U.S. Cuts Number of Delegates to World AIDS Meeting (Cut to 1/4th)

[Khephra]

The U.S. government will send only one-quarter as many people to the huge international AIDS conference starting Sunday in Bangkok as it sent to the last one in Barcelona.

The decision to cut attendance, which comes as the Bush administration is rolling out its five-year, $15 billion global AIDS treatment plan, was reached long after many government scientists had made plans to attend the conference, which is held every two years. Dozens of scientific presentations were withdrawn, about 50 will be published only as summaries and not presented publicly, and dozens of meetings -- many designed to train Third World AIDS researchers and foster international collaboration -- were canceled.

The move, which officials say is to save money, is interpreted by many AIDS experts as payback for the heckling of Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson at the last AIDS conference and further evidence of a "go-it-alone" attitude in the administration's global AIDS program.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37629-2004Jul8.html

[Redhead488]

1. This one kinda makes sense.

How many hundreds of people do we need to send to a freaking conference? We're still sending about 50 people, right? I'm all for training, but let's have the proper forums to do that. Most of these so-called conferences are a waste of time where no real work ever gets done.

[Dogmudgeon]

2. Not so

It means that the USA will have a visibly smaller presence at the AIDS conference.

It is another highly visible way that Team Bush will assert American imperial privilege -- "We're the Boss. You work for us."

It is a MAJOR political statement of support -- or contempt.

Actually, plenty of work gets done at these conferences. They are effective venues to get a year's worth of bickering out of the way so that the rest of the year can be spent cooperating.

The yearly AIDS conference (and many other such conferences) IS the "proper forum".

--bkl

[Redhead488]

3. I don't see it that way,

but you may be right. So instead of 200 people sharing papers we send 50. I don't see that as a big deal. MONEY talks....getting people into the countries where AIDS is nearly epidemic is important. Not some friggen conference--how many people do we need to coordinate? I'd prefer we save the millions wasted on sending a huge team to this conference and spend it in Sud-Saharan Africa where the need is greatest.

[Bridget Burke]

4. He's right.

We could afford to send the whole group to the conference AND send money directly to Africa. But "our" government has other priorities.

International cooperation is really necessary, especially with research. Free exchange of information is essential.

[Redhead488]

5. Sure we could AFFORD to

but how many millions can we save by sending "enough" and using that money on other AIDS priorites?

[Danmack]

7. Red Herring

if there is enough money (200 Billion) to fight a global war on terror there should goddamn be enough money to do anything we can to fight aids.

Aids by a long shot has or will kill more people than the war on terror ever will.

Its just a case of chaney uped priorities

[Redhead488]

8. Good point

But we do have other priorities as you say. There are other illnesses and diseases we need to spend money on as well.

[Dogmudgeon]

10. More about priorities

I just read another thread about the recent death of Austrian Prime Minister Klestil.

Bush isn't going to the funeral. Neither is a single official representative of Team Bush. No, they're "sending" Arnold Schwartzenegger.

If that isn't a "bee-yotch slap" to the Austrians, I don't know what is.

I think that the action with the AIDS conference is in the same league.

These conferences are of great importance for a reason I neglected to present before -- they bring the actual scientists together so they can work as friends and colleagues, not as competitors. If Bob Gallo had hung out with Luc Montagnier a few times before they began their work on HIV, it would have saved a full year and a half of time that was spent on bickering who discovered what and when.

In theory, all scientific collaboration could be done by phone calls, teleconferencing, and publishing in journals. But the human factor is still a powerful form of "magic", and intangible ingredient in any scientific endeavor. Bush is using a false sense of economics to deliver his message of contempt.

For you and me, who have to scrape and hoard every penny, the cost is not trivial. But in the struggle against AIDS, which infects tens of millions of people world-wide, when the richest country in the world can't pony up a few million bucks to enhance the course of research, that's just brazen contempt.

--bkl

[cosmicdot]

6. "most of these so-called conferences are a waste of time ...

... where no work ever gets done"

by reading the article, I came away with a different perception and opinion

wonder if things would be different if American Big Pharmaceutical companies were running the show?

imo, AIDS is hardly just another seminar to bone up on one's management skills ... http://www.aids2004.org/

Ironically, the theme of this year's conference is: "Access to All".

Retaliation and retribution are characteristics of Bush and his minions ... having worked with similar good ol'boys, I can believe Tommy Thompson would do something in spite:

A CDC official labeled as "bull" the HHS explanation that the cutbacks were primarily to save money.

"This is clearly the result of the booing of Secretary Thompson in Barcelona, which he took quite personally," this person said.


Who decides who the 50 attendees will be?
what work will be involved, and what costs will be involved, for these 50 to dissiminate all the information shared at the conference?

How important is US presence at the conference?


"Dozens of scientific presentations were withdrawn, about 50 will be published only as summaries and not presented publicly, and dozens of meetings -- many designed to train Third World AIDS researchers and foster international collaboration -- were canceled.

The largest group in the world in terms of AIDS expertise comes from the U.S., so it's important this expertise is at the conference," said Peter Piot, head of UNAIDS, the program run by the United Nations and the World Bank. The reduced attendance "is a big deal for the quality of the conference," he said.

Nils Daulaire, a former official of the U.S. Agency for International Development who now heads a Washington-based advocacy group called the Global Health Council, said "there's a shibboleth that these are junkets, but they are not. They are intensive and hard work. You don't get many opportunities to get the critical mass that you do at a meeting like this. I always come out . . . having learned something that I hadn't even thought about."

The world's largest center of AIDS research will make up approximately 0.0025% of the attendees:

This year's conference is expected to be especially large -- as many as 20,000 participants -- and important because of major new efforts to bring AIDS treatment to the Third World.

Sounds so Bush-like; and, so typical -- it's all perception and image:

The decision to limit U.S. participation in the Bangkok conference is sending a message the rest of the AIDS world will not miss, said a senior CDC official who declined to be identified.

"It's a perception from the rest of the world that the U.S. wants to be engaged, but the U.S. wants to call the shots," the official said.

And, secretive:

Jack Whitescarver, director of the NIH Office of AIDS Research, declined to be interviewed. The NIH released details of the cutbacks only in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.

[TahitiNut]

9. "Who cares what you think?" - on the Busholini coat of arms

Yes, 'scientific' conferences are 80% garbage ... it's inescapable. They're also very necessary and hugely beneficial in an unplanned way. There's a kind of serendipity that takes place at conferences. Whether it was over a beer with Edsgar Dijkstra in the bar at the Royal York or chatting about knitting with Grace Hopper before a panel was seated or sucking on an orange juice with Alan Kay or taking an elevator and swapping home addresses and phone numbers with James Martin or walking through the corridor with Ken Iverson, I found it was the the happenstance encounters and casual interactions that led to later contacts that stimulated some applied research that bore fruit. It's a kind of 'butterfly effect' ... and there's really no substitute.

[HuckleB]

11. Pitiful.

Bush must go.

[struggle4progress]

12. kick for hard-hearted a**h***s. eom