Why no Americans at AIDS event?

BANGKOK—The absence of American researchers at the International AIDS Conference here this week has left many pondering why the decision was made to limit US attendance, and by whom. "It came from above [Secretary of Health and Human Services] Tommy Thompson," said one US researcher who was told not to present her paper and had to find funding from other sources to attend. Although her work was cofunded by her university, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) component meant she was forbidden to present or talk to the media, she told The Scientist. "So I'm not going to give you my name."US officials have cited cost factors in the decision to impose a limit of 50 scientists attending from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the CDC. Among the missing, for example, is Jonathan Kagan, Deputy Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases' Division of AIDS—despite the fact that NIAIDS accounts for half the US spending on AIDS research.Other top scientists from CDC and NIH have had to come without their coworkers, who were to present papers, compromising the scientific content of the meeting. "You hardly see an American speaking here. Just one spoke this morning," said Gregory Chan, a physician from Trinidad and Tobago treating HIV/AIDS patients in prisons. Chan said he comes to the scientific components of the meeting because "the fight against HIV/AIDS is socioeconomic, but it is also very hard science." "The people who decide what science gets funded… those people aren't here," said Stephen Spector of the University of California at San Diego. "It's very unfortunate. It's across all of NIH, and many institutes are involved with AIDS and HIV. NIAID is underrepresented at this meeting. Many of the key people aren't here."Joep Lange, president of the International Aids Society, which organizes the conference, told The Guardian it had retracted papers that had been accepted for conference sessions after US authors had been refused permission to come. "I really think it is shameful that they restricted the US government participation, particularly when you think they are putting so much money into the fight and people in the field who have to do the job are directly prevented from coming here," Lange told the newspaper. Catherine DeAngelis, editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association, had also spoken out because the coauthor of a JAMA paper, Marc Butlerys, had not been allowed to fly to Bangkok to talk about it. The journal routinely holds press conferences allied to the conference and would have paid for the researcher to attend.Media speculation had suggested that Thompson was "punishing" scientists for their dissent from US government views expressed 2 years ago at the last conference in Barcelona, where he was heckled. But opinion among those at the Bangkok conference is that the issue is broader—specifically, the increasingly political nature of the biennial international AIDS meetings.The meetings have become a focal point for activism in recent years, and the 2004 event, with 17,000 delegates, is no different. Demonstration has followed demonstration, and top of the agenda is access to antiretrovirals for the millions who need them.People living with AIDS and injecting drug users accused the Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra of "lying" about a promise to treat all Thais in need of drugs, and others have issued a mock "international arrest warrant" against world leaders, including President Bush, for failing to do enough against AIDS. President Bush's $15 billion, 5-year Emergency Plan for HIV/AIDS Relief is also being heavily criticized by delegates for its commitment to the "ABC" message (abstain, be faithful, or use condoms), which African women in particular are describing as "totally irrelevant" to their male-dominated world. Spector admitted that "less and less" science was being done at the International AIDS Conferences. The winter conferences on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections are becoming more important for science of HIV/AIDS, he said, "but these meetings give an opportunity for scientists around the world to interact." It is also an opportunity for scientists to get a context for their work, in the social, medical, and political side of AIDS, he said.

Why no Americans at AIDS event?

Key US scientists missing from the increasingly political International AIDS Conference

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