THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, August 8, 1994 TAG: 9408080054
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: LOS ANGELES TIMES
LENGTH: Short : 48 lines
The recent congressional approval to recreate the Office of AIDS Research is nothing short of a revolution.
It was orchestrated by a tiny band of activist/dissenters in New York. Their leader was a 33-year-old former Wall Street bond trader named Peter Staley. Several years ago, he and his friends broke away from ACT UP, the group known for in-your-face protests.
Figuring they could accomplish more from the inside, they formed their own group, Treatment Action Group, or TAG. They buddied up to researchers, read grant abstracts and learned about funding streams. Then they issued three reports that caught the attention of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., and his colleagues in Congress.
The reports contained a litany of complaints: Money was being spent on studies that were redundant or failed to bear fruit. No one person was in charge of the federal AIDS budget. Top scientists in immunology and virology - fields that have relevance to AIDS - were not encouraged to join the fight. Promising researchers were staying away.
The AIDS Clinical Trial Group, the arm of the National Institutes of Health that tests AIDS drugs, had studied AZT and other drugs extensively but had yet to come up with good guidance for doctors, the reports said. The research effort, the group asserted, lacked coordination and direction.
``It's written off as, `Well, that's the way science works,'' Staley says. ``I don't see why it has to be that way.''
To Staley's astonishment, Congress agreed.
As a result, for the first time, one central authority - the Office of AIDS Research at NIH - controls federal AIDS research purse strings. It falls under the direction of Dr. William E. Paul. He's a highly regarded immunologist, but has no experience with AIDS.
Paul is drafting a plan that will put more money into basic research and less into clinical trials.
The NIH spends about twice as much on clinical tests as it does on basic science.
KEYWORDS: AIDS RESEARCH FUNDING
by CNB