AIDS TREATMENT NEWS No. 057 - May 20, 1988
John S. James
We first heard the idea several months ago, as plans to scatter human ashes on the White House lawn as a protest of the Reagan Administration's mismanagement of AIDS education and treatment research. But no such action took place.
More recently people are talking about real funerals--with real bodies in the coffins or ashes in the urns--outside of the Japanese embassy in Washington, or consulates throughout the country, in protest against the boycott by Japanese companies against Americans trying to buy dextran sulfate for AIDS/ARC treatment--after the drug had been sold over the counter to anyone for 20 years. (One U.S. AIDS physician called this boycott "immoral and close to murder".)
At this time negotiations are taking place on the dextran sulfate issue, and the protest against Japan may be unnecessary. The White House, of course, remains an appropriate site. But whatever the immediate situation, political funerals will deserve and require careful thought, planning, and work in advance. Whether such funerals ever do occur or should occur, the community should start discussing the possibility now.
The biggest obstacle preventing political funerals is that they will require much detailed work such as overcoming legal difficulties, notifying the press appropriately, and otherwise making detailed arrangements which persons who are dying, and their families and loved ones, would seldom want to do at that time.
An organization would have to take on these arrangements. Like the Neptune Society, which offers burial at sea, a specialized group could handle the details.
Then persons who wanted a political funeral could write their choice in their will, and be spared the burden of arranging the details.
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