The Commercial Side of Disease Is on Display at AIDS Conference

John Emerson, 84, is receiving visitors inside his “Aerosol Treatment and Sputum Induction Chamber,” an isolation booth for AIDS patients with tuberculosis. Kathy Sabel is holding a doll and demonstrating the needle-less “biojector,” which she claims injects medication at “the speed of sound.”

But the real crowd pleaser is John Higginson, who, every few minutes, inflates a condom until it reaches the size of a large watermelon and explodes.

Welcome to the bazaar of AIDS businesses.

More than 100 companies are promoting their products and services at the sixth International Conference on AIDS this week in San Francisco. Exhibitors include everyone from Pfizer Inc., the pharmaceutical giant, to Magnus Communications, a tiny educational video firm. All have paid a minimum of $5,000 to be here.

Few companies will admit that they came for anything but charitable reasons, especially since some AIDS activists are likening them to the Biblical money-changers.

Peter Staley, a spokesman for the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP), says, “ACT Uppers, when they walk into this place, feel like Jesus did when he walked into the temple. We’re tempted to turn everything over and tell them to get out. We don’t need this blatant profiteering in a house of AIDS.”

The New York chapter of ACT UP threatened Friday to storm the exhibit hall at the Moscone Center. One of their potential targets, pharmaceutical giant Hoffman-LaRoche, hired security personnel at its booth.

It’s clear that AIDS has become big business, and numbers help explain why.

The World Health Organization estimated earlier this month that 6 million people will have AIDS by the year 2000, with another 15 million to 20 million infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which causes AIDS. It estimates that 6 million to 8 million people worldwide--or one in every 400 adults--are infected with HIV.

Moscone Center, despite the sleek exhibits and high-tech lighting, can’t hide the unpleasantness of this shopping trip.

Drugs, test kits, recombinant proteins, amino acid solutions, condoms, videotapes, home care services--all are here for the asking.

W.B. Saunders, a Philadelphia medical publisher, is selling textbooks, including the Color Atlas of AIDS, complete with photographs of malignant melanomas and skin diseases that often afflict people with AIDS.

Caremark Inc.’s employees stood behind a white picket fence in the exhibit hall, touting the company’s home-care services. Rhonda Racioppi, Caremark’s HIV program manager, declined to say how much it charges to provide its service to AIDS patients.

Many of the exhibitors seemed concerned about how they were being portrayed and didn’t want to talk cost.

“The company has asked us not to get into a numbers game,” a Caremark spokesman said.

Jean Halberg, district manager for Homedco Infusion, a Fountain Valley home therapy company, said: “We are a for-profit company, but we care for indigent patients too.” She noted that the money for the booth helps sponsor the conference.

“We see a lot of things here getting hyped, and I can see where people on the outside see this as greed,” said Matt Heindel, Western region manager for Irvine-based Kendall McGaw Laboratories. “But if the companies weren’t spending money this way, I think a cure would be a lot farther down the road than it already is.”

Some among the international assemblage of scientists and physicians attending the conference seemed grateful, even delighted, by the commercial exhibits.

Sola Ami Kambamba, an AIDS educator in Zaire, was fascinated by a woman’s prophylactic device called the Condomme. The device, manufactured by M.D. Personal Products, has yet to gain U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval.

“Until now, I didn’t know there was such a thing,” Kambamba said. “This conference is good exposure.”

Dr. Lourdes Joseph D’Costa, a Nairobi physician, said he wandered the exhibit hall for hours. “We in developing countries do not see many of these things, so this is of great help,” he said.

Only a few of the products, such as Emerson’s isolation chamber, were criticized by scientists. Emerson said the chamber prevents the spread of tuberculosis from AIDS patients to health care workers.

“That’s ridiculous,” said James Kahn, clinical assistant professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. “You don’t need an isolation chamber.”

Some AIDS activists thought conference sponsors erred in screening out less mainstream exhibitors, such as those offering herbal medicine treatments for AIDS.

“There needs to be room for alternative medications,” said Phill Lechner, a Hollywood resident who has AIDS. “Too much room is taken up by major drug companies.” Lechner was wearing a jacket plastered with cards proclaiming himself one of the “Queers Against Profiteers.”

Staley, a former Wall Street bond trader, said he was angry with the way that some companies were touting their products.

“They could be a little more humble in their approach. Du Pont, with its rotating sign, looks like a used car lot,” he said. “I’ve always felt that the pharmaceutical industry is an integral part of the search for a cure, and I want to see them in the fight against AIDS.

“But what annoys people at the conference is that less than 20% of the booths are for companies doing research on a cure,” Staley added. “And a majority are doing things like making test kits, which is profiteering from the fear of HIV rather than trying to find a cure for it.”