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AIDS Denialists go too far.
ACT-UP San Francisco must go. by Phillip Alden As an AIDS Treatment journalist and an activist, I have witnessed the antics and violence of ACT-UP San Francisco on many occasions. As a member of ACT-UP Golden Gate (now Survive AIDS) I have tried to ignore ACT-UP San Francisco. That was a mistake.
As my fellow Survive AIDS members and the gay community at large now know, ACT-UP San Francisco harms people with AIDS. They tell people not to get tested for HIV. If a person has tested positive they tell them not to take AIDS drugs.
ACT-UP San Francisco has long opposed clinical trials, claiming that Antiviral Therapy is the cause of AIDS, not the virus itself. ACT-UP San Francisco believes that there is a conspiracy between doctors, pharmaceutical companies and the government to profit from the suffering of people with AIDS.
At the beginning of the AIDS activist movement there was only one ACT-UP in the City. When some members started to promote the ideas ACT-UP San Francisco now espouses, the group split, and ACT-UP Golden Gate was born. At first the two groups worked together on occasion, but as the ideological rift widened, ACT-UP Golden Gate was forced to cut all ties with ACT-UP San Francisco.
The members of ACT-UP Golden Gate have been repeatedly harassed and assaulted by members of ACT-UP San Francisco, but it doesn't stop there. Two female employees of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation were attacked by Ronnie Burke and Michael Bellefountaine, and had restraining orders issued against them.
ACT-UP San Francisco gets its "scientific" mandate mostly from the work of Dr. Peter Duesberg, a molecular biologist from the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Duesberg was recently picked to serve on a panel put together by South African President Thabo Mbeki. South Africa is facing an AIDS disaster and President Mbeki is desperate for answers. Peter Duesberg, along with Bay Area biochemist David Rasnick, believe that AIDS is not caused by HIV. Duesberg and Rasnick claim that poverty, drug use, malnutrition and other infectious agents are the cause of AIDS.
The top AIDS scientists both in the United States and Europe have disproved the assertions put forth by Duesberg and Rasnick, but that hasn't stopped them, or ACT-UP San Francisco from continuing to mislead, deceive and endanger the lives of people with AIDS. They have even gotten some help in Washington from conservatives who are eager to gut services for people with AIDS, including the AIDS Drug Assistance Program.
In 1996, at the International AIDS Conference in Vancouver, members of ACT-UP San Francisco threw red liquid on speakers while they were addressing a crowd of doctors and researchers.
The leaders of ACT-UP San Francisco appear to be Michael Bellefountaine, David Pasquarelli, Jason "Todd" Swindell, Andrea Lindsay and Ronnie Burke. It's hard to tell because they like to spread misinformation and they want to avoid responsibility for their reprehensible actions.
In an effort distance themselves from ACT-UP San Francisco, and to stop the confusion because of the name similarities, the members of ACT-UP Golden Gate decided to change their name to Survive AIDS. They went to Network Solutions and bought the domain name surviveaids.org while planning a new web site. Learning of this, ACT-UP San Francisco bought surviveaids.com and surviveaids.net and used those two domain names to steer people to the ACT-UP San Francisco web site. Survive AIDS was able to get the extension ".org" because they are a 510(c)3 non-profit group. ACT-UP San Francisco bought the commercial extensions ".com" and ".net" because they are not a non-profit organization.
Burke, Bellefountaine, Pasquarelli and Swindell are co-trustees of the GTT Trust, (as reported in the May 11 issue of the Bay Area Reporter). Apparently the group formed this trust in secret and bought the building that houses their headquarters and their medical marijuana dispensary on Market Street.
ACT-UP San Francisco has a much larger budget than Survive AIDS, over $1.6 million vs. $83,000. ACT-UP San Francisco has also received the support of People For the Ethical Treatment of Animals because, since they are opposed to AIDS research, they can conveniently be opposed to lab animal use.
The assault on the Structured Treatment Interruption community forum co-hosted by Project Inform and Survive AIDS on April 17 was the last straw for the AIDS treatment community.
Burke, Bellefountaine, Pasquarelli, Swindell and a handful of others entered the auditorium about 40 minutes into the presentation and began shouting; "you faggots deserve to die" and their trademark "AIDS is over." They threw pills and spit on the attendees, and members of Survive AIDS and Project Inform had to keep their audience from physically attacking the interlopers. Pasquarelli screamed in Martin Delaney's face, calling him a "liar" and a "murderer." They also pushed two Project Inform staff members, injuring Judy Leahy's knee. Leahy, a mother of two and a dedicated AIDS activist, is currently pursuing legal avenues regarding the incident.
This simply cannot continue. ACT-UP San Francisco's argument that they are a dissenting voice does not correlate with their actions. An opposing viewpoint does not involve subterfuge, violence and violating the civil rights of others. ACT-UP San Francisco has caused too much harm already, and it's past time to insure that they don't harm more people in the future.