
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, June 26, 1990                   TAG: 9006260256
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: San Francisco Chronicle
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

SULLIVAN SPURNS MILITANT GROUP

Health and Human Services Secretary Louis Sullivan vowed that he will not work with the "chaotic and disorganized and irrational" AIDS protesters whose jeers drowned out his speech Sunday in San Francisco.

"I personally resent it, and I will not in any way work with those individuals," Sullivan said in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle after returning Monday from the International AIDS Conference. "They have shown they are not worthy of trying to form a coalition."

As the top administration official appearing at the conference, Sullivan faced a deafening roar of shouts and whistles that made his speech inaudible to those in Moscone Center. Persisting in delivering the speech for the benefit of television microphones that could pick it up, Sullivan was pelted with wads of paper and condoms.

In an hourlong session, the nation's top health official also defended the administration's spending on AIDS as "right on target."

He compared spending on AIDS research with the amounts spent on cancer and other diseases that kill more Americans.

But Sullivan's immediate concern was what he called "the antics" of the "chaotic and disorganized and irrational people who were involved" in the protest.

Sullivan said his ban on cooperation with those who disrupted his appearance applies to "ACT UP specifically."

"I can understand their anger, but what I do not accept is their disruptive actions," he said. "What they did was totally contrary to American principles of free speech."

In the past, public health officials have tended to accept ACT UP's militant protests as a manifestation of frustration among those enduring the AIDS epidemic. That attitude was taken by the AIDS conference sponsors, who went out of their way to accommodate ACT UP's protests and demands.

Federal officials have also given grudging credit for the militants' success in helping bring about changes, particularly in liberalizing federal policies on drug tests.

"I will give them credit for that," Sullivan said, "but there's a limit to the effectiveness of this. There's a line that should not be crossed. That line was crossed in San Francisco."

by CNB