Dr. Anthony Fauci
"You are responsible for all government-funded AIDS treatment research. In the name of right, you make decisions that cost the lives of others. I call the decisions you are making acts of murder."- Larry Kramer
San Francisco Examiner, June 26, 1988
Anthony Fauci, you are a murderer and
should not be the guest of honor at any event that reflects on the past decade
of the AIDS crisis. Your refusal to hear the screams of AIDS activists early in
the crisis resulted in the deaths of thousands of Queers.
Your present inaction is causing
today's increase in HIV infection outside of the Queer community.
We are outraged that Project Inform,
an organization that supposedly works on behalf of the infected community,
would insult us by bringing you to our city. You can't hide the fact that you
are nothing but a despicable Reagan-era holdover and drug company mouthpiece.
With 270,000 dead from AIDS and
millions more infected with HIV, you should not be honored at a dinner. You
should be put before a firing squad.
Clinical trials: the
government-sanctioned mass murder of PWAs
Anthony Fauci, you are a murderer
because you oversee government-sponsored clinical trials that test and retest
combinations of immunosuppressive, toxic therapies that kill people with HIV.
The majority of U.S. clinical trials involve worthless antivirals like AZT
combined with some other drugs (generally another toxic antiviral).
What these tests have proven is that
you can piss away billions of dollars testing dangerous compounds that
DO NOTHING to improve the quality of life, stop opportunistic infections, or
extend survival for people with HIV. AZT, 3TC, ddI, ddC, d4T, and the current
crop of protease inhibitors are nothing but poison.
Ten years of the plague have shown us
that trying to kill the virus kills people with AIDS, and you, Dr. Fauci, know
it.
How long will it take you to start
focusing on the immune system, how to boost it, and how to prevent the
opportunistic infections that are killing people with AIDS?
Even you admit that "the immune
response against HIV is extremely powerful and is clearly more effective than
any of the therapeutic approaches currently available in controlling virus
replication."
Still, you give your blessing to
clinical trials of highly profitable toxins that destroy PWAs' already
compromised immune systems.
CD4s and viral load: a marketing
exec's wet dream
Anthony Fauci, you are a liar because
you have known for years that CD4 counts are a travesty of a surrogate marker
that, through drug company coercion, have been elevated to the status of
"a standard."
Now that everyone else knows it too,
you and your corporate drug company cronies are urging researchers to foist
another useless marker, peripheral blood viral load counts, on our frightened,
desperate community.
Peripheral blood viral load fluctuates
in the blood circulation and offers virtually no indication of the health or
disease progression in HIV+ people.
According to a recent article in the
April 1995 issue of The Lancet concerning viral replication, "the principle
that virus suppression will produce a major clinical benefit must remain an
article of faith." Information like that isn't stopping doctors of death
like Marcus Conant from insisting that:
"Patients should be treated earlier with
combination therapy, and we should be using markers such as PCR and branched
DNA to measure viral load as surrogate markers in clinical trials."
Your scheme isn't too difficult to
figure out: promote another invalid surrogate marker that has no relation to
the health or life expectancy of PWAs; develop a test that costs $200-$300 to
measure this invalid marker; encourage the creation of more deadly drugs that
affect this invalid marker.
And then compare the pathetic results
you get from these deadly drugs to the more pathetic results you got from AZT
and other nukes. In the eyes of the government, everybody wins.
Companies that sell drugs and market
tests get rich, and PWAs who sacrifice their bodies in your trials of death are
eliminated from the face of the earth.
The fact that your clinical trials
aren't meant to save our lives is no secret. A December 1994 BETA article
"A Remarkable Combination: AZT plus 3TC" reports that the Phase
II/III studies of these drugs were: "designed to evaluate the effect of
the combination on laboratory markers of HIV disease progression, such as viral
load and CD4 counts, not critical endpoints, such as opportunistic infections and
survival."
Related post: Any African HIV patient who takes AZT tablet is a lunatic- Scientist Johan Van Dongen
AIDS activists from ACT UP San
Francisco and DNCB Now! have been screaming for over a year that HIV+ people
need to activate their cell-mediated immunity and raise their CD8 counts. These
activists were invited to the NIH to present a forum and share their knowledge
and experience with researchers.
Finally, some researchers are coming
around and hearing our voices. Doctors like Susan Buchbinder, who in the August
1994 issue of AIDS, stated that:
"Elevated levels of CD8 cells in
healthy long-term HIV+ individuals suggest that these cells play an important
role in delaying disease progression."
Because of your 1995 Annual Review of
Immunology article, we know that you know this, Dr. Fauci, but still, you
prattle on about those CD4s that tell us nothing at all.
Selling out: from "Murderer"
to "Tony"
One thing that 10 years of the plague
has taught us is how easily people and organizations can be bought off. You are
one of those people, Dr. Fauci. Project Inform is one of those organizations.
During this time of crisis, you are
complacent; part of a government bureaucracy that values thriving
pharmaceutical company entrepreneurism over the health of people with HIV.
You are a pill-pushing pimp that
cooperates with drug companies in forcing dangerous concoctions down the
throats of a desperate community that is brainwashed into believing that taking
a pill, any pill, will help them.
.
AIDS drugs are not sold to help
people; they are sold to make a profit. The situation is so out of control that
drug companies now create and sell drugs like Marinol, a synthetic derivative
of the natural compound marijuana.
The conflict of interest, so apparent
between you and the pharmaceutical corporations, has now been embraced by those
in the AIDS community who claim that they are leaders. In their present state,
organizations like Project Inform, San Francisco AIDS Foundation, and ACT UP
Golden Gate are all so embroiled in a conflict of interest that they must be
viewed as enemies by PWAs.
Project Inform is still pushing AZT.
San Francisco AIDS Foundation's BETA reads like a promo piece for Glaxo, and
many of today's so-called AIDS activists are nothing more than public relations
representatives whose job it is to create a demand for the latest overpriced
cure du jour.
In the meantime, grassroots efforts
like the AIDS Cure Act are assailed by these sell-out AIDS organizations that
have no desire to ever see a cure.
