The San Francisco Examiner - Monday, May 19, 1997
Jim Herron Zamora of the Examiner Staff

"It's tremendous news," said Jeff Sheehy, president of the Harvey Milk Club in San Francisco. "It would have been better if it had happened four years ago when he first took office. But I'm glad he's finally taking leadership. I think the resources are there. There has not been the political will."

Clinton, in a speech in Baltimore Sunday, said a team of researchers would be organized by the government and focus on vaccine research.

The announcement was met with enthusiasm by many people with personal involvement or a professional commitment to battling AIDS.

"I certainly hope that Clinton's right and we find an AIDS vaccine within a decade," said Dan Wohlfeiler, education director of the Stop AIDS Project. "Unless he matches his leadership with dollars then we'll fall far short of that promise and millions more lives will unnecessarily be lost."

In his speech, Clinton did not promise a specific amount of new money for research into an AIDS vaccine. The staff later released his proposal to spend $147 million next year for AIDS vaccine research, up $17 million from this year.

He did promise a number of new programs, including establishing a vaccine research center at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., staffed by up to 50 researchers drawn from existing NIH programs.

"It is no longer a question of whether we can develop an AIDS vaccine, it is simply a question of when. And it cannot come a day too soon," Clinton said in a commencement address at Morgan State University in Baltimore.

Compared to Kennedy's challenge

Clinton compared the search for an AIDS vaccine to President John F. Kennedy's challenge in 1961 to put a man on the moon before 1970. "If the 21st century is to be the century of biology, let us make an AIDS vaccine its first great triumph," he said.

A vaccine is urgently needed for prevention, Clinton added, noting that 3 million people around the world were infected with HIV last year. He noted the virus now ranks with tuberculosis and malaria as the world's deadliest infectious diseases.

But Dr. Robert Gallo, one of the scientists who discovered the AIDS virus, expressed doubt last week about the feasibility of finding a vaccine. "We have to say it is a serious possibility that we will never succeed with a vaccine against HIV," he told a symposium in Washington.

Treating HIV by administering a cocktail of drugs to millions of people in the developing world would require a huge input of funds and political will from the Western world. A vaccine could be a more efficient alternative - but drug companies that spent vast sums developing the cocktail have yet to be persuaded a vaccine is feasible enough to be worth committing research dollars.

Topic at church service

Clinton's promise was the major topic of conversation among many in The City's gay community. In an emotional sermon at Metropolitan Community Church, Rev. Jim Mitulski called on Clinton to have the political will to carry through on his word.

"The great impediment (to a vaccine) is not medical - it is religious opposition," Mitulski said. "I wonder if President Reagan could have said this? . . . Or if President Bush could have said it during his four years?"

In an interview later, Mitulski cited the controversy over gays and lesbians in the military as well as the debate over legalizing marriage among homosexuals as areas where Clinton has failed.

"I have a lot of enthusiasm about this," Mitulski said. "The ther reality is to hold him accountable to this. His commitment to the gay community has been inconsistent."

Mitulski and others who have lost loved ones to AIDS wondered why it has not been a higher priority earlier.

"I'm excited. I'm delighted. I'm pleased," said Anthony Turney, the executive director of the Names Project foundation. "But I have to ask why has it taken so long?"
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