AIDS Activists Taunt, Drown Out Sullivan

Hundreds of angry AIDS activists armed with sirens, air horns, whistles and weary vocal cords, drowned out the country’s top health official Sunday as he called for cooperation, understanding and a willing ear during the closing ceremony of the Sixth International Conference on AIDS.

Dr. Louis W. Sullivan, U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, carried on stoically through the ear-splitting din. Paper airplanes, crumpled leaflets and confetti rained down on him, launched by bellowing, fist-shaking, finger-pointing activists.

“We must learn to listen to each other, to learn from each other and to work together,” Sullivan said, his words only barely heard at the back of the cavernous hall, behind the wall of activists near the stage. “Our frustration must never drive us to close our ears or our hearts.”

In the speech, Sullivan quoted from a letter he sent recently to U.S. Rep. Thomas S. Foley (D-Washington), Speaker of the House of Representatives, in which Sullivan opposed a congressional proposal to deny job protection to people with the AIDS virus who work as food handlers.

Echoing the sentiments of scientists and AIDS activists, Sullivan said that exempting food handlers from protection of the Americans with Disabilities Act “will only complicate and confuse disease-control efforts without adding any protection to the public health.”

Sullivan suggested that such a policy would be “based on fears and misinformation” about the AIDS virus. He noted that blood-borne and sexually transmitted infections like the AIDS virus “are not transmitted during the preparation or serving of food or beverages.”

Congress is to take up the proposal this week.

The demonstration, which lasted throughout the 15-minute speech, marked the first major disruption of the four-day conference. Despite earlier predictions of violence and fears of everything from blood-throwing to kidnaping, scientists and activists had worked together, calling for mutual respect.

Members of ACT UP, the group that organized the protest, claimed a victory, saying they had registered their objections to federal AIDS policies. “After 10 years of Bush/Reagan rhetoric on AIDS, we will no longer tolerate words without action,” the group said in a flyer handed out in the hall. Group members then joined the annual Gay Pride Parade near the convention center.

But scientists and some other activists expressed disappointment, saying they had been denied the opportunity to hear what Sullivan had to say.

“I actually feel we all lost,” said Jonathan Mann, former head of the World Health Organization’s AIDS program. “The images that will go around the world will be of a man with a noble face speaking quietly and carefully to a sea of wild people.”

Mann said he would have preferred having delegates rise “in silent and dignified protest and turn our backs.”

Said Pierre Luddington, a gay community leader in San Francisco who is infected with the human immunodeficiency virus: “I do think the man had a right to come here and be heard. You’d be surprised. We might have heard something that we wanted to hear.”

The demonstration erupted at 12:15 p.m. as a conference organizer attempted to introduce Sullivan. Sullivan was the top-ranking Administration official to attend the meeting. President Bush turned down an invitation to speak or to submit a videotaped speech.

Sullivan remained seated, impassively, for 10 minutes while about 250 activists filled the cavernous hall with noise--jeering, chanting, whistling, blowing air horns, setting off a siren and attempting to rally the audience of several thousand to turn their backs on Sullivan.

When it was clear that the noise would not stop, Sullivan strode to the podium and began reading from his prepared text. As the din from the floor rose, so did the volume control on the public address system. Many delegates, fingers stuffed in their ears, straggled out of the hall.

At one point, even the sign-language interpreter appeared to give up trying to hear and interpret Sullivan’s talk.

The activists complain that the Bush Administration’s rhetoric is inconsistent with its policies. They cite, for example, Administration policies restricting travel by infected foreigners to the United States, opposition to an AIDS disaster relief bill recently passed by Congress and the fact that about 37 million Americans have no health insurance.

The annual international AIDS conference is scheduled to be held next year in Florence, Italy, and in Boston in 1992. But the International AIDS Society, one of the sponsors, will withdraw its support of the Boston meeting unless U.S. travel restrictions are repealed.

In an interview, Alan Fein of the Harvard AIDS Institute, set a deadline of Nov. 1, 1990. “If there is not a complete elimination of restrictions on the entrance of HIV-infected foreigners, we will withdraw as sponsor,” Fein said.

Staff writer Kevin Roderick in San Francisco contributed to this story.