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7 BILLION SOLLART NEEDED TON AIDS MID菜, 養森蔬菜我 PRIY**TION TOR AFRICA
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Pride Guide 2001 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE
A-17
GIL KUDRIN
AIDS
DRUGS AFRICA
The 18th annual AIDS candlelight vigil in San Francisco's Castro district on May 20.
After 20 years, the silence is still deafening-and deadly
by Gil Kudrin
Cleveland-Greetings from the front. I have been asked to write this article 20 years into the AIDS pandemic. On June 5, 1981, the Centers for Disease Control first broke news of a rare cancer seemingly appearing only in gay men. The silence was deafening. It still is! It is also deadly.
ACT UP, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, was formed in 1987 as an act of desperation in a meeting where Larry Kramer's words sparked a revolution. Well, ACT UP's ten-year anniversary has come and gone, and millions of lives have been lost... and still the silence is deafening.
Did you know that the National Institutes of Health are now predicting a cure date of 2050? Did you know that they are also saying that their estimates of 1 billion dead are low? What have you done to stop AIDS?
On March 5, 2001 ACT UP chapters around the world were joined by Doctors Without Borders, the Gap Group and hundreds of others activist organizations in a day of protests aimed at the 40 largest multinational pharmaceutical companies who were taking to task the government of South Africa for patent infringement.
South Africa's crime was that of buying generic forms of HIV drug therapies for around $350 a month for which we pay $1,500-$2,500 a month in the United States.
Two days later the companies in question lowered the prices of their HIV medications by 90% for the countries in Africa fighting to save their people and their future. Maybe if you showed up we might have managed the same deal for the people you love here in the United States.
Notice I did not call them cocktails. These drugs are not a happy-hour drink! They are very toxic chemicals that are our only hope of staying alive long enough to get you off your ass to push our government into creating a Manhattan-style project to find the cure for AIDS. This is a promise that Bill Clinton
did not keep. Do you think that George W. Bush will pursue this idea without your rage? It is a proud time to be part of the LGBT community. In spite of Reagan, Bush and tens of thousands of
people like them in positions of power, we have managed to begin true health care reform in the United States and teach the world how to
rely on Medicare and Medicaid for your health care? Take the time to visit the human resource department where you work and figure out how long you would be insured if
ACT UP
care for people with CLEVELAND
AIDS.
We live in a country
that assures us that no matter how heinous a crime we commit, we are entitled to a lawyer. At the same time when we are ill we do not have a right to a doctor and medication. Is health care a right or is it a privilege of only the wealthy?
What do we need to do?
• Demand a Manhattan Project-styled taskforce to find the cure for AIDS.
• Demand that members of the Congress of the United States receive Medicare and Medicaid as their only form of health insurance offered by their employer-that would be you. They work for you.
• Demand a reform of the pharmaceutical industry that would end their inhumane pricing structures.
• Demand the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment so that the women in our community have equal rights. They have fought for the men in our community as we have died by the tens of thousands.
• Demand that clinical trials are conducted with women in equal numbers to men. • Find out what a clinical trial is. Your life may depend on it.
Take our own country to task for human rights abuses. That is what we are truly facing when we step back and look at our health care industry.
Do you think that you will never have to
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you were to become disabled. I think that you will be both surprised and frightened.
Almost every major advance in the way in which clinical trials of new medications are carried out in the last 20 years has come from the
work of AIDS activists. Much of the work on the Work Incentives Legislation of 1999 was spurred on by the AIDS community. I could fill volumes with the achievements of our
community and ACT UP chapters around the world; I could also fill volumes with the names of the dead.
On May 20 while in San Francisco I was able to attend the 18th annual candlelight vigil. There were no more than a thousand people marching in a city that has lost tens of thousands of gay men to AIDS.
On June 5, 2001, know that we have lived this hell for 20 years. If each one of us does not do everything that we can do to save our community every day we will live this hell for another 20 years . . . and 20 years after that... and that will only be for the lucky ones who survive.
ACT UP! Fight back! Fight AIDS!
Gil Kudrin is a member of ACT UP and works with the Ryan White Title One Council.
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