Miami Herald - July 11, 2004
Fred Tasker, ftasker@herald.com

Sheri Kaplan of North Miami went to her doctor for birth control pills in 1994 and came away with an HIV-positive diagnosis: "From regular old heterosexual sex," she says. "Probably even the missionary position. I was in shock." She has devoted her life since then to a clinic waging holistic war against AIDS.

Toye Brewer went to the University of Miami School of Medicine in the 1980s, just as America was beginning to recognize AIDS.

"It was new then," she says. "I was fascinated that it had not just medical aspects, but sociological and political dynamics, too, in the way it affected minorities in Haiti, Africa and other countries."

Kim Saiswick was a nurse at a Fort Lauderdale shelter for runaway youths in the late 1980s. "I started seeing my kids getting sick," she says. "I had to find out what was going on."

The three share a passion even though they haven't met. They might soon. They are attending the 15th International AIDS Conference in Bangkok, Thailand, running from today through Friday.

Their common mission: to pick the brains of AIDS fighters from Johannesburg to Jakarta about how to fight the dreaded syndrome at home.

Kaplan, upon learning that she was HIV-positive, turned to Eastern ideas to boost her immune system to fight the virus on its own.

"I grew up in a family that weren't pill-takers; my grandma always had a dozen home remedies for everything."

To share her experience, she founded the Center for Positive Connections in North Miami in 1995. She doesn't ask her clients to avoid pills. She sends them to doctors and advises them to follow their orders. But the center also offers such "holistic" services as acupuncture, massage, mediation and yoga, and such activities as dating, dinners, theater, sports, holiday parties and cruises.

She will present her findings in Bangkok, hoping to become a model for centers around the world. She offers herself as proof: She has never taken an anti-HIV pill and today is without symptoms.

Brewer, now assistant professor of clinical medicine in the medical school's Division of Infectious Diseases, wants to see what the United States can learn from less affluent countries.

Uganda, for example, cut its HIV rate by two-thirds after the prime minister, national church leaders and even elementary school teachers spoke out frankly in a national campaign about prevention's "ABCs" -- abstinence, being faithful, using condoms.

Says Brewer: "We're just not a prevention-oriented society. We go for the fancy treatment drugs."

She hopes to find ideas in Bangkok to deal with that.

Saiswick is community outreach director for Holy Cross Hospital in Fort Lauderdale, working with the poor, minorities, seniors and immigrants.

"They have difficulty getting healthcare," she says. "Illegal immigrants are afraid if they come in for care, they'll be deported. They won't, but they don't know that."

She looks forward to the Bangkok conference for experts' reports on microbicides -- new anti-HIV vaginal gels for women who can't persuade their partners to use condoms. "This is a female strategy. In many cultures, men are averse to condoms. Anything we can put into the hands of women could save a life."

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