Dozens Held as Conference on AIDS Opens : Protests: As activists storm police barricades, researchers plead for understanding of

The international AIDS conference opened here Wednesday as activists stormed police barricades outside the Moscone Convention Center and researchers inside pleaded for respect for the scientific method and a recognition of a common purpose unifying scientists and patients.

Dr. John Ziegler, a UC San Francisco professor of medicine and conference chairman, called for patience and cooperation among activists and researchers. While crediting AIDS activists with impressing upon scientists the urgency of the epidemic, he beseeched them not to disrupt the scientific dialogue.

“You ask, ‘Where are the treatments? Where is the vaccine? The scientific method seems frustratingly arcane and the progress painstakingly slow,’ ” he said. But, he added, “in our haste for answers and solutions, however, we cannot compromise the scientific method. There are no shortcuts to new knowledge.”

“To the scientists and clinicians, I ask: Listen to our patients,” Ziegler said. “. . . To the persons with HIV infection and their advocates, I say welcome. We hear your message. . . . But please respect the scientific process and do not obstruct the flow of information. The scientists and activists share a unity of interest. Our common enemy is HIV.”

Outside, the demonstrators, demanding free access to the conference as well as access to new drugs to fight the disease, surged forward into a wall of about 80 helmeted and mounted police. At least 75 protesters were arrested.

As of early Wednesday, about 9,500 delegates and 1,500 journalists from 121 countries had registered for the four-day conference. The on-site registration fee is as high as $550. One hundred agencies and community organizations are boycotting the meeting to protest U.S. restriction on travel by foreigners infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).

During the two-hour opening ceremony, organizers and speakers wore red armbands protesting the federal immigration policy. Activists complained bitterly that President Bush had turned down an invitation to speak, instead attending a fund-raiser for North Carolina Sen. Jesse Helms, author of the immigration restrictions.

San Francisco Mayor Art Agnos hailed the estimated 10,000 researchers, health care workers, officials, patients and activists gathered in the cavernous meeting hall. Comparing the federal response to AIDS to the response to the October, 1989, San Francisco earthquake, Agnos asked, “Where is our retrofit for AIDS?”

More San Franciscans have died of AIDS than died in World War I, World War II, and the Korean and Vietnam wars “combined and tripled,” Agnos said. “There is something wrong when our nation’s leaders would rather debate how to protect the fabric of the flag than how to protect the fabric of people’s lives.”

Dr. Jay Levy, a UC San Francisco School of Medicine professor, reviewed in his talk what researchers have learned of the human immunodeficiency virus--how it infects not one type of cell but many, how there are many strains, and how it can grow more virulent once a person is infected.

But there have been encouraging discoveries, as well. Recent studies suggest a quarter of all infected people remain healthy after 10 years, Levy said. And a study of infected chimpanzees has found that one animal “appears to have rid its body of the virus completely.”

“Can we help this happen in humans as well?” Levy asked.

Outside, about 500 activists chanted slogans and taunted the police. Shortly before the opening ceremony began, they began rattling barricades despite police warnings that they would be clubbed. Then groups of men and women, led by the Los Angeles chapter of the activist group ACT UP, began leaping the metal barricades and rushing police lines.

Those arrested were cited for interfering with a police officer. The arrests continued for about an hour as new activists filled the gaps left by those loaded into sheriff’s buses. “I have HIV infection and I want action,” Patrick Leach of San Francisco said as he was being taken away.

Times staff writers Victor Zonana, Kevin Roderick and Robert Steinbrook in San Francisco contributed to this story.