Even the site of this year’s conference symbolized the growing rift between science and activism. The voluminous glass-walled Banamex convention center (scientists) and the rambling Global Village tent (activists) were separated by the back stretch of Mexico’s equestrian Hippodrome. Gray-washed planks spanned the muddy racetrack between the two, but few scientists ventured into the carnivalesque Global Village, and few activists crossed over to attend (without disrupting) the tedious lectures in the Banamex.
Pharmaceutical companies had their architecturally stylish kiosks in a big room at the end of an upper concourse of the Banamex, but the activists still found them. The Bristol-Myers Squibb kiosk was the site of a “die-in” staged by Act Up-Paris, who claimed the company kills children. The claim was based on BMS’s decision to stop producing 100-milligram pills of the antiretroviral drug Efavirenz, because that dosage wasn’t profitable. (Antiretroviral treatments, or ARTs, are not vaccines; rather they help prolong the life of AIDS sufferers.) HIV-infected adults usually take 600 mg per day, and it wasn’t clear why the larger pills, which BMS still makes, couldn’t be cut down to child size. What was clear is that Act Up’s antics of offering BMS “toys for the children they sentence to death” (as their handout reads) prompted a mix of bemusement and disdain from people on the science side.
Those who heard Act Up’s message the least were the folks at BMS, since the pharmaceutical companies were shrewd enough to leave their kiosks unmanned. MSD (Merck Sharp & Dohme) had a gleaming white Kubrick-like mini-theater with empty benches facing a blank screen. Subdued slogans like Boehringer Ingelheim’s promise of a “quiet evolution in HIV treatment” read like retreats more than rallies. Pfizer’s swank attempt at Buckminster Fuller looked more like a broken eggshell, and may well have reminded activists of the many broken promises science has handed them over the years. Still, with no vaccine in sight, and companies like Roche getting out of HIV/AIDS research altogether, activists need to build bridges with big pharma, not burn them. Protesting these companies for being profit-driven is like protesting a porcupine for being spiky.
Less informed than Act Up’s targeted action were the more numerous unfocused protests. One such march pierced through a crowded Banamex concourse, past the zigzagging wall of information upon which hundreds of international scientists hung “poster presentations” of their studies and experiments. Ignoring this massive source of data, protesters brandished signs with empty statements like “Stop AIDS Now!” Scientists generally greeted these outbursts with a collective, “Well, duh!” Had the marchers stopped to read some of the scientists’ posters, they might have learned something.
Mixed messages
Countries had their own booths too, each one staking ground on a pertinent AIDS issue and offering an avalanche of free publications. The Dutch booth professed a “practical and non-judgmental approach to society’s difficult issues,” and focused on the plight of sex workers. A beautiful candy-colored dildo lovingly framed in a pink, fuzzy, heart-shaped diorama was surrounded with wall panels affecting traditional blue and white Dutch tiles. The booths from sub-Saharan African nations (home to 75 percent of HIV/AIDS cases) were less playful, presenting both hope and despair: hope mainly in the form of increased condom use, and despair in pretty much every other statistic, including the inability to get better statistics.
