SAN FRANCISCO -- The 6th International Conference on AIDS opened Wednesday with the arrests of about 100 protesters and calls by both researchers and activists for President Bush to end AIDS-related travel restrictions.
John Ziegler, co-chairman of the conference, wore a red armband in solidarity with the numerous protests expected to occur during the four-day meeting, many focusing on the travel policy and other types of discrimination against people with AIDS.
The conference is being boycotted by about 100 international groups because of the United States ban on visitors who have AIDS or have tested positive for the AIDS-causing human immunodeficiency virus, called HIV.
'This conference ... opposesU.S. immigration policy in the strongest possible terms,' Ziegler told about 10,000 delegates who stood for a few moments of silence to show support for those who boycotted the conference because of the immigration regulation.
During the opening ceremony, nearly 100 arrests occurred outside the Moscone Convention Center. Protesters moved peacefully from their designated area across some barricades where one-by-one they were arrested, photographed, put in buses and driven off.
No arrests occurred inside the convention center, where several HIV-infected people, including Peter Staley of New York's AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power or ACT UP, delivered speeches attacking government response to the AIDS epidemic and Bush's failure to lift the travel rule.
'There is a man who could have prevented these absurdities. This is a man who has said he would like to see a kinder, gentler nation,' said Staley as he flashed a slide of Bush upon a giant screen.
Dozens of AIDS activists joined Staley at the stage, and he then persuaded many members of the packed auditorium to stand up and chant, 'Three hundred thousand dead from AIDS -- Where is George?' The World Health Organization estimates at least 300,000 people have died of AIDS around the globe since it was first recognized in 1981.
Bush refused two invitations to address the conference, choosing instead to attend a fund-raising event for Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., a leader in efforts to restrict travel and employment of people with AIDS, Staley said.
'I would like to say how sorry I am, and how embarrassed as an an American, that our country -- whose tradition serves as a proud beacon for emerging democracies -- should persist in such misguided and irrational current policy,' Dr. June Osborn, head of the U.S. National AIDS Commission, said at the opening ceremony.
But Osborn, who dedicated her remarks to people who have died of AIDS and groups boycotting the meeting, added: 'We must learn to cope usefully with anger. There is room, and cause, for anger ..., but it must be transformed into resolve in order to be useful.'
In the almost 10 years since the mysterious syndrome was first diagnosed among U.S. homosexual men, the AIDS-causing human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, was discovered, tests were developed to protect the blood supply, and some drugs have been developed to slow disease progression.
Although the conference is the leading scientific forum for AIDS research and some promising new findings are expected to be reported, no major advancements in the development a vaccine or treatment are anticipated.
The keynote address was given by Eunice Kiereini, head of the World Health Organization's nursing task force in Kenya. 'We can no longer categorize it (AIDS) as a disease threatening some races and noth others, only men and not women and children,' she said. 'Every single human being on this earth is faced with AIDS threat.'
The National Academy of Sciences, meanwhile, released a report concluding that the AIDS epidemic will broaden its attack on the United States over the next decade, striking more women, teenagers and others once thought at low risk.
The AIDS virus has infected at least 6 million people worldwide, including about 1 million Americans. More than 136,000 AIDS cases have been reported in the United States since the epidemic was detected in 1981 and more than 83,000 have died, more than the number of Americans killed in combat in the Vietnam and Korean wars combined.
Arawn Eibhlyn, of ACT UP San Francisco, led Wednesday's march through the main downtown Market Street, tied up the cable car system at a popular tourist boarding site and wound up at a fountain known for a marathon AIDS vigil that ended last year.
'We want access to treatments, to drugs and to all aspects of AIDS advances,' he said.
Eibhlyn said ACT UP also was marching to expose the highly touted San Francisco model of care. 'People are slipping through the cracks. It's a model that depends on volunteerism. It hasn't worked here and it won't work elsewhere,' he said.
