Chapter 10 Chapter 10
The AIDSThe Propaganda War AIDS Campaign I don't pretend to be a doctor by any stretch of the imagination.
But
over the last decade, I learned more about HIV and AIDS than I ever wanted to know. And now that I acquired this knowledge it scares the hell out of me to think that this may indeed be the great plague mentioned in the Bible that could very well be mankind's final scourge. This fatal disease is far worse than anyone ever imagined, and our government has deliberately downplayed the gravity of it for years.
But
I'm getting ahead of myself here. Let me backtrack a bit to 1985 ...
In 1985 I knew as much, or rather, as little as most Americans did about AIDS. I confess that I too thought it was only a "gay man's disease" and that
it would never concern me nor my family. Based on this self-
assuring ignorance, I believed all that the CDC and it's head Anthony Fauci put out about the disease, which frankly was not very much other than the normal safe sex propaganda associated with any STD.
But three events would drastically alter my views about AIDS and the CDC and one of those events was personal.
By chance, I ran into one
of my old scuba students from Puerto Rico on the streets of Miami Beach one day. He was on vacation and taking in the sights of trendy South Beach. It was a pleasant surprise for both of us and we spent 164
over an hour reminiscing about old times over a cold beer at a sidewalk cafe.
He was one of the Accion
Juvenil kids whose once troubled life put him at risk of a life of crime and drugs.
He was now married
with a brand new baby and job as a pharmaceutical sales rep.
Diving was still his hobby and half of our
conversation r e vo l ve d around favorite dive spots back in Puerto Rico. The rest of our chat was getting updates on all the other kids in that group of divers that I trained for months. even became radar screen.
a marine
biologist,
Most were doing well, one
and a handful dropped from the
But I was shocked to learn that one of the guys, a real
amiable and ambitious young man had just died of AIDS.
His name
is not important to you, but sure is to his family in a very conservative Puerto Rico. They would prefer that all of their family, friends, and neighbors still believe that "Juan" (not his real name) die of colon cancer.
Yes, even now in 2000, the social stigma of AIDS is still ugly
and quite powerful in many places around the world.
Less than a year earlier I had received a wedding invitation from Juan that had been forwarded to me through yet another friend I had kept in touch with over the years.
Juan had been dating this same girl for
almost six years and by mutual agreement they had put their wedding plans on hold until they both finished their university studies.
Juan was
anything but gay, and before he met up with his fiancée,
had a
reputation for being a smooth ladies man, even when I first met him in his teens.
Although n ot overly handsome, Juan was a real charmer, 165
and as long as I remember, he was always being chased by the local Puerto Rican girls.
A few times he let them catch him.
dead and I was shocked.
Now he was
How could Juan have gotten AIDS?
It was
inconceivable to both me and our mutual friend who now said good-bye to run off to catch a bus for DisneyWorld in Orlando.
My day was ruined by this unpleasant
news and I couldn't
stop
wondering. Later that evening, I tracked down his mother's telephone number and gave her a call to express my condolences. I briefly got to speak with his older sister who was once a classmate of mine at Inter American University. We joked about boring Professor Lugo who talked us to sleep in his Economics class, and commiserated about Juan. We were good friends at IAU and often shared coffee together during class breaks. I decided I would take a shot and hope she would trust me with the truth. I asked her how Juan really died. There was an awkward silence on the phone that seemed to last forever. I apologized for asking and tried to change the subject. But it was too late, as she broke down and b e g a n
sobbing
and mumbling
"What?"
I a sk e d,
not a b l e
t o understand her. "He wasn't gay. He wasn’t gay!" She blurted. I did my best to calm her down and then tried to restore some conversation by assuring her that I knew Juan wasn't gay.
In a few minutes we
were both trying to solve the mystery. Juan occasionally smoked some pot, but never used any hard drugs, and that ruled out dirty needles. All we could come up with was that he was in the hospital following a car accident about three years prior to his death.
It wasn’t too serious, a few stitches, a fractured le g, and nose.
a broken
But after learning more details I learned that he also suffered a 166
slight concussion when his face slammed into the dashboard, and he was unconscious for about a half hour while his nose bled profusely from both nostrils.
Some minor reconstructive
was
repair
required
to
a
surgery
his face
broken cheekbone and his nose and
doctors transfused a pint of blood during the surgery. the transfusion
of
a second thought,
No one gave
and everyone was just glad that
Juan didn't fare far worse in the accident. The car was totalled when it was smashed from behind by a drunk driver at 40 mph.
At that time
in history, the CDC still was not acknowledging that the HIV virus could be transmitted through a blood transfusion,
so when we hung up the
phone that night, Juan's death remained a real mystery to both of us. The second event that hit home with me was the TV news disclosure that Arthur Ashe's ultimately
(the great tennis pro) suffered from AIDS and
died from the disease. With
a wife and kids, he was
undoubtedly a heterosexual whose virility was never in question.
That
press conference news clip remains etched in my mind and the more I thought about Juan, the more I replayed that clip over and over again. Yet the CDC remained strangely silent.
I just had a gut feeling but
again, I'm no doctor and I knew almost zilch about contagious diseases and immunology. But my extensive Red Cross training taught me that malaria, dengue fever, and hepatitis could all be transmitted by tainted blood so I always had lingering doubts about this relatively new HIV disease. After all it too was a virus, not merely a bacterial infection that could be chased off with antibiotics..
167
With the Florida International University campus located virtually a five minute drive from my house, I began making regular visits to the university's library. I started reading all I could put my hands on about
168
HIV and AIDS but almost all the reports and statistics being published originated with either the CDC, U.S. Surgeon General or U.S. Public Health Service. They all seemed to be singing from the same hymnbook however, and they all insisted that HIV could only be transmitted by sexual contact or dirty needles.
Then the third and final event hit me like a sledgehammer.
Somehow
the library began carrying copies of research papers and Journals of the famous Pasteur Institute of France and they were aggressively chasing down the origin, cause, and effect of AIDS. They knew our HIV virus by a different name - HTLV. Same identical virus, just a different label.
I
immediately noticed the difference between the French and American reports.
The Pasteur Institute didn't beat around the bush nor try to
sugar coat the brutal facts about AIDS. But the more I read the sooner I began to realize a major difference of opinion.
For example, the
CDliterature casually suggested that "HIV can sometimes be fatal" whereas the Pasteur Institute flatly stated that "HTLV has consistently proven fatal in all recorded cases to date". more discrepancies
As I read on more and
began to surface until I was floored by the most
powerful one that said "current research in lab tests indicates infection can occur through contaminated
blood transfusions".
Further, the
Pasteur people differentiated b e t w ee n multiple strains of HIV including one strain that was incredibly impossible. The
Pasteur
mutant -
making a cure virtually
The CDC never even menti oned m or e than one strain. research groups also went so far as to question the
effectiveness of condoms in preventing AIDS suggesting that condoms were designed to be a barrier to sperm and not the HIV virus which was on fifth the size of a sperm and could
probably
pass through
the 169
pores of most condoms. I was floored. How could two modern medical communities be so far apart on such crucial issues on such a dreadful disease?
It seemed the only thing the two organizations actually agreed on was that the HIV virus itself was virtually undetectable and that it could go undiagnosed for months or even years until visible symptoms were recognized in victims.
Usually the first sign of infection would be a
noticeable increase in white blood cells, but without a blood test,
that
too would go undetected. A noticeable weight loss is most often the first real visible symptom.
At any rate, I was convinced Juan's nagging
mystery was finally solved. To be sure I sent off a letter of inquiry to Dr. Anthony
Fauci at the NIH asking about the Pasteur Institute's claims.
When I didn't even receive a form letter reply from him nor his staff, my suspicions were confirmed in my own heart and mind.
I was angry to even think that our own government knew that the Pasteur Institute was right on target with their findings yet would not acknowledge it. Why would they hide such crucial information from the public? After all, this voracious virus was poised to claim millions of lives with no known cure or vaccine even on the horizon. I would discover the answer to this question some six years later. For now I was headed to prison. I had lost my appeal on the IRS case and Uncle Sam demanded it's due. So off I went to serve what I was told would be a 11-13 month stint in the pokey.
But even behind bars, I had access to a small library and continued to read up on AIDS.
But my selection of reading materials was minimal 170
and getting current news of the disease was not easy. But by luck, WSVN Channel 7 of Miami began running a health segment on it's nightly news program that almost daily mentioned some news about AIDS research.
I watched this program religiously. I then had the luck
to meet a middle-aged doctor from South America who was actually an immunologist who got himself entwined in a drug importation conspiracy and was now facing about ten to fifteen years behind bars. As I began to strike up conversations with him whenever I could, I learned that he too was very interested in AIDS and for years taught virology at a medical school in the Dominican Republic.
He was no Luis Pasteur
mind you but, his level of knowledge far exceeded my own and I always had a bag of questions for him every time we'd bump into one another. Through question and answer periods that could last up to an hour, I was slowly getting an abbreviated course on virus detection, symptoms, and diagnosis.
Doc was a good teacher but our class time grew less
and less frequent due to other demands of prison life especially my unexpected visits to solitary confinement.
At MCC Miami, very few people actually served their sentences there. This was what's called an "intake facility" where people awaiting trials or sentencing are kept. Once they are sentenced they are usually sent off to another prison to do their time. So it was rare to be at MCC Miami for more than a year or two.
There were a couple of exceptions however.
including someone who was sentenced to two years or less, or in the rare cases where the judge actually ordered that someone be kept jailed in the vicinity of their family. Then there were the government witness who would be needed for upcoming prosecutions. So when I came out of solitary one day and discovered someone new in Doc's cell, I was not 171
surprised to learn that he had been sentenced and transferred away to another prison.
But he had left me a gift with his cellmate - a stack of
medical magazines and journals he had subscribed to. They were all in Spanish but it was a special day for me to inherit all this condensed knowledge. All the reading materi al sure helped to distract my mind from the dark world of prison.
I was glad that I had taken the time to
learn Spanish in Puerto Rico.
The more I read, the more I began to realize that the CDC could not possibly be so ignorant about the AIDS epidemic. It appeared to me at least, that our government didn’t trust the public enough to tell us the truth.
Indeed, some six years later I would be told by a CDC official in
Washington that there was no point in causing public hysteria when no cure or vaccine could be offered. Trying to get those comments in writing however, proved to be impossible. They were way too smart for that. But events beyond the control of the CDC forced them to start being more truthful about AIDS. When former Surgeon General Koop finally began speaking openly and truthfully about AIDS and Magic Johnson went public with his HIV infection, the CDC was forced to admit what the Pasteur Institute had been saying for almost a decade was true. But the deception continued in yet other ways that personally infuriated me, as I felt that the government believed keeping people calm was far more important than keeping them alive.
172
Q: Which of these people have AIDS? A: All of them The truth is that most people that are HIV positive do not even know it until 1-7 years after they get infected when symptoms first start to appear. When people do not know they are infected, it is very easy to infect others.
This is why everyone should get an AIDS test
yearly, especially if you have multiple sex partners. 173
I then recounted all the past cases of government cover-ups like the Tuskeggee Syphillis experiments, The Navy's mustard gas experiments,
the Army's Agent Orange denials,
experiments,
the Air
Forces
radiation
etc. all of which used American citizens as guinea pigs or
lab rats without advising them of the deadly consequences. and suddenly it wasn't too wild to believe that Uncle Sam might not be so forthright about AIDS with the public either, especially since there were rumors floating
about
that
HIV
was
an
Army
biological
warfare
experiment designed for use in Vietnam that had gone awry. To me, who had my own personal experiences with the government, all things were possible and nothing could be ruled out.
The biggest deception that continued to propagate in Washington was the deliberate underreporting of AIDS cases. Keep in mind that AIDS is a very expensive disease to treat. Special medications at the time could easily cost a patient $30 a day and long terminal hospital stays could last for months, creating hospital bills that often exceeded $300,000 or more. These costs would take a huge bite out of medicaid and insurance
companies
whose
lobbyists
pounded
the
pavement
in
Washington daily and regularly made generous campaign contributions. Their financial interests quietly
took priority in key Congressional
committees and the pressure was exerted upon the CDC to keep AIDS cases to a minimum. But how do you control such a thing?
It's not as
hard as you may think if you are as creative and deceptive as the CDC was in the 80's and early 90's.
It all comes down to establishing an
artificial standard - determining where HIV infection ends and full blown AIDS begins. This is done by counting T cells in an AIDS patient. Let me explain in the simplest of terms ... 174
Even though everyone who is HIV positive (infected with the HIV virus) will m o s t l i k e l y eventually die prematurely of AIDS, or complications related to AIDS, they are not really considered to be AIDS patients by the government or insurance companies, and therefore are not entitled to very many if any benefits or coverage with most medical plans. So the CDC arbitrarily decides that if a person has X amount of T-cells in a blood sample, they merely are HIV patients, but if they have X+ amount of T-cells, they are magically transformed into genuine AIDS patients. What this does, is allow the government and insurance companies to save billions of dollars by not officially acknowledging that someone will die of AIDS
until they
have
progressed
to the
point of advanced
infection. If they would acknowledge all HIV infection as AIDS cases (as I believe they have a moral and ethical obligation to do), the lives of millions of people could be extended five or even ten years with earlier treatments and attention.
But like everything in America, it all comes
down to money. The CDC has the sole discretion to decide what number of T cells constitutes AIDS, and their number was almost twice as as
the
European
medical
community's.
The
high
insurance
companies were grateful for the CDC's cooperation and inability to count accurately.
This T-cell counting distinction gives the CDC an added bonus of creating the illusion that they have AIDS under control because their quarterly AIDS statistics reports released to the public only include cases of the full blown AIDS cases which represents one-tenth of all those that tested HIV-positive and are destined to die a premature and agonizing death. So when you see a CDC AIDS report, that might say
175
200,000 cases of AIDS were reported for 1999, in reality, about three million people were really infected with the HIV virus and would, without the discovery of a cure, die of AIDS.
Why three million and not two million? More counting chicanery. Even the CDC and Pasteur Institute agree that one third of those people infected with the HIV virus don't even know they are infected yet, and won't until they either 1) have the occasion to be hospitalized for something else and get a routine blood test, 2) infects someone else who gets hospitalized and gets a routine blood test, or 3) symptoms finally appear and a diagnosis is made.
On average, it now takes an
HIV infected person eighteen to twenty-four discover that they are HIV-Positive.
months to realize or
If they are sexually active during
that 18-24 months, they will unknowingly infect others. Some people have gone more than three years before symptoms surfaced. HIV is a very sneaky virus that can latently hide within you for months and years. The CDC knows this better than anyone, yet they make no effort to factor in these latent, yet undiscovered cases in their counts, which as I said, they admit could be a third more than known cases. It may very well be fifty percent mor e than actual known cases - nobody really knows for sure. To be fair, the CDC does, or did at the time rely heavily on input from the NIH and the two organizations would often quote each other for political convenience and to convince the public their numbers we real.
But the point is, clever and deliberately deceptive counting policies at the
CDC
make
AIDS
in America seem a lot less serious than it
actually is for the sole purpose of saving both tax dollars and big bucks for the insurance companies. When I learned about this fraud at the CDC, 176
I was determined to expose it to the public. But being behind bars did not make it easy for me. editors
to
key
I attempted
to write
a few
letters
to the
national newspapers, but those letters probably never
left the prison grounds as I explain in an upcoming chapter.
I therefore
decided that when I was eventually released from prison, I would seek out and join up with some AIDS awareness group and use their public forum to address the government AIDS fraud.
Dr. Anthony Fauci the former NIH Director, became the point man for the U.S. government’s propaganda campaign to keep the public calm about AIDS. His methods were questionable, and in the author’s opinion unethical. For years the classification and counting of HIV infections/AIDS case were deliberately skewed to downplay the scourge of the 21st century.
Eventually I was released in 1990 to Riverside half-way house in Miami. And I must admit that place was run by some of the most dedicated and caring people I have ever met in my life. The U.S. prison system would be lucky to find staff half as decent as the Riverside folks. Anyway, as I promised myself two years before, I began to seek out some AIDS awareness groups armed with the research I found in prison etched in my mind. Although I had taken over a hundred pages of notes on my AIDS discoveries while jailed, prison officials would not let me leave prison with any of my papers other than my release forms and “legal papers”. They literally stole my files from me despite my vehement 177
protests which if anything, they simply found amusing. (See later chapters).
After sitting in on a few meetings of three different AIDS awareness groups in the Metro Miami area and collecting their literature, I made yet another crucial discovery that helped to perpetuate the CDC's fraud. Almost every AIDS awareness group receives substantial grants or other financial subsidies from the U.S. federal government.
Uncle Sam
pays millions to these groups every year, and at first I was impressed and felt maybe those in the government's ivory towers might be compensating for a little guilt. free money was
exposed
But the real motives behind the
when
I discovered
that
in order
to
obtain these government grants, all of the groups had to submit their
literature, mission
groups
leaders
to
statement,
and
the government for approval.
an innocuous, standard sort of requirement the legitimacy
resumes
on
the
This seems like
on the surface to ensure
of the group. However, when I dug deeper, I learned
that only those groups that promoted the government's official line on AIDS got the bucks.
If you submitted literature, that contradicted the
government's AIDS doctrine, even on smaller issues like whether or not condoms really prevent AIDS, your group didn't get a dime. was a very cost-efficient
This
way for the CDC to ensure that the public
heard their propaganda, and only their propaganda.
Running an AIDS
awareness organization is an expensive undertaking, and without funding, your voice is lost in the din of monetary
the
well-subsidized
groups.
This
manipulation of information that could save people's lives
just enraged me even more and eventually
I would get to debate
178
one
of
the
leaders
of
such
a subsidized
organization
on live
television (Kathy Lynch of the Health Crisis Network).
By this time, I had come to learn that exposing the CDC's phony AIDS statistics would be a futile effort if I kept pursuing AIDS groups that were funded by the government establishment. It would be easier to sell a stereo system to a deaf man.
I decided I would take another approach
and form my own organization that would tell the unedited, uncensored version of the AIDS dilemma to the public. After my experience with the Ramey Community Council, I felt confident that I could muster up some volunteers and crank out a few thousand flyers on the streets of Miami if nothing else.
I figured word of mouth would help us grow into a
respected AIDS Awareness group that would eventually force a debate with the AIDS establishment. I was young, optimistic, and even more idealistic to believe I could ultimately get the public's attention focused on the CDC's statistical sham.
In 1991, along with a handful of HIV patients, I formed the American AIDS Alert Association
as a non-profit volunteer
served as it's first chairman.
organization
and
Our initial goals were limited by our
budget, which at the time was a collection of $612 that we donated ourselves to the cause. Our first meetings were actually held in the food court of the Dadeland Mall. We had to decide how to best utilize the only two three resources we had, our time, the Pasteur information, and our $612.
We decided that we could only afford to print up and
distribute some cheap flyers and address one issue at a time.
We
agreed that the five of us would each volunteer four to six hours every weekend and one day per week at lunch time handing out flyers. We 179
had to start somewhere and this was our first step of a very long and frustrating journey.
Our first issue was the biggest one - transmission of the disease, and we put out flyers warning the public that they could get AIDS a dozen different ways without ever even having sex.
As incredible as it
sounded it was absolutely true and we listed the various ways with blood transfusions at the top of the list. We cited the Pastuer Institute as our source and we were besieged with calls to our answering machine of people wanting more information.
At this point we realized
we could not properly respond to requests for written information without enough funds for mailings.
Envelopes and postage add up when
requests start numbering about 200 a day.
We were contemplating
charging $1.00 for information booklets that would cost us 25 cents to print and another 40 cents to mail out. And we were about to take that route when God came to our rescue with a miracle.
Some kind soul
sent us $5,000 in the mail with an anonymous note that simply read "Keep up the good work. The truth needs to be told".
Considering that
our group was only a month old at the time, this gift could not
have
come at a better time and it really served to bolster everyone's morale. We had passed out about 15,000 flyers during our first months and the results were already becoming visible. Not just the donation, but in the volume of inquiries we were getting. People really were interested, or at the very least curious to know more about AIDS than what they heard from the CDC. We also picked up three new volunteers during our first month including the grandmother of an AIDS victim who died at age 22.
180
During our second monthly meeting, we set a goal to pass out 50,000 flyers by the end of the month, and to buy a used automatic dialing machine so we send our message out by telephone as well. And since we didn't have a telemarketing crew just yet, the machine would have to do.
It would leave about 500 one minute AIDS awareness messages
per day on the answering machines of Dade County residents. And true to our basic core policy, we never solicited money from anyone.
We
gladly accepted donations when offered, but I am proud to say we never asked nor begged for them.
By the end of month we three had grown to 16 volunteers and we began to address the issue of government AIDS statistics and the falsehood that condoms were 100% effective in stopping the spread of AIDS.
In
retrospect, I can now say it was probably these flyers that ticked off the government-funded AIDS establishment. We were now in effect publicly calling the CDC deceptive. Around this time, someone had donated two used computers to our group and told us about a program that would let the computers fax out two thousand of our flyers every 24 hours. It was like having two full-time volunteers standing on a downtown street corner. He showed us how to program the computers and make it spew out our flyers by fax.
We bought a database of local fax numbers of
Miami businesses and we faxed away in addition to our normal routine and the new telemarketing machine.
It was about this time that I
learned about two South Florida companies that were well aware of the contaminated blood problem and proposed their own solution of a homologous blood bank, where people could store their own frozen blood in case they ever needed a blood transfusion.
I befriended these
people and would soon go to work and later invest with one called 181
Lifeguard. It was also about this time that I realized
my conscience
would no longer let me work for the Red Cross as detailed in Chapter 8. I could
not falsely
pledge
my allegiance
to an organization
that
knowingly or not, was helping to spread AIDS to unwitting and trusting patients by the hundreds. I only regret that it took seven years and hundreds of hours of volunteer work to learn what I did about the American Red Cross. Live and learn I guess. Before
my
Red
Cross
blood
banking
experience I n Miami, I often felt like a rebel without a cause. But after I learned the truth about how AIDS was and could be transmitted, I found my cause and it aligned with the FDA and its Director David Kessler which shut down many Red Cross blood banks and sued them. When we thought the Red Cross cleaned up it act, I would move on. The FDA would have to maintain constant vigilance. In 2012 the Red Cross again was fined $6.9 million by the FDA for failing to honor previous court orders to ensure the safety of our national blood supply.
In 1993, we recruited our latest volunteer, a young Latina girl named Elsie
Ramos who
hosted
station about health.
her own
live talk- show on a local radio
She had come across some of our flyers and
invited me to be a guest on her show a couple of times to discuss our views about AIDS. of
controversy
Those radio shows really served to fuel the fires
in the
Miami
AIDS
community
and
our donations
182
began to grow along with our numbers of
p ar t - ti m e a c ti vi t y a n d
pr o t e s t volunteers which quickly grew to over a hundred.
The next thing I know we were invited to be a guest on a local Sunday morning television show to discuss AIDS Awareness.
I was not told that
Kathy Lynch from Miami's Health Crisis Network would also be a guest, but made that discovery upon my arrival at the studio.
It was a live
show, so I decided to take full advantage of it and when given the chance to speak, raised the issue of government funding of AIDS groups
whose
motives were growing more towards
getting
more
subsidies than telling the public the truth about AIDS. No arguments erupted
but it was clear to the audience that the AAAA was not
anyone's puppet.
We also discussed the condom, AIDS education in
the schools, and one or two other issues. After the show, Kathy approached me and said "I admire your passion and dedication, but don't you think your group will just cause people to panic?"
My
response to her was the same that I would always give when asked that question many times "I'd much prefer to panic and remain healthy and alive, than to remain calm and get myself infected and die". I think most people would choose the same if given the choice. But not giving them the choice to learn the truth at all is grossly unethical.
Shortly thereafter we made a move that got the AAAA some incredible publicity, lots of criticism, but saved over 320 lives. We established and introduced our "AIDS Amnesty Program" which was two fold.
First we
provided a way for people to get a totally anonymous AIDS test (free for the homeless and unmarried couples) and secondly,
notify former
sexual partners of people who tested HIV-positive without disclosing the 183
infected person's identity.
We also offered free AIDS counseling to
those who tested positive. We had assumed that these were things that government health agencies were already doing, but were shocked to learn that in Florida at least, the only social AIDS programs offered "Confidential" AIDS testing that required all who took the blood test to identify themselves and be included on a government database.
This
government program actually discouraged people from getting tested and we felt obligated to offer the public what they really wanted completely anonymous testing. But rather than focus on the benefits of our program the Miami Herald and New Times newspaper chose to attack our notification
program which basically entailed
sending a
certified letter by mail to people who were identified as former lovers of HIV patients who may not yet know they could be infected, and advise them to get an AIDS test.
The letters we sent out did not identify the
patient by name to protect their privacy, and we did not maintain a database
once
the
letters
were
sent.
The
letter
read
"Dear
XXXXXXXXXX, we regret to inform you that someone who claims to have been sexually intimate with you within the last ten years, has recently tested positive for the HIV virus. may or
DO NOT PANIC, you
may not be infected." The letter went on to recommend that
they get an AI DS test as soon as possible and to abstain from further sexual
activity
until they
do.
So many people responded to our
program that I personally provided AIDS counseling for over a hundred patients myself
(I am a HRS certified AIDS counselor). As a matter of
ethics I did not report nor disclose the identity of a single patient I counseled as all counselors were required to do “in strict confidence” even though some HRS officials were enriching themselves by secretly (and Illegally) selling databases to insurance companies for $500,000 or more. 184
I would have scanned and insert my Florida HRS AIDS Counselor certificate here presented to me by Dr. Robert Moon of Broward County, Florida but it was one of over a thousand documents stolen from by U.S. Federal Agents at gunpoint from my mother’s home in Parma, Ohio in October of 1999
Although the media and government p u b li c h ea l t h establishment raised hell and even threatened
a law suit to stop our program, the
legal beagles and The ACLU director Robin Blum came to our aid confirming that our program was well within the law and that the government did not have the exclusive right to notify people that they may be infected. Most people I spoke
with
agreed
that
if the
government had taken the initiative to establish a similar program, we wouldn't
have to.
In retrospect,
we made over 1,300 such
notifications of which 817 were already infected, BUT, 320 of them didn't even know it until they received our notice and got themselves tested. So to me at least, and probably 320 other people and their sexual partners, all the criticism we endured was well worth the final results. What really ticked
me off was how quickly the media tried to create 185
controversy without ever interviewing anyone who benefited
from our
program nor suggesting alternative solutions to a very serious and growing problem.
I have absolutely no regrets about our actions and
programs and if I had to go back and do it over again, I certainly would choose the very same paths our board of directors chose before.
Someone in the government leaked a fake tip that I had initiated this program only o drum up more business for the AIDs testing centers I invested in, but in reality more than 70% of the letters mailed out were to recipients in other Counties and States where I had no business interests. Florida has the highest transient rate in America of all the states. Instead of embracing a program that worked, as we clearly demonstrated, the government did not want to upset their own applecart. Any changes might quickly expose the fact that the AIDs epidemic was being grossly underreported, and certainly not just a “gay men disease” as President Reagan wanted the world to believe. In fact, in some countries as much as 50% of all HIV infections are women. In the U.S. it is approximately 33%. See below…
Author’s Note: Please note the dates on these charts which were what was available when I finished writing this chapter in 2009. The data has not much changed since. Just be sure to rely on accurate data from The Pasteur Institute, World Health Organization and UNAIDS. Every government has a tendency to play down its own medical problems, except when they are applying for foreign aid and grant moneys. especially if they have a large tourism industry.
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187
Forget the government propaganda – AIDS is not just a “man’s di sease” 188
If nothing else, all the publicity created by the Herald and New Times actually helped us grow to the next level as we were invited on even more radio talk shows, did some editorials for WPLG Channel 10 and got a bigger forum
and audience
in our little part of the world.
Donations and volunteers continued to grow and we could now even afford an office. We also received a $3,000 donation with the suggestion that the money be used to help produce a video and audio cassettes on the subjects of our past debates.
Our board thought that was splendid
idea, and over the next three months, we gathered all our data together and produced a two hour video tape which I narrated. It was entitled "AIDS-WHAT YOU DON'T KNOW CAN KILL YOU" and it included video excerpts from various news programs and interviews with Dr. Lorraine Thompson, Dr. C Everett Koop, and others. We sent the video out to public schools throughout South Florida and the government threatened yet another law suit if we didn't stop.
Again the lawyers
prevailed on our behalf. We only had to pledge to release a memo we received in confidence from the CDC employee about AIDs statistics for them to back down and get off our back. Unfortunately this memo was one of the documents seized illegally by federal agents or it would be scanned in to this book like others are in later chapters.
The memo was from a
Deputy Director within the CDC and it ordered all staff that if they received any media inquiries about AIDS statistics, they were not allowed to make any comment whatsoever and were required to refer every inquiry directly the office Anthony Fauci. There was also a ominous sentence in the memo that threatened CDC staff with termination if these instructions were not “strictly followed.”
189
And then the incredible happened. I received a call from a woman named
"Shirley"
Washington.
from
something
called
the
AIDS
Coalition
in
She called with the pretense of congratulating us on our
AIDS Amnesty program but eventually suggested that our group would qualify for a $250,000 grant which she suggested "could even be used to pay the salaries of an administrative staff'. I played along and asked her how we'd go about getting this grant. It was no big deal according to her. We'd only have to fill out some forms and an agreement to distribute the AIDS awareness material they provided us which she boasted was "glossy full color quality booklets".
Again I played along
and told her to send me the forms and some of the fancy booklets we'd have to pass out. When her package arrived, we all had a good laugh when we discovered all the booklets were published
by the U.S.
government printing office for the CDC, Peace Corps, USPHS, and the USA agency.
We toyed with the idea of signing the papers to get the $250,000 and then using the money to print up more of our own simple two color brochures that we used for months, but ultimately decided that just wouldn't be right.
We sent the forms back to Shirley along with some
of our own flyers for her to read.
My best guess of that episode was
that the AIDS establishment i n Washington was making a feeble attempt to buy us off. weeks
When I called the AIDS Coalition about two
later to see if I could get a director's
name or corporate
information, I asked for our friend Shirley. "Whose calling?" they asked. When I stated who I was, I was put on hold for a good three minutes before the receptionist came back on line an politely informed me that "There's nobody here by that name" and hung up.
Gee I wondered, it 190
took them three minutes to figure out they had no one named Shirley in their office? Oh well ...
I often reflected upon an old colonel that I met on the Magic Bus and started to see if any of his pieces fit about Fort Dietrich and the “special project he was assigned to. I decided that I would make some inquires.
Three pages withheld pending my final resolution and safety of my family. Throughout my four year stint at the American AIDS Alert Association, I was proud of the fact that we never accepted a dime from Uncle Sam and the integrity of our all-volunteer
staff
and policies remained
uncorrupted. More importantly our message to the public was heard in South Florida at least. I knew in my heart we were doing the right thing and this was confirmed by over a hundred congratulatory received from AIDS
patients all over
the country and another Everett
Koop
calls we
himself.
from C. Dr.
Koop
tempered his congratulations with a subtle warning however when he said to me “Young man, what you are doing is noble but you always need to be aware that you are fighting against an agenda that is focused on calming the public. If you do anything to endanger this calm, well…..you might have 191
problems with the folks in Washington.”
When I asked what kind of
problems, he hesitated and just replied… “I can’t be sure, but they would certainly not be pleasant .”
Like I said at the beginning of this chapter, I learned far more about AIDS than I ever wanted to know. But after counseling over a hundred AIDS patients, I know in my heart that even though we didn't change the world, we made a big difference in the lives of a few hundred people, saved some lives, and created a provocative, but healthy debate about AIDS in South Florida. I would venture to suggest that the residents of South Florida are now some of the best-educated citizens when it comes to AIDS awareness and our group can claim at least some of the credit for that achievement.
Personally my AAAA experience was overwhelming.
When you're
sitting across from someone who knows they will not only be dead in a year or two, but have to endure an agonizingly painful and humiliating death, suddenly all of our own problems seem so petty and insignificant. The emotions double when you learn that the patient has toddlers at home waiting to play or be tucked in. All the money and material things it can buy means squat if you don't have your health to enjoy it. From a selfish point of view, I only wish I had this enlightening experience before I went off to prison and not after.
It would have made my stay
behind bars a relative vacation compared to what an AIDS patient must suffer. I can honestly say I have never seen so much misery, suffering, and despair than in some of the families of AIDS patients, especially when children were the victims. I don't think anyone can comprehend a parent's pain and frustration knowing they are helpless to save their 192
child. And I'd be remiss if I didn't close out this chapter by saying each and everyone of us is affected by and vulnerable to AIDS whether or not you even know anyone who is HIV-Positive or not.
All it takes is a
single one night stand, a blood transfusion, a single tattoo, ear or body piercing, infected dental instruments, or even a pedicure or manicure cut to get infected (if the instruments are not sterilized after each use). The odds are indeed remote, but you are never beyond the reach of this awful disease. Your best defense against AIDS is knowledge. Please Read all you can about AIDS and never be so naïve to believe that it cannot happen to you..
I further wish to balance my comments about Dr.Fauci who is a welleducated and dedicated scientist. It is only the role that he played in supporting the government’s deception in the late 80s and early 90s that infuriated me. Perhaps he felt it was for the common good to keep the majority deceived about the real severity of the crisis since there was no cure in sight at the time. Perhaps like Colin Powell, he was duped and used by the Whitehouse unwittingly. Whatever the reasons, the public trusted him as our battlefront warrior against AIDS and he gave millions of Americans a false sense of security. We all moved on and he has certainly made contributions in many other battles and for 20 years he has not abandoned the war effort. He is certainly a competent and capable scientist. Perhaps he may not have risen to the top of his field without doing the favors requested of him by the White House. Just as W’s regime told scientists to play down the effects of Global Warming, I have no doubts that Reagan and Bush father asked him to go along with their ploy to minimize the deadly effects of AIDS and blame gay people for its spread. At the time there was very little social tolerance for gays in America so the public was 193
ripe for yet another deceptive illusion and policy. Had Fauci been truthful about the true scope of AIDs, millions of people could have recived treatment 2-3 years earlier, but insurance companies would have minimal profits - If any. UPDATE: This Chapter was written well over ten years ago and the world of medicine has made great strides in reducing the spread of AIDS in the West and in prolonging the lives of those infected with a variety of “cocktails” that inhibit the cell growth of the HIV virus.
Magic Johnson is a living
testament to what research laboratories can do when properly funded. I am confident that one day there will be a bullet-proof vaccine against AIDS, for at least most if not all strains of the ugly virus. I urge the wealthy of the world to contribute generously to AIDS research programs at John Hopkins, Duke University, and the Case Western University AIDS Research Centers. The lives they save may be those of your children or other loved ones..
China now is also coming to grip with AIDS, as a disease and not a scouge. Dr. Ray Yip and others in Beijing and every Province have formed teams to educate and prevent.
Just like Americans the Chinese also fear being
stigmatized by the results of a positive AIDS test so most are relying on home-test kits that they can buy privately on line. But since every couple must get their blood tested in order to obtain a marriage license, and others must do the same to get a visa to travel to many countries, the AIDS profile of China is starting to be pieced together. I am not “in the loop” here so it would be irresponsible for me to comment or even guess as to the gravity of China’s AIDS problem.
I have gotten involved on a limited basis as a
volunteer and have made a proposal to China’s version of the CDC to institute an anonymous testing program like we did in Miami, but this 194
proposal was submitted recently and typically a reply may take 1-3 months here in this huge government bureaucracy. There is indeed hope for a cure as Timothy Brown of Germany recently demonstrated when an experimental treatment removed the HIV virus completely from his tissues.
"It is often much easier and convenient to do what is popular than to do what is right” - President Jimmy Carter
© Copyright 1995-2014 By Bruce A. Gorcyca – All Rights Reserved
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