Newsday - August 15, 2001
Laurie Garrett, Staff Correspondent

Evertz, unofficially known as White House AIDS czar, was interrupted repeatedly as he addressed the Second National HIV Prevention Conference, speaking to some 3,000 government and private sector health workers. He responded to the catcalls by saying, "I need your feedback."

"There really is no room for inequality or disparity in our work," Evertz said. "If we can't talk about men who have sex with men, sex workers and their clients, transgenders, and injecting drug users, we can't do our jobs."

An audience member shouted, "Does your boss know that?" referring to President George W. Bush.

"Yes, my boss does know that," Evertz said. "My presence [here] really is the best way to convey to you that the Bush administration really does care about AIDS ... It's hard in times of urgency to ask for patience, but I ask you to be patient."

Evertz until now had been invisible to the AIDS community. But in an interview, he said yesterday's address is the first of many he expects to make as he visits community-based AIDS organizations across the country.

Evertz was appointed in April after members of the Bush administration initially told reporters that the Office of National AIDS Policy would be eliminated - a statement that met opposition in both the AIDS community and Congress. Bush subsequently said he had no intention of eliminating the position, and appointed Evertz.

The selection drew heat from both the right and left, as conservatives decried the appointment of an open homosexual and liberals denounced his credentials as an antiabortion Christian activist. Professionals working on AIDS issues were troubled because Evertz had never worked on AIDS issues, had no science or health background, and offered only one apparent "credential" for his appointment - his homosexuality. Evertz was Wisconsin president of the Log Cabin Republicans, the nation's largest gay and lesbian GOP organization.

Since his appointment, Evertz said, rumors in Washington have asserted that the White House had muzzled him. "I have never been told what I can and cannot say," Evertz said yesterday.

Evertz said he has been on a steep learning curve, studying the scientific and social literature of AIDS. He acknowledged that his absence from public appearances has contributed to an erosion of credibility for his office.

"And I care deeply about those people who are living with AIDS. You know I have to do a lot to address the credibility issue. I recognize that," he said.

In the interview, Evertz acknowledged several controversies facing the administration.

He said although the United States is, so far, the major contributor to the new UN-established Global Fund for AIDS, it won't insist that implementation of the fund's activities reflect administration policies.

"It's desperately important that those desperately poor countries be involved in deciding what's done with the money" in conjunction with a scientific advisory panel, he said. But he noted that the United States will be contributing some $700 million to the fund over the next three years, and the White House will need to ensure "to Congress that the money is well spent."

In another leadership arena, last week Evertz kept a public silence after national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Jeffrey Koplan came under attack by GOP members of the House after a National Institutes of Health report said that there's insufficient evidence to show how effective condoms are in protecting from sexual exposure to diseases. Some conservatives took the position that Koplan's agency, which had endorsed condom use, was pushing failed products.

"I'm going to try to keep myself from being too vulnerable, also, while saying what I think needs to be said," Evertz said of his silence on the issue, as well as of Koplan's apparent vulnerability.

Evertz sees his role as building bridges between the White House and community groups working on AIDS issues and facilitating communication between agencies on HIV matters. Although his predecessor, Sandy Thurman, used the office as a bully pulpit, Evertz, a quiet man, said such a role would be better played by others.

On the issue of doubling the budget for promotion of sexual abstinence, Evertz said he didn't know how the funds are being spent. "But I know that the Secretary [of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson] and I want to know it works, what works. It may be anecdotal at this point, but a lot of strategies are that way at the beginning until they prove themselves."

Most AIDS service organizations are disdainful of abstinence promotion, arguing, as Gail Wyatt, director of the UCLA Women's Health Project, told the conference yesterday: "The average age of first marriage in this country is now 25 to 26 years. So what are we talking about when we talk about no sex before marriage?"

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