PROJECT INFORM AND COMMUNITY RESEARCH ALLIANCE WILL MERGE

Two San Francisco community-based AIDS research organizations, Project Inform and Community Research Alliance, have voted to merge in order to carry out research more effectively. Project Inform, active since 1985, provides AIDS treatment information through a hotline (see phone numbers in the other Project Inform article in this News Notes section) and publishes a newsletter (PI Perspectives); last year it organized a study of the Compound Q being imported by patients from China. Community Research Alliance, founded in 1988 as a project of San Francisco's PWA Coalition, organized an institutional review board and scientific advisory committee, and took other steps legally or otherwise necessary to carry out clinical trials. It conducted the hypericin monitoring study reported in AIDS TREATMENT NEWS issue #96, February 2, 1990.

This merger was consistent with the widespread belief that AIDS organizations should consolidate to provide services more efficiently. In this case, the savings is not in staff or facilities, but in avoiding the need to duplicate the building of a public identity and funding base for separate organizations with the same purpose.


STATEMENT OF PURPOSE

AIDS TREATMENT NEWS reports on experimental and complementary treatments, especially those available now. It collects information from medical journals, and from interviews with scientists, physicians, and other health practitioners, and persons with AIDS or ARC.

Long-term survivors have usually tried many different treatments, and found combinations which work for them. AIDS Treatment News does not recommend particular therapies, but seeks to increase the options available.

We also examine the ethical and public-policy issues around AIDS treatment research and treatment access.