ACT UP Philadelphia PRESS RELEASE

Early AM Spine Delivered on Eve of World AIDS Day to Arlen Specter's Home: Wake-Up Call from AIDS Activists Demanding Specter Reverse Year-End Cuts to Global and Domestic AIDS Programs Tuesday November 30, 2004 * 7:40 AM 4111 Timber Lane, off W Schoolhouse Lane

Contact: Paul Davis 215.833.4102

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(Philadelphia) On the morning before World AIDS Day, AIDS activists from ACT UP will deliver a real spine to the home of Senator Arlen Specter to demand that he find the integrity and strength to stand up to the Bush Administration's attacks on AIDS prevention programs as well as funding cuts against the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

"Arlen Specter talks a great talk about global AIDS, but last week he caved in to pressure from the Bush Administration and cut funding for the Global AIDS Fund," said ACT UP's Jose DeMarco. "This cowardly cut happened during the Global Fund's Board meeting in Tanzania, where African heads of state and people with AIDS from all over the world were insisting that a new round of grants for life-saving programs be launched."

The Bush Administration has consistently donated far less than the US fair share of the Global Fund's needed budget, which brought the Global Fund to the brink of closing its doors. At the Global Fund's Board meeting in Tanzania Nov. 18-19, Bush Health Secretary Tommy Thompson attempted to cancel a round of grants coming due in 2005. At the same time, Senator Specter and Representative Kolbe (R, Tucson AZ), under pressure from the White House, slashed funding from the Health and Humans Services and Foreign Operations Budget lines. Arlen Specter is the Chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Appropriations committee.

In addition to cuts to the Global Fund, Sen. Specter cut funding for life-saving domestic AIDS programs that access to medicines and other direct services for thousands of low-income Americans with HIV. Specter has also fought for increased funding for disproven, ineffective "abstinence only" prevention programs that preach chastity as HIV prevention, and deny people access to medically accurate, age appropriate information about condoms.

"We are bringing Senator Specter a new spine because he seems to have misplaced his. With so much at stake, how can Senator Specter's turn his back on millions of people living and dying with AIDS?" demands Allison Dinsmore from ACT UP. "With a new backbone, maybe Specter will be able to keep his promises and stand up to the Bush Administration's ideological attacks on effective HIV prevention and the White House attempts to kill the Global AIDS Fund."

"Senator Specter has been one of the top proponents of abstinence-only-until-marriage programs-- faith-based patronage that earmarks over a million dollars to primarily religious-based programs in Pennsylvania to miseducate vulnerable youth," reports Minni Katz from ACT UP. "This amounts to a shameless election-year slush fund for the religious right, while promoting discredited policies that forbid honest discussion of HIV prevention."

The AIDS pandemic is in its third decade and incidence of the virus is accelerating, particularly in Africa, South and Southeast Asia and the Former Soviet Union. There are currently over 40 million people living with HIV/AIDS around the world and this number is expected to explode to over 100 million by 2010. The Global Fund for AIDS, TB and Malaria is a multilateral war chest to fight this pandemic as well as the plagues of TB and malaria. In the 3 years the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has existed, it has funded cutting edge programs in 140 countries and is providing treatment and prevention to millions of people with AIDS, TB and Malaria. The Global Fund is an innovative new way of delivering foreign aid, with donors and recipients holding equal weight at the table and people with AIDS and NGOs included in every part of the decision making process. At its inception Kofi Annan called for wealthy countries to contribute $10 billion a year in order to fund vital treatment and prevention programs.

Due to ideological considerations regarding the use of condoms, syringe exchange, reproductive health services and affordable generic drugs, the Bush Administration has underfunded the Global Fund and now seeks to close its doors. Under pressure from activists, the Bush Administration launched its own global AIDS initiative in 2003. During the International AIDS Conference earlier this year, that bilateral program's anti-generic drug policies was cited by the Congress' non-partisan Government Accountability Office as the single largest obstruction to the efforts of developing countries to scale-up access to treatment to fight AIDS earlier this year.

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