60 Arrested in Protest by AIDS Activists

At least 60 AIDS activists were arrested today as hundreds of protesters besieged the National Institutes of Health to demand faster development of treatments for the deadly disease.

About 900 protesters gathered at the NIH headquarters in the Washington suburb, and at least 60 were arrested for blocking police vehicles or trying to enter buildings. Most were charged with trespassing, officials said.

Most of the demonstrators, who came from as far away as New York, California, Ohio and Louisiana, were kept away from buildings on the grassy campus by mounted Park Police and NIH police, preventing disruption of most activities.

At least eight protesters, however, were arrested after entering the Rockville, Md., office of Dr. Daniel Hoth, director of the division of AIDS, said NIH spokesman Bob Schreiber. Nothing was damaged and there were no injuries, he said.

On the NIH campus, protesters erected cardboard tombstones, chanted, “NIH, you can’t hide. We charge you with genocide” and carried placards that read, “NIH--Negligence, Incompetence and Horror” and “Nobody Is Home.”

“The NIH is acting as if they were trying to cure the common cold rather than treating a deadly disease,” said Charles Franchino, a member of New York’s AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, or ACT-UP, which is leading the protest.

Phyllis Sharpe, 39, of the Bronx, N.Y., a black former drug user infected with the AIDS virus, accused NIH researchers of not doing their best to include minorities, women and drug abusers in tests of potential AIDS treatments.

“They do not want to save me or my child,” said Sharpe, whose 3-year-old daughter is infected with the virus.

Tom Keenan, 30, a non-AIDS-infected heterosexual English teacher at Princeton University, said it is a shame the government has not done more to solve acquired immune deficiency syndrome.

“People shouldn’t die from neglect. People are dying and are dying regularly,” Keenan said.

About 76,000 Americans have died of AIDS, and the protesters claim that although the federal government has spent $1 billion and 10 years in testing AIDS drugs, only one drug--AZT--has received approval from the Food and Drug Administration.