Speaker reflects on response to AIDS

Donald Francis, a prominent AIDS doctor and educator, spoke to students Thursday about what he sees as the inefficiency of the federal government in dealing with AIDS and its failure to provide financial support to fight the epidemic in the 1980s and early 1990s.

In a speech titled “AIDS, Sex and Politics: Reflections on the First Years of AIDS,” Francis told students about the political struggle he and his colleagues faced to get recognition for the importance of the disease.

Tiffany Gates, coordinator of the event, said she asked Francis to speak because she believes he is a revolutionary figure in the AIDS movement.

“He’s a personal hero. He’s one of the first doctors to realize how potentially devastating AIDS could be,” Gates said.

“He has spent his whole life getting the government to acknowledge the importance of devoting time, money and resources to this cause.”

Francis discussed the struggles he faced in getting attention for the disease in the early 1980s, when cases of HIV/AIDS were first reported. He said he sent memos to the government about the importance of acknowledging AIDS and asking for more funding, but the matter was not taken seriously at the time.

“You have to have the government take responsibility for the health of the people, and they didn’t, and you had thousands of people die,” Francis said. “They were not responding to AIDS as they should.”

Francis said though the federal government was not helping with the epidemic, coalitions comprised of individuals, including gay men, businessmen and some government leaders, fought to call attention to the disease.

Soon academics started pushing for the recognition of the disease. An AIDS task force was created along with a California AIDS Leadership Committee, which outlined what California needed to do to stop the spread of the disease.

People also began encouraging prevention and care. They discussed abstinence versus sex, protected sex, HIV testing, safe injections and preventive education in schools, Francis said.

“Epidemics are much like fire ““ if you don’t stop them, they’ll keep going and going,” Francis said.

He said the next step in controlling diseases such as AIDS is reforming the public health structure by creating boards of health at the federal, state and local level.

The people on the board would be scientific experts and leaders, Francis said, and would be politically independent and have the power to make health policies in the best interest of the people.

“We need honesty and science that drives policy,” he said.

Francis also talked about the effects HIV/AIDS had on medical professionals. In most outbreaks, people often die soon after being hospitalized. HIV/AIDS, however, is a slow-moving disease, and patients were in and out of the hospital for years at a time in some cases.

“A lot of them become your friends,” Francis said.

Francis, as AIDS adviser for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was constantly in the limelight. When he expressed the way in which he wanted to see AIDS dealt with, which went against the government’s approach, he got into some trouble with the agency.

“I’m not a radical,” he said. “I was just saying what needed to be done.”

His struggle, along with the struggle of others who were pushing for HIV/AIDS support at the time, is depicted in a book, and also in a movie called “And the Band Played On.”

“I thought it was a very humbling experience to hear the person who was personified in the movie,” Shareeta Garrett, a UCLA alumna, said.

Garrett said she especially liked how Francis showed how the different branches of government were integrated in public health. For example, the executive branch proposes government involvement in many public health issues and the legislative branch decides whether to fund it, Francis said.

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