Baboon Marrow Patient Targets Animal Activists

Jeff Getty, who received a baboon bone marrow transplant in December, said he and other AIDS patients plan a counter-protest in Maryland against animal rights activists.

The 38-year-old activist said Monday that the group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, based in Maryland, and other organizations have hounded him since the transplant.

“They call me a ‘victim of mad science,’ ” said Getty, a former University of California policy analyst who became an activist in the mid-1980s when he discovered he was HIV-positive. “I received some rather obnoxious messages when I was in the hospital fighting for my life.”

Getty, who left San Francisco for Washington on Monday, said he and more than 25 other people with AIDS will target the group with a protest in Landover, Md., on Thursday.

“It’s hard to get people with AIDS who are sick to go fight in the streets,” said Getty, who lives in Oakland. “But we have to get the message out that [animal rights groups] are slowing and obstructing AIDS research.”

Meanwhile, PETA has begun its weeklong March for Animals in Washington and expects to draw thousands of animal rights activists from throughout the country. The group is opposing animal abuse on farms and the use of animals in cosmetic and medical labs and in circuses, among other things.

PETA spokesman Dan Mathews said Getty and his fellow AIDS protesters will go largely unnoticed.

“Many of us in the AIDS community wish Jeff would move on,” Mathews said. “He’s beating a dead horse--or baboon, in this case.”

Getty believes the animal rights groups are particularly vocal because he has been feeling so well since the transplant--a result which could lead to further use of baboon marrow in AIDS patients.

“They said that if Getty had died, they would’ve let this drop,” Getty said.