Art & Understanding

Left Field by Patricia Nell Warren

?Where did the year go?? Once older folks like me monopolized that question. Now I hear it from younger people too. Evidently we are all severely dizzied by the onslaught of events and information. But it?s possible to see disturbing AIDS trends that will continue in 2004 if some Americans don?t get their heads out of the sand. To that end, I?m giving out my Golden Ostrich awards for 2003.

The first Ostrich goes to (sound effects: envelope being ripped open) the California voters who supposedly care about keeping the state liberal and Democratic, but didn?t vote in the recall because ?my vote doesn?t count.? They might have prevented a takeover by right-wingers who are using Arnold Schwarzenegger as a figurehead. What three years of Arnold?s administration will mean for California AIDS policy is anybody?s guess.

A second Ostrich goes to (rrripp) those in government who don?t care about the human bottom line of the ADAP crisis. ADAP offers retroviral treatment access to over 90,000 low-income people?many of them black and Latino?who are uninsured or lack adequate prescription-drug coverage. Recently ADAP has suffered budget shortfalls, soaring drug costs, and patients living longer?meaning that clients are backing up on waiting lists. Nearly twenty states have ?responded? to the crisis by narrowing eligibility for treatment. Recently a proposed amendment adding $214.8 million to ADAP was voted down by the Senate. Meanwhile people are starting to die. Says Patrick Lee with the North Carolina Council for Positive Living: ?America spends billions on a war that destroys life and we have to beg our government to spend money on medications that save life.?

My next Ostrich is for the media who yell about the ?global AIDS war,? and shower us with photos of South African children who die without treatment, but refuse to put a human face on these ADAP casualties right under their noses at home. Several months ago, West Virginia reported its first two waiting-list deaths. The victims? names weren?t even mentioned in the articles I saw. Five deaths have reportedly occurred in Georgia, mentioned only in one or two gay publications. Sabin Russell in the San Francisco Chronicle was one of the few I?ve seen, who wrote recently about actual living Americans facing this fate.

A special Golden Ostrich to Texas, where the state Board of Health cut off nearly a third of its ADAP clients?around 4,200 of them. As a result, healthcare providers who care are working with frantic creativity to cover treatment through county indigent programs or patient-assistance programs funded by pharmaceutical companies. Even so, some of these Texans will die. One healthcare provider points out the actual high cost of these ?cost-cutting? measures, saying bitterly: ?Let?s say someone slips through the cracks while waiting for ADAP approval and presents to the hospital six weeks later with PCP pneumonia. The hospital is obligated to treat the patient at the cost of tens of thousands of dollars.?

A matched pair of Golden Ostrichs to those who refuse to deal with PWA homelessness. A number of U.S. cities have left AIDS housing funds unspent, so I had to ponder which city to give the Ostrich to. I finally settled on San Francisco, which positions itself as the world capital of AIDS consciousnesss, yet failed to spend $124,664 of housing funds last year, while at least 3,000 San Franciscans languished on the waiting list. HUD gets the other Ostrich in this category. While homeless AIDS patients die on the street, HUD spends millions to develop Homeless Management Information Systems for use by shelters. What are HMISs? These systems will be linked into a national database to track the movements of homeless people. Stated intent is to improve services to the homeless, but the HMIS network will actually be used by law enforcement to monitor homeless people, because, gee, some of them might be terrorists.

And a Golden Ostrich in advance to the CDC if it logs these casualties into its annual mortality statistics as ?deaths from AIDS.? These are not deaths from AIDS. They are ?deaths resulting from government withholding treatment and help from poor people.?

My final Golden Ostrich goes to (the grandest rrrrrrrrrip of all)...to the Vatican, for its recent statement that condoms actually contribute to the spread of AIDS. In Africa, according to one AIDS-program director interviewed by the BBC, local priests are telling their flocks that ?condoms are laced with HIV/AIDS.?

The foregoing aren?t the only ones who deserve Golden Ostriches. If I had more column space this month, I?d give out a few more. But I only get 750 words, so that?s all for 2003.

And the Golden Ostrich Goes to...