AIDS Activists Protest at Animal-Rights Meeting

In a city that thrives on political shootouts, World Animal Awareness Week shaped up as a timid affair. Who, after all, is against saving elephants and protecting pets?

The answer: people who think using animals in AIDS research is more important. It is being delivered in strident style this week by AIDS activists who came from as far away as San Francisco to disrupt the animal-rights convention.

Even before the thousands of animal-rights advocates, including a bevy of Hollywood celebrities, could take their seats Thursday for the opening of the conference in the USAir Arena, a small group of men blocked the entrance to the arena. They accused the animal-rights activists of opposing animal research that could, they say, result in a breakthrough in the battle against acquired immune deficiency syndrome.

Nine of the protesters, all of whom had tested positive for the virus that causes AIDS, were arrested and later released on their own recognizance.

“We need this research and we are going to fight for it,” said one of the arrested protesters, Steve Michael, 40. “The reality is you get AIDS, you get sick and you die. These people who oppose research on animals to find a cure have to take a look at the real world. Their organizations want us dead.”

But the animal-rights supporters argue that because animals do not get AIDS, research on laboratory animals will do the AIDS cause no good. “In fact,” said Steven Simmons, an animal-rights activist who has AIDS, “many AIDS activists around the world have recognized that animal experiments are hindering progress toward a cure.”

Spokesmen for animal-rights groups say some AIDS activist groups are being used--and sometimes funded--by drug companies and companies that sell animals to research laboratories.

“In their desperation to find a cure, we believe some of the AIDS activists groups are being taken advantage of,” said Suzanne Joy, an executive of In Defense of Animals in San Francisco. “Obviously we are not against AIDS research. We are in favor of research that helps humans and does not harm animals.”

The protest against the animal advocates is being led by ACT UP, which stands for AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power.