U.S. AIDS policy likely to face protests

As the man in charge of the Bush administration's $15 billion plan to treat millions of HIV-infected people in underdeveloped nations, Randall Tobias might expect a hero's welcome at the International AIDS Conference opening today in Thailand.

Instead, the U.S. global AIDS coordinator is likely to be greeted by the protests of activists opposed to the administration's policies and to Tobias.

Tobias, some activists said, could expect a reception similar to the one given Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson at the last conference. Thompson was booed off the stage at the 2002 conference in Spain.

Since then, the administration has launched the most expensive effort ever by a government to fight AIDS internationally. Yet neither the financial commitment nor the power Bush has given Tobias to mobilize the U.S. bureaucracy has won over critics, who charge that the administration's efforts are hamstrung by political and ideological concerns.

"He's been worse than we thought," said Sharonann Lynch of the AIDS organization Health Global Access Project of Tobias. "Tobias is the front man for Bush's ideology-driven policies on prevention and on treatment" of AIDS.

Lynch said Tobias has given his critics fodder by emphasizing abstinence and faithfulness as ways of preventing AIDS while playing down the role of condoms, and by not embracing generic drugs as substitutes for more expensive, patented brands.

Conservative supporters of the president's program argue that it is meeting with resistance because an entrenched international network of AIDS experts and activists doesn't like being told that their methods have failed to end the epidemic.

Rep. Mark E. Souder, an Indiana Republican who strongly supports the president's efforts to combat AIDS internationally, said the criticism of the U.S. program was politically motivated.

"Every action taken by President Bush to elevate the fight against AIDS, both domestically and globally, has been greeted with derision and whining by activists who can't bear to see the president's compassionate conservative agenda achieve the results that the previous administration failed to deliver," Souder said.

The U.S. program seeks to double the number of people with access to AIDS drugs in Africa in its first year, vastly expanding treatment and prevention efforts in hard-hit African nations, the Caribbean and Vietnam. In the five-year time frame of the program, it plans to treat 2 million HIV-infected people with antiretroviral drugs and provide palliative care for 10 million HIV-infected people and AIDS orphans.

Tobias says his critics' vehemence mystifies him.

"This program gets a lot of criticism," he acknowledged in an interview in his Washington office. Bush, he said, "is doing so much," yet "a lot of the critics are saying, 'You should do more.'"