California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger
(copyrighted photo used with permission)

There were a couple of interesting statistics reported in The New York Times late last week. According to Tara Parker-Pope:

Americans are living nearly two-and-a-half months longer, according to new life expectancy statistics released today. In 2007, life expectancy in the United States reached a high of nearly 78 years, up from 77.7 a year earlier.

Life expectancy in the United States has been on the rise for a decade, increasing 1.4 years — from 76.5 years in 1997 to 77.9 in 2007, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC]. The life expectancy data, compiled by the agency’s National Center for Health Statistics, are based on nearly 90 percent of the death certificates filed in the United States.

Further:

The C.D.C. also reported a 10 percent drop in death rates related to H.I.V./AIDS, the biggest one year decline in mortality since 1998. H.I.V. is the sixth leading cause of death among 25 to 44 year olds.

POZ.com responded with additional statistics:

According to the CDC, AIDS-related death rates fell 10 percent—the biggest one-year drop in AIDS mortality since 1998. However, 11,061 people died from AIDS in 2007. For all races combined, it remained the 13th leading cause of death for 15- to 24-year-olds the 6th leading cause of death among 25- to 44-year-olds and the 11th leading cause of death for 45- to 64-year-olds.

A ten percent decrease in AIDS-related deaths can certainly be taken as positive sign that our AIDS/HIV organizations are doing something right, including here in California, where Republican Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, just used (or possibly abused) his line item veto to decimate AIDS programs and services up and down the state. All told, the Governor approved more than $83 million in cuts to California’s AIDS/HIV care and prevention programs.

Says Mark Cloutier, CEO of The San Francisco AIDS Foundation: “The hopeful statistic was the result of more HIV-positive people receiving counseling, treatment and support services.” Cloutier added, “This is the worst time to eliminate the very services that are helping people lead longer and more productive lives.”

Cloutier called on Sacramento to pursue alternative solutions:

“We urge the governor and the Legislature to reverse these destructive budget cuts by reconsidering revenue enhancements that would maintain the state’s safety net without hindering economic recovery … In times of fiscal crisis, responsibility for balancing the state budget and creating an emergency reserve fund should be borne by all of us and not just by the neediest people in California.”

The San Francisco AIDS Foundation’s online form makes it easy to add your voice to the call for sanity in Sacramento.

California Assemblymember Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco)
(photo: Dan Aiello)

Dan Aiello, writing at California Progress Report, provides a status update on AJR 13 — a measure that would put California on the record as opposing the ban on blood donations by gay and bisexual men. In addition, Aiello has extensive background information on how the policy came into being and why it needs to be revoked.

Ending the Federal Ban on Gay Blood Donations

by Dan Aiello

On Tuesday the Assembly Judiciary Committee passed AJR 13, the U.S. Blood Donor Nondiscrimination Resolution (Ammiano-D), leapfrogging the legislation over the heads of Republican committee members’ who were united in opposition.

If approved, AJR 13 would call upon the nation’s Food and Drug Administration to end its more than quarter century ban on gay men donating blood to the nation’s blood banks.

The decades-old federal blood donor ban was introduced as a way to assure the U.S. public that the nation’s blood banks were safe at the genesis of the AIDS epidemic here, according to author Randy Shilts pioneering chronicle of the health crisis, And The Band Played On. But according to Shilts research, medical experts have argued since its inception the ban did little more than discriminate and for more than two decades mandatory blood screening has rendered the ban useless.

Freshman assembly member Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco) has decided 26 years of discrimination is long enough.

“Blood has no sexual orientation and the FDA should have no discrimination,” Ammiano explained. “I hope President Obama hears our call to change this shameful and discriminatory practice immediately so we can save more lives.”

Sponsored by Equality California, the bill could lead to the elimination of the Food and Drug Administration’s ban on donations of blood by healthy gay and bisexual men:

“No healthy and willing donor should ever be turned away,” said EQCA Executive Director Geoff Kors. “This policy unnecessarily discriminates against gay and bisexual men as it provides zero additional protection to our blood supply. To the contrary, the result of this discrimination is fewer units of medically necessary blood.”

Under existing federal rules, any man who has had a sexual relationship with another man in the past 31 years is automatically prevented from donating blood at any facility, regardless of personal health. The law prevents innumerable gay and bisexual men who are otherwise healthy from contributing to the nation’s blood supply, which faces chronic shortfalls due to a lack of donations.

I asked Aiello exactly how this clearly discriminatory policy came into being and what, ultimately, the consquences were. He told me:

The FDA banned gay donors fully aware the measure would not make the U.S. blood supply any safer, but at the same time would appear to the public as action while appealing to the moral majority coalition that was the core of the Reagan coalition. Blood, almost always donated, had a production cost of $10 dollars in 1983. The Stanford University Hospital test employed and proven effective at the time of the ban, would have added $6 dollars to the cost of every donation. At a time when the total number of reported AIDS cases was less than the total number of Americans who died in plane crashes, the administration saw the public concern as unwarranted and the cost of screening too high given the relatively few reported AIDS cases. In fact, the June, 1983 ban was announced only a month after the nation’s first reported transmission of the virus contracted by transfusion.

Although the Reagan administration chose cost over safety, the public was not as trusting. And once Stanford Hospital began screening all blood for AIDS and Hepatitis, other bay area hospitals found it increasingly difficult to attract surgery patients when the safer alternative nearby. In the end, it was the consumer who directed policy, and Reagan’s feeble blood ban law was forgotten. But it has remained on the books continuing to remind us who was blamed for the epidemic. Americans came to believe gay men, regardless of lifestyle or health status, were the rats who carried this plague. It is a belief many Americans still have, one supported by this 26 year old edict.

(emphasis: mine)

Now, over a quarter of a century later, Aiello notes:

The American Association for Blood Banks, America’s Blood Centers and American Red Cross support the repeal of the ban some of their members helped to enact, calling the current lifetime deferral for gay and bisexual men “medically and scientifically unwarranted.”

I’ve been writing a lot lately about Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s callous and short-sighted budget cuts to California’s AIDS/HIV programs and services. The Governor has cut $83 million from the California State Office of AIDS. How bad is the impact going to be here in San Diego County? Rick Braatz, writing at The Gay & Lesbian Times, has the bad news — and it’s really, really bad news — and this is just the beginning:

County HIV funding council passes 2010/2011 budget cuts and increases
Being Alive San Diego annual funding reduced by 20 percent

By Rick Braatz

Addressing actual and anticipated state cuts to HIV core services, the San Diego HIV Health Services Planning Council – which decides how federal HIV dollars will be spent for San Diego County HIV services – passed its 2010/2011 budget with increases to core services and decreases to (and elimination of some) supportive services at the County Health Services Complex last Wednesday, Aug. 5.

“We can do better than this. The impact of the governor’s HIV cuts is not a theoretical impact. It’s not a budget impact. It’s a human impact. And when we’re making decisions about people’s lives or if they should be able to eat or have housing or have medications, there is something wrong with that system that’s ill thought out and unconscionable,” said San Diego LGBT Community Center Executive Director Delores Jacobs, who sits on the council.

(emphasis: mine)

Here are the numbers:

• $78,967 from Emergency Housing ($264,967) to $186,000 (two-week hotel vouchers provided HIV/AIDS clients in need of temporary housing)
• $159,929 from Shallow Rent Subsidy ($446,786) to $286,857 (housing subsidies for HIV/AIDS clients)
• $87,546 from Transportation ($401,140) to $313,594
• $87,545 from Food Services: Home Delivered Meals ($380,392) to $292,847
• $25,265 from Legal Services ($125,265) to $100,000
• $23,991 from Emergency Financial Assistance ($73,991) to $50,000

The council eliminated funding for two HIV supportive services:

• $30,923 from Information and Referral to $0
• $59,834 from Volunteer Peer Advocacy to $0

These are not frivolous extravagances that are being scaled back or entirely eliminated. These programs are vital to people living with AIDS or HIV infection. The impact on our local service providers will be devastating. The elimination of funding for Volunteer Peer Advocacy, for example, according to Being Alive Executive Director Shannon Wagner, will result in a loss of 20% of the organization’s operating budget on top of a 30% drop in private donations the group has already experienced. What is the Volunteer Peer Advocacy program and why does it matter? According to the Being Alive website:

Peer Advocates are volunteer counselors who assist and pursue the best interests of his/her client. Peer Advocacy is a program of Being Alive San Diego whose mission is to deliver quality, compassionate services to people affected by HIV/AIDS, and to provide education and referral services to those in need.

Peer Counselors or Client Advocates are individuals who have been living with HIV or have been affected for a period of three years or more and are familiar with the challenges of living with HIV/AIDS, know the resources and services available in the community and know how to access them. Peer Counselors/Client Advocates are willing to share their experiences, are empathetic, compassionate, provide useful information, emotional support, treatment/HIV education, camaraderie, referrals and much more.

The goal of Peer Advocacy is to encourage people with HIV to take charge of their lives and help direct people into dealing with these challenges more positively and effectively. The most powerful aspect of this program is that the counselors are all volunteers and are providing this service as a way of giving back some of the love and support that they received when they needed it. It just seems to be easier sometimes to talk to someone who is also HIV+, someone who can relate to your situation and know there is not a hidden agenda.

While a number of lawsuits are being filed to confront the Governor’s draconian cuts in AIDS/HIV funding, the best short term solution is to dig deeper and donate to our local AIDS/HIV organizations, if you have the financial wherewithal, or to sign up and participate in the AIDS Walk San Diego that will be happening on 27 September.

Finally, if, like me, you’re good and angry about the decimation of our state’s AIDS/HIV prevention and treatment progams, why not give Governor Schwarzenegger and the folks in Sacramento a piece of your mind. The San Francisco AIDS Foundation has made it simple and fast with an online form. Here’s the pitch:

On July 28, 2009, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger used his veto authority to make $489 in additional cuts to the state budget. This budget imposes drastic cuts to health and human services, above and beyond those already made by the state Legislature, that will jeopardize public health in California for years to come. In total, the budget cuts more than $83 million from the State Office of AIDS, eliminating all state funding for HIV prevention and testing, we risk a serious setback in the hard-won progress we’ve made against the AIDS epidemic in California.

The governor used his line-item veto authority to cut more than $52 million in general fund support for HIV/AIDS education and prevention, therapeutic monitoring, counseling and testing, early intervention, home and community-based care, and housing. The only programs that survived the cuts were ADAP, which provides access to lifesaving treatment for low-income people with HIV, and AIDS surveillance. The cuts to the state’s HIV/AIDS budget are in addition to more than $30 million in reductions already approved by the state Legislature. His vetoes also slash millions of dollars from the state’s Medi-Cal program, which provides medical care for the state’s poorest residents.

Less than five minutes of your time is all it takes.

Schwarzenegger under fire. ‘Hundreds’ looks like an understatement to me.
Watch closely (video: ABC News Los Angeles)

According to ACT UP/Los Angeles’ Peter Cashman, on Tuesday night approximately 800 people marched from Pershing Square to the Ronald Reagan Building in Downtown Los Angeles to protest Governor Schwarzenegger’s cuts to Califorrnia’s AID/HIV programs and services. As mentioned in the video, AIDS Project Los Angeles intends to file a lawsuit against the Governor, on the ground that his line-item vetoes of the state Legislature’s July budget revision bill are unconstitutional.

APLA Executive Director Craig E. Thompson said, “APLA’s programs — including those that provide in-home care to seriously ill, HIV-positive L.A. County residents and those that offer HIV prevention education to Angelenos at highest risk of HIV infection — stand to lose a total of more than $1.8 million as a result of Schwarzenegger’s cuts. The agency is the hardest hit statewide.”

Here are, via the So-Called Homosexual Agenda, some additional photos of the march:

• http://la.indymedia.org/news/2009/08/229523.php
• http://la.indymedia.org/news/2009/08/229543.php
• http://la.indymedia.org/news/2009/08/229563.php

It’s time again: Stand up. Act up. Fight AIDS.

Whenever I write about AIDS/HIV-related issues, and especially recently in regard to the horrifying cuts to vital AIDS services and programs made two weeks ago by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, people ask: where the Hell is ACT UP when we need them? Now, I have an answer.

After a lot of conversations with veteran and younger activists, I’m excited to announce that ACT UP/San Diego is in the process of being reborn. Nicole Murray-Ramirez made the announcement today in San Diego’s Gay & Lesbian Times:

ACT-UP San Diego is coming!

Silence = Death. The government cuts when it comes to AIDS will result in death, I believe. Many San Diegans are concerned that not long ago I joined a demonstration in front of the State building in Downtown organized by Bienestar, San Ysidro Health Center and CLASP. Bravo to them and to everyone who came out. But now comes word that ACT-UP San Diego is reestablishing and that’s good to hear. We need the energy and focus of ACT-UP, and let’s support the organizers. For more information, visit www.miketidmus.com

The ACT UP/San Diego site should be fully functional in a couple of days.

Fair use encouraged. Contact ACT UP/San Diego for larger versions.