Gaynews.Admin@asuvax.asu.edu (Gaynews Admin) (06/13/89)
City Health Commissioner Stephen Joseph will announce a new plan today ot
collect the names of everyone who tests positive for AIDS-virus infection.
Joseph said the names would be used to track down the peoples drug and sexual
partners.
He said his plan will go into effect as soon as new studies are published
showing the effectiveness of new AIDS treatments.
The plan is likely to be controversial because it apparently will end
anonymous testing which prevents collection of names.
Anonymous testing was instituted because it was believed to encourage people
to take the test.
Under the new plan, the city will rely on "confidential" testing in which the
city promises to keep the names secret.
Joseph said the new policy will help control the spread of the HIV virus,
which is generally believed to cause AIDS.
"We will have no choice but to change some of our most basic HIV related
policies," he said in a speech prepared for delivery in Montreal to the Fifth
International AIDS Conference.
"It is only matter of time before reliable published studies demonstrate the
effectiveness of treatment for the [AIDS infected but healthy] person," he
said.
That development "will be upon us sooner that we think," he said.
He said the change "will usher in a new era in which policies will shift
towards a disease control approach to HIV infection along the lines of classic
tuberculosis practice."
"Aggressive [drug and sexualpartner] contact tracing will become standard
public health applications for controlling [AIDS] infection," he said.
Joseph also indicated that he plans to move away from "voluntary" testing in
which each person must sign a consent form.
He said it is becoming necessary to do "routine" testing a term which is
normaly used by doctors to mean automatic testing of patients.
He did not say whether patients would be able to object.
"Confidential counseling and testing will continue, but because more
aggressive and routine in high [AIDS] prevalence areas," he said
Such areas would include poor black and Hispanic communities where 70 percent
of the city's residents stricken with AIDS last year live.
"As AIDS becomes increasingly a disease of the poor, the potential for
racial, ethnic and economic discrimination grows," said the commissioner.
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Uucp: ...{gatech,ames,rutgers}!ncar!noao!asuvax!stjhmc!107!597!Gaynews.Admin
Internet: Gaynews.Admin@f597.n107.z1.fidonet.orgOACTUP@OBERLIN (06/14/89)
I was just up at the V International Conferance on AIDS in Montreal,
and heard the speach. I don't remember the exact wording, but I have a tape
of it and I can transcribe the memorable parts.
However, I was also talking to several of the members of ACTUP NY who
were there, looking at the New York Daily News article about Josephs
announcement. The consensus of those I talked to was that the Daily News was
more responsible for a bad peice of journalism than was Joseph for what he
said. The article took the most outlandish phrases of Josephs and left out
the rest, also, I believe quoting him somewhat out of context. Was this
that article? It sounds very much like it. Where was this article from?
The worst thing about the article is that now half the people who
would have gone to get tested won't.
I'll try to get a transcript out of the speach as soon as possible.
On the subject of AIDS as genocide, there was a book that came out
sometime in the late sixties-early seventies that addressed the future
directions that US CBW (Chemichal/Biological Warfare). Included in that book
is a section that terms the SIV virus of the African Green monkey a very
promising virus that should be looked into for its potential for CBW. Of
course, the SIV virus is very dissimilar from all strains of HIV-1, but does
have very close resemblances to HIV-2, the less virulent form of the virus.
In other words, the virus that is responsible for most of the AIDS cases in
the world could not have come from that source.
To loosly paraphrase the president of Zambia (whose name
escapes me at the moment), Keynote speaker at the conferance, anyone who
believes these conspiracy theories is not only stupid, but wrong (he had a
lot of other things to say, but that was the general gist), and there is
ample evidence that has been pointed out to show this. I included this bit
of information mainly to show that twenty years ago
people were suggesting the idea of using an HIV type virus for CBW, and that
the military ceartainly does have the intent to develop CBW weapons of this
magnitude (and Beyond).
Echoing something I read somewhere else (and contradicting the last
paragraph), there is a tendancy to either spout or reject conspiracy theory,
but not really analyse and examine the possiblities. Maybe it is something
that we need to examine. But lets find some decent treatment first, before we
start wasting time and energy on blaming someone. Already enough time and
resources are spent on epidemiological studies trying to find out such
relevant things as corolations between suropositivity and gender
non-conformity in men. All very interesting, but not neccessarily that
useful.
And as Terry Sutton pointed out, we don't need conspiracy theories to
recognise that AIDS is genocide.
As for the conferance itself, if anyone has anything they want to know
about, I taped many of the panels etc. and have the abstract book. Time
permitting I would br willing to transcribe some for the list. Soluble CD4
attached to an appropriate toxin seemed to be the biggest thing in terms of
treatment (though still not past test tube stage), in that it will selectively
kill only the infected T-cells and the virus cannot become resistant to it -
as the CD4 molocule is the site that the virus attacks the T-cells, if it
became resistant to sol-CD4 it would also become resistant to CD4 on the cell
membrane and be unable to infect T-cells. Also important in terms of
development - co-factors seem to have been narrowed down a bit. CMV does not
appear to be a cofactor, but HTLV-1 definitly is. HHV-6 (Human Herpes Virus
6) also has been found to be a cofactor - additionally it can in some cases
destroy T-Cells by itself, though only rarely as 70% of people in the world
are thought to be infected. Also, they have found a new growth regulating
substance that is released by HIV infected T-Cells and is believed to be
responsable for much of the AIDS related KS.
The Conferance covered many different issues, from advanced virology
to the role of Pastor care to Education to Insurance (that was a fun one).
If people want something transcribed or related to the echo, let me know.
John Chapman
Oberlin College,
SJC9582@OBERLIN