ELIZABETH GLASER/PAF

ELIZABETH GLASER PEDIATRIC AIDS FOUNDATION

In 1988, Elizabeth Glaser, who had lost a child to AIDS, created the Pediatric AIDS Foundation, (PAF), 1311 Colorado Ave., Santa Monica, CA 90404; telephone: (310) 395-9051. Among PAF's projects is the search for ways to block passage of HIV from infected mothers to unborn or new-born children.

She was born Elizabeth Ann Meyer in New York City, on November 11, 1947. After receiving degrees from the University of Wisconsin and Boston University, she became a school teacher in Los Angeles. There she met and married Paul Michael Glaser, the actor who played Starsky in Starsky and Hutch on TV. When their daughter Ariel was born in 1981, Ms. Glaser received a transfusion of blood containing HIV, and Arie! became infected through breast milk. Unaware that she carried the virus, in 1984 Ms. Glaser had a son, Jake, who was infected in the womb. In 1986 all three were diagnosed HIV positive, but Paul Glaser has remained uninfected.

Ms. Glaser met with President Reagan and pleaded for more funds and attention to the AIDS crisis with no results. When Ariel died, Ms. Glaser and two friends set up the PAF, which by 1992 funded 103 research grants costing $7 million.

Though weakened by HIV, Elizabeth Glaser has been an energetic AIDS advocate harshly critical of Presidents Reagan and Bush and their administrations' poor handling of the epidemic. At the Democratic Convention in July 1992, she made a powerful and deeply moving speech in which she turned Bush's points-of-light catchphrase against him. She said, "A thousand points of light are not enough. My house has been dark for too long."

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