik, one of four openly gay members of the panel.

Reznik, chief of dental services at a clinic in Atlanta that treats people with HIV, said other PACHA members share his view, including those who have been longtime allies of the Bush administration.

John Agwunobi, assistant secretary of the Department of Health & Human Services, told PACHA members on Feb. 27 that the administration was getting close to naming a new director of the White House Office of National AIDS Policy (ONAP), referred to as the nation's "AIDS czar," in the next few weeks.

Agwunobi said administration officials were also close to naming a director of the HHS Office of HIV/AIDS Policy, a separate AIDS-related office in the federal government. This post has been vacant for more than two years. Christopher Bates, a senior health program analyst, who is gay, has been serving as acting director of the office. AIDS advocacy groups have urged the administration to name Bates permanent director.

The advocacy groups have said they have heard promises of soon-to-be-named heads of these two offices before, but nothing so far has materialized.

The White House press office has declined to say why Bush has taken this long to name a new ONAP head, saying it never comments on presidential appointments until an appointee is named.

The position became vacant on Feb. 10, 2006, when Carol Thompson, who served as head of ONAP since May 2004, left to take a new job at the State Department. The position had previously remained unfilled for nine months before Bush named Thompson to replace gay physician Joe O'Neill.

President Clinton created the ONAP to help coordinate the government's AIDS programs and to serve as an intermediary between the White House and advocacy groups and state and local agencies working on AIDS issues.

When Bush took office in 2001, news surfaced that he was considering eliminating the office. But a storm of protest from members of Congress and advocacy groups prompted the president to retain the office, administration insiders said at the time.

Jim Driscoll, a gay Republican activist and former Bush appointee on PACHA, said ONAP has played a key role in implementing the Ryan White AIDS Care Act. The act provides funding for AIDS programs in states and cities.

"Domestic AIDS is really being neglected and that vacant position is a symbol of that neglect," Driscoll said.

Reznik said many of the nation's national and local AIDS organizations have argued over how federal AIDS funds should be divided among urban and rural parts of the country. He said these organizations haven't come together to push for a unified policy on domestic AIDS programs, and the administration has focused more on international AIDS programs.

Circumcision & HIV

During the PACHA meeting last week, presentations by two officials from the U.S. National Institutes of Health on dramatic findings of studies on AIDS and male circumcision in Africa appeared to overshadow domestic AIDS issues.

NIH officials Carol Williams, an epidemiologist, and Ed Tramount, a physician and research director, told of findings that adult males who were circumcised as part of AIDS prevention studies in African countries had greater than 50 percent fewer HIV infections that those who were not circumcised.

Tramount said that the findings raised questions about whether the U.S. should consider promoting adult male circumcision for certain U.S. population groups considered at high risk for HIV infection.

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