Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1994. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
San Francisco Chronicle (SF) - WEDNESDAY, December 7, 1994 Edition: FINAL Section: Editorial Page: A22 Word Count: 312
YET AGAIN WE HAVE to wonder what, if anything, the Clinton administration really stands for when it stubbornly refuses to release a year-old government report that concludes that needle exchange programs help to limit the spread of the AIDS virus.
There are plenty of bootleg copies of the confidential report by the Centers for Disease Control that endorses needle exchange programs, but the Clintonites refuse to make it public apparently fearing a political confrontation with the moralists of the Republican right-wing.
Chronicle staff writer Louis Freedberg reported that the administration refuses to divulge the information despite repeated requests and appeals under the Freedom of Information Act. An anonymous Public Health Service official alibied: "Officially, the matter is still under review." Sure.
This, only a few days after the AIDS-related death of Elizabeth Glaser who electrified the 1992 Democratic convention with her dramatic account of how she and her two children were infected with HIV through a medical transfusion. After she died Saturday, President Clinton made a sanctimonious call on the nation to "honor her memory by finishing the work to which she gave everything she had."
How hollow his words ring. With intravenous drug use now the main way that AIDS is transmitted in the United States, especially in the heterosexual community, it is unconscionable that the administration refuses to reveal the findings that support the conclusions of a landmark University of California at San Francisco study that recommended overturning a congressional ban on using federal funds for needle exchange programs.
"The evidence has now become very, very clear, to the point where you could consider it public health malpractice to keep the ban in place," said Dr. Don Des Jarlais, director of the Chemical Dependency Institute at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York. Of course, it took someone outside the Beltway to tell the obvious truth.
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