AIDS TREATMENT NEWS No. 059 - July 1, 1988
John S. James

(1) In San Francisco: A copy of the abstracts of all three thousand presentations at the Stockholm conference is kept at the library of The Healing Alternatives Foundation (formerly the Healing Alternatives Buyers' Club), 273 Church Street, in San Francisco, open Tuesday through Saturday 1-5 PM, 626-2316. There is a keyword subject index and an author index, so you can find the abstracts on the above treatments, or on other subjects. Individual abstracts can be photocopied at the library for five cents each.

If you want the complete set, we have arranged for a photocopy shop to keep a master set on hand so that anybody can order a copy. The complete abstracts, enlarged for legibility and now a stack of paper seven inches thick, can be obtained for the photocopying charges, about $55., from Copy Mat, 2370 Market Street (near Castro), 864-2679. Ask for the "Stockholm Conference Abstracts".

(2) From elsewhere: Persons out of town who cannot pick up a copy personally can obtain one through Project Inform, (800) 334-7422 in California, (800) 822-7422 elsewhere in the U.S., or (415) 558-9051 from anywhere. The total cost of photocopying, shipping, and handling will be under $100.

--Long-Term Survivor Study. The AIDS Healing Alliance (a San Francisco organization not to be confused with The Healing Alternatives Foundation) is conducting a long-term survivor study. It needs participants for its pilot study within the next week. It is seeking persons who have had

* An AIDS diagnosis for at least two years, or * An ARC diagnosis for at least seven years, or * A seropositive status for at least seven years. Participants will fill out a medical and lifestyle survey questionnaire.

For more information or to request a questionnaire, call Tom Greaney, (415) 863-7725 (message phone).

--Major New York Fundraiser July 10. A little-known group which organized a very successful fundraiser last year hopes to do even better this July 10. This effort can also be a model for fundraising elsewhere.

People Taking Action Against AIDS (PTAAA) last year raised more than $120,000 at a single even, with less than $5000 in expenses. The key was an auction of donated work by well-known artists, some world famous, at an event at a home in Bellport, Long Island. PTAAA gave $50,000 to the Community Research Initiative to fund a lipid study, and the remainder to a local AIDS service organization, LIAAC, the Long Island Association for AIDS Care.

This year PTAAA will not only help the same beneficiaries, it will also reserve money for small seed grants to help other communities organize their own events. It is particularly interested in supporting organizing outside of major metropolitan centers, in areas where there is currently not much AIDS activity or information access.

For information about the July 10 event, or the community grants, or how similar events might be organized in San Francisco or elsewhere, call Don Hall, PTAAA, (516) 286-2374, or write PTAAA, P.O. Box 378, Belport, NY 11713.

California: Help Needed Against Dannemeyer Initiative. An "AIDS Initiative" which would close California's anonymous testing sites and force physicians to report anyone they know or "suspect" to be antibody positive will be on the November ballot in California. It would also allow insurance companies to use the HIV antibody test to deny coverage, and require anyone who has tested antibody positive to report themselves to authorities within seven days.

While the voters just rejected the similar LaRouche Initiative by a large margin, the Dannemeyer "AIDS Initiative" is much stronger politically. It has important Republican Party support and is not associated with La Rouche. Also, it may have insurance industry support because it would repeal the current law against using the HIV antibody test for insurance.

This initiative threatens the movement to get people to be tested earlier and treated earlier. It gives everybody strong reasons to delay getting tested as long as possible, delaying medical intervention and AIDS-prevention counseling. It is likely to exacerbate the AIDS disaster.

To support the effort against the Dannemeyer Initiative, contact Mobilization Against AIDS, (415) 863-4676. New help is urgently needed because the people who usually fight these initiatives are overextended with AIDS work already.

Comment On HIV Testing and Insurance: Legislation which passed the California Assembly this week would let insurance companies use the HIV antibody test to deny health insurance to persons with HIV (a provision also included in the Dannemeyer "AIDS Initiative", above). This issue illustrates a long-term problem for the whole U.S. health-care system, not just AIDS. For the HIV antibody test is only the first of an expected wave of high-tech tests to detect persons at higher risk for cancer, heart diseases, arthritis, and other expensive illnesses, as well as AIDS.

In the past the whole point of insurance has been to share the risk. But in the future the industry will inexorably drive to use the new tests to cut costs, by excluding those at risk and betting only on a sure thing--clients screened to exclude any detectable risks. Others will be dumped onto the increasingly overburdened public sector. They may also face employment discrimination, as they cannot qualify for the often-mandatory "benefit" of group health insurance--or would raise the employer's premium if they were hired.

FDA Backs Off On AL 721. Last week the FDA moved against two suppliers of AL 721 or related products: Ethigen Corporation, the patent and trademark holder on AL 721, and Nutricology Inc., in San Leandro, CA. Protests began immediately and the FDA rescinded both actions in the same week. It appears that the central FDA office near Washington, DC did not even know about the actions of the regional offices until the protests began.

The four people central to the negotiation for the AIDS community were attorneys Jay Lipner and David Barr with Lambda Legal Defense in New York, Martin Delaney with Project Inform, and Curtis Ponzi, attorney for The Healing Alternatives Foundation in San Francisco. We spoke to both Lipner and Ponzi; they saw the outcome as a message of community empowerment, but Lipner commented that the ultimate results are unknown and warned that we must keep watching the FDA in the future.

The New York Times ran a page-one story on these events on Sunday, June 26.

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