ACT UP Educates: Research Crisis
Julie Davids
The Future of AIDS Research is at Stake:
Community Update and Teach-In
Monday, June 26 8:00 pm SHARP
St. Luke's Church
330 S. 13th Street, Center City Philadelphia
(between Pine and Spruce Streets)
wheelchair accessible
AIDS research is a mess. It's all about drug companies __
not nutrition, alternative treatments, adolescents, women or people of color.
Now, the Office of AIDS Reseach (OAR) has appointed a "blue ribbon" panel to
decide research priorities.Who's on it?
The usual old boy researchers, drug company hacks and, representing
"community," the drug-company sponsored Treatment Action Group. The few
accountable People living with HIV/AIDS and activists will be isolated
in the closed-door meetings of the panel.
__what research do WE want?__
__and how do we get it?__
featuring members of ACT UP Philadelphia and New York;
local clinicians and activists
for more information, call ACT UP Philadelphia at 215-731-1844
Carlton Hogan
>ACT UP Philadelphia invites you to a free educational forum, video and discussion:
>
>
>AIDS research is a mess. It's all about drug companies __
>not nutrition, alternative treatments, adolescents, women or people of color.
>Now, the Office of AIDS Reseach (OAR) has appointed a "blue ribbon" panel to
>decide research priorities.Who's on it?
>The usual old boy researchers, drug company hacks and, representing
>"community," the drug-company sponsored Treatment Action Group. The few
>accountable People living with HIV/AIDS and activists will be isolated
>in the closed-door meetings of the panel.
I feel obligated to answer this inaccurate characterization of TAG,
which is redolent of implications of corruption and "sell-out". I will
try and do this as diplomatically as possible, as I have no desire to
start a flame war, but as a long term AIDS activist, I have had
an enduring respect for the work done by TAG, and by members previous
to TAG's founding, when they constituted the intellectual muscle
of ACT-UP's T&D committee.
The idea that TAG is sold out to industry is ludicrous. Sure they have
taken some industry money. Which of the big activist groups haven't?
I seem to remember that ACT-UP NY took some BW money at one point, and
Project Inform is rolling in industry gelt.
The key question is whether they have been co-opted by these funds,
whether the content or tone of their criticism has been altered at the
behest of their patrons. I think in TAG's case, it's clear they have not.
IN the recent debate over accelerated approval for protease drugs,
ACT-UP NY and Project Inform rolled over big, virtually parrroting
everything said by Ed Skolnick of Merck. They blindly accepted industry's
unverified, un-peer-reviewed claims about the predictive utility of
quantitative RNA plasma viremia (which conveniently would knock many
millions off the cost of drug development if adopted as adequate
evidence to support approval), dismissed concerns about the marginal
efficacy and possible toxicity of these drugs, and in general sounded
like a glossy four-color-sep industry brochure.
TAG incited the ire of a large segment of the community by saying
the emperor had no clothes: that these claims, while certainly attractive
and desirable, needed to be subjected to rigorous empiric verification.
In the process, they infuriated representatives of Roche, Merck, Abbott,
and other companies, who cunningly have adopted much of their current
PR strategy from a careful deconstruction of Mid-80's activist
rhetoric. By telling people what they want to hear, they walk into
FDA hearings with a formidable double-threat whammy- "activists"
and industry in agreement. TAG held the line for good science.
Which is *not* to say that everything's OK with the OAR review panel:
Nominations, and the formation of the panel were done very quickly,
very silently, and with virtually no community input: obviously a very
bad, and eminently criticizable state of affairs. Such criticisms do
not require trashing TAG to be valid, though.
Carlton
_______________________________________________________________________
| |
| Carlton Hogan (car...@gopher.ccbr.umn.edu) |
| Community Programs for Clinical Research on AIDS Statistical Center |
| Coordinating Center for Biometric Research |
| Division of Biostatistics, School of Public Health |
| University of Minnesota |
| 2221 University Ave SE, Suite 200 Voice: (612) 626 8899 |
| Minneapolis MN 55414 FAX: (612) 626 8892 |
|_____________________________________________________________________|
Affiliation Provided for Sake of Identification, not Representation>