Miami Herald - Monday, July 19, 2004
Fred Tasker, ftasker@herald.com

But what the three South Florida women who journeyed here to attend the XV International AIDS Conference came away with was far more emotional. They left impassioned, angry with their country, rueful, determined and cynical at once, demanding change, doubting it can happen. They bonded instantly.

Sheri Kaplan runs the Center for Positive Connections in North Miami, an AIDS clinic she started after being diagnosed with HIV in 1994 from hetreosexual sex.

Kim Saiswick is a nurse and the outreach director for Holy Cross Hospital in Fort Lauderdale, working with low-income AIDS patients.

Toye Brewer is an assistant professor of clinical medicine at the University of Miami School of Medicine, presenting a poster here on drug-using gay and bisexual men in South Beach and Miami clubs.

Here are some of their thoughts after attending the conference:

Kaplan: "I love the demonstrators. They brought the stigma and the suffering to the forefront. It made a difference."

Saiswick: "The U.S. is spending all its money in the wrong places. Killing people in Iraq. We're making war there when the war we should be fighting is here. A war we could win. Our priorities are all wrong."

Brewer: "This meeting wasn't about science. It was about the world struggle between the haves and the have-nots. People dying miserable deaths when we could save them by spending $1 a day on medicine."

Saiswick: "After the last conference (in Barcelona in 2002) the drug companies lowered the price of their drugs."

Brewer: "Right. Why does the U.S. want people to respect drug patents when so many people are dying. Aren't human lives more important? People are saying they want care, they need care. We aren't spending our money right."

Kaplan: "It was so emotional to go to the People With AIDS Lounge (Kaplan is HIV-positive, and so welcome there), and talk to the people. They see how healthy I am and they ask, 'How do you do it?' " Kaplan has remained healthy with HIV for 10 years by using natural methods to build up her immune system. "I hear them talk about the shame and stigma at home."

Brewer: "I tell patients back home how lucky they are to have the drugs they do. I've had patients down to 90 pounds, with diarrhea 24 hours a day. And six months later they're smiling, going back to work. I tell them 95 percent of people in the world are forced to die because they can't get them. They have no idea."

Saiswick: "You tell people you're a nurse and they drain you dry -- they ask about everything you know. There are so many things we know about that they don't in other countries."

Brewer: "This will affect my practice. It's not just prescribing drugs. It has really heightened my compassion."

Saiswick: "We just have to keep fighting."

Brewer: "To see ourselves as a global village."

Kaplan: "It's all one world. We have to unite and share. It's made me very emotional."
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