U.S. Funding, Policy on AIDS

The comments of Surgeon General Antonia C. Novello (Commentary, July 20) are too little, too late. AIDS activists and organizations such as AMFAR (the American Foundation for AIDS Research) and ACT UP have been trying to publicize these dire facts about women and AIDS for years.

Novello is playing politics with AIDS. Her esteemed predecessor, C. Everett Koop, tried to mobilize public opinion and government policy to fight AIDS and was blocked by the Bush Administration every step of the way. Novello’s remarks come on the heels of moving statements made at the Democratic National Convention by two people living with the AIDS virus.

While she acknowledges that women have specific gynecological manifestations of HIV infection, she does not mention that these symptoms are not included in the official AIDS definition. By not including these symptoms in the official definition, many women are denied Social Security and other benefits available to persons whose symptoms do meet the official definition. Efforts by public health officials and AIDS activists to change the AIDS definition have been ignored by the surgeon general and Secretary of Health and Human Services Louis Sullivan.

BRINT P. BUTCHART

Fullerton