Pubdate: Sat, 22 Jul 2006 Source: Toronto Star (CN ON) Copyright: 2006 The Toronto Star Contact: http://www.thestar.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/456 Author: Peter Calamai, Science Writer POLITICS JOINS SCIENTISTS AT AIDS MEETING The drawn-out controversy in the U.S over the alleged distortion of scientific evidence by neo-conservatives and the religious right is thundering down on the International AIDS Conference here next month. More than a hundred U.S. activists will come to Toronto for the six-day meeting, organized into a "strike force" to counter presentations where ideology, prejudice or opinion are warping the scientific evidence about prevention, a leading AIDS campaigner told the Star this week. "We're prepared to combat situations at the conference where more ideological positions are taken," said Judy Auerbach, an official with the Foundation for AIDS Research in Washington. The Aug. 13-18 meeting, expected to draw as many as 26,000 participants, is the 16th edition of the premier event in the HIV/AIDS field, put on every two years by the International AIDS Society. Past meetings have featured both major scientific advances and heated political clashes. Clashes are again expected in Toronto over ideological flashpoints such as the Bush White House insistence on giving a high profile to sexual abstinence in government HIV prevention programs, despite low success rates. In apparent response to such opposition, the Bush administration -- despite its wide-ranging, multi-billion-dollar commitment to fight HIV/AIDS -- at first restricted conference attendance to just 50 scientists or policy-makers from the two U.S. government agencies mostly responsible for AIDS research, the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control. That's a fifth the numbers sent to previous such conferences overseas. NIH officials said they had negotiated another 18 places, bringing their total to 43. A CDC spokesman wouldn't provide details about numbers. "The conference is at the crossroads of science and politics. It will suffer because of this quota," said co-chair Mark Wainberg, a McGill University professor and top Canadian AIDS researcher. Despite the Bush restrictions, conference officials estimate as many as 2,000 participants will come from the U.S. "Our conference will be extremely strong from both the scientific and community standpoints, but would have been even stronger still if not for the policy being enforced by the U.S. government," Wainberg wrote in an email. The quota means numerous well-known scientists from CDC and NIH won't be coming, Wainberg said. Some didn't even bother to submit presentation proposals because they saw so little chance of getting travel approval. Many of those given the green light to take part are bureaucrats from the two agencies rather than the leading scientists "who would have loved to attend," the conference co-chair said. Scientists stress the importance of major conferences for networking and informal information-sharing. The White House contends the quota was imposed several years ago as part of a wider move to rein in the soaring costs of attending international meetings. But Wainberg says many NIH and CDC scientists have told him privately that politics is the real motivation "without question." "One reason Toronto was chosen as a venue was that people could come from the U.S. without much expense. We thought we were doing the U.S. government a huge favour," said Wainberg. Several scientists noted that the quota approach guarantees tight control on which government researchers attend and also the message they present. The conflict is just one skirmish in a larger war that erupted soon after George Bush took office 5 1/2 years ago over interference with scientific research in politically sensitive areas such as endangered species, climate change, sexually transmitted diseases, evolution versus intelligent design, and stem cell research. The larger struggle continued this week as Bush cited "moral" reasons Wednesday in vetoing a bill from the U.S. Senate to allow the NIH to fund medical research that used surplus embryonic stem cells from fertility clinics. And on Thursday a leading science advocacy group released its third survey where U.S. government researchers complained of political interference with scientific findings. Nearly a fifth of the almost 1,000 scientists who answered the confidential survey said they had been asked -- for non-scientific reasons -- to change or delete technical information or conclusions in scientific documents at the Food and Drug Administration. The FDA is the federal agency which guarantees the safety of food and drugs through testing and regulation. The Union of Concerned Scientists sent the survey to the FDA's 6,000 scientists. "These aren't isolated incidents. It's something that's happening across government on a regular basis," said Francesca Grifo, the union's director of the scientific integrity program. Also happening on a regular basis is controversy over U.S. government policies at international AIDS conferences. Advocacy groups didn't have a unified front at previous meetings in Bangkok and Barcelona. So this time more than three dozen U.S. and international groups created the ad hoc "strike force," called the Caucus for Evidence-Based Prevention. The three key partners are the Foundation for AIDS Research, Population Action International and the Sexuality and Education Council of the U.S. The groups are pushing for HIV and AIDS strategies based solely on scientific evidence, defined as "rigorously designed, implemented and evaluated studies and programs." "Too often, for ideological and political reasons, strategies with no proven efficacy have been promoted instead of those that are known to work," says a caucus briefing memo. Auerbach, the foundation's vice-president for public policy and program development, said the caucus expects to field about 100 members at Toronto. Planned activities include a daily newspaper emphasizing presentations about HIV prevention, and smaller working groups concentrating on specific topics such as youth or new prevention technologies. "We're going to make the public in Toronto aware that there's a lot more going on in preventing AIDS than abstinence and being faithful, which are the answers most promoted by the U.S. government," Auerbach said. But Auerbach and others also acknowledge that the Bush administration deserves credit for making major investments in HIV/AIDS research, prevention and treatment both domestically and abroad. The U.S. government currently spends $17 billion helping the estimated one million Americans with HIV/AIDS. From $840 million (U.S.) in the 2001-02 fiscal year, government spending on HIV/AIDS outside the U.S. rose to $3.2 billion in the current fiscal year. For 2007-08, the Bush administration has asked Congress to approve more than $4 billion. Included in that spending is the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. Unveiled in 2003 and projected to cost $15 billion over five years, it's the largest international health crusade ever with projects in more than 120 countries. Activist complaints of ideological distortion centre on the 7 per cent of the plan's spending earmarked for abstinence and "be faithful" programs in 15 so-called focus countries. That amounts to one-third of total spending on prevention, which is 22 per cent of the overall budget. Wainberg praised the relief plan as "the largest program that's getting AIDS antiviral drugs into the hands of people who otherwise would not have had access to them." Yet by limiting official participation in Toronto, the U.S. squandered a chance to ensure the world knows how much good it's doing. "It's an opportunity that they've blown," Wainberg said. That's just one example of the bigger picture which global health expert Dr. Peter Singer argues shouldn't be eclipsed by skirmishes at the AIDS convention next month. Even Prime Minister Stephen Harper's shunning of the Toronto gathering is simply small-p politics and not truly significant. "This is less about whether the PM shows up at a conference or not and more about what should be Canada's international signature in addressing the global challenge of HIV/AIDS," said Singer, a U of T professor of medicine and senior scientist at the McLaughlin Centre for Molecular Medicine. He said Canada needs a robust foreign policy strategy that applies its strengths in science, technology and innovation to tackling HIV/AIDS. Canada's contributions to the international AIDS effort since 2000 have topped $800 million. "The millions affected in Africa would be much more interested in what Canada is doing about HIV vaccines than about the small-p politics at the conference," said Singer. Yet examples gathered by the Union of Concerned Scientists show that interference by the Bush administration can be extremely political. As recently as May, panellists for a CDC-sponsored conference on sexually transmitted diseases were switched at the last minute after a conservative congressman complained that abstinence-only education wasn't well represented. But the substitute pro-abstinence panellists didn't go through the customary scientific peer review process as had those initially chosen. Alan Bernstein, head of the Canadian Institutes for Health Research, said respecting peer review is paramount to the credibility of any scientific agency. Speaking generally and not about the May conference, Bernstein said there is nothing improper with governments setting priorities for scientific and health research. "But the decision as to what researchers actually get to spend that money on should only be based on peer review. That's the line in the sand." - --- MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman