International Conference:

** PWAHA Fight for Life, Amsterdam
The People With AIDS Health Alliance Fight for Life is a private
medical clinicQsufficiently unusual under Holland's national healthcare
system to have attracted international attention in Europe. This
clinic, which is loosely affiliated with Fight for Life, the AIDS
service organization in Oakland Park, Florida, specializes in AIDS/HIV
treatments, including experimental therapies. For example, it helped
many people in Europe and the U. S. obtain ddC when that drug was not
available through standard channels.
Currently there are three clinic physicians: Joseph (Jeff)
Graafmans, M. D., Rolf Eussen, M. D., and Henk Maarten Laane, M. D.,
Ph.D.
Because of the U. S immigration policy on HIV infected people, the
clinic receives many questions on how to obtain medications, especially
AZT, when traveling in the U. S. If U. S. physicians could help solve
this problem, please call the clinic, or come by if you attend the
International Conference on AIDS in July.
Fight for Life is also one option for obtaining HIV-related medical
care if that is necessary in Amsterdam.
For more information, contact Fight for Life, Postbus 15552, 1001
NB Amsterdam. Phone (20) 627-5093, fax (20) 626-4522. If you are in
the area, the clinic is located at Vijzelstraat 77 I, 1017 HG Amsterdam.
** Finding Hotel Rooms in Amsterdam; Finding Medical Research
Two travel agencies we checked had no hotel rooms available in
Amsterdam during the International Conference on AIDS; they have been
sold out for weeks. But last week we reserved a room easily, through
the Netherlands Reservations Centre, phone 070- 320-2500. Neither
travel agent gave us that number, despite thousands of dollars of
business we had done with each. We got the number from ACT UP.
We find this case a metaphor for AIDS research. Travel agents are
not agents of the traveler, who does not pay them; rather, they are
independent salespersons for airlines, hotels, and other businesses. If
they were truly the traveler's agent, serving the traveler's interests,
they would do things differently -- for example, by telling their
clients how to find a room even when they would not get a cut.
Similarly, medical research is not the agency of the people who
hope to benefit, but of the businesses, governments, and other
institutions which pay for it. If medical research truly served the
interests of its ostensible clients, many things would be done
differently.
There isn't time now to reform the whole system. But meanwhile, we
have ACT UP, Project Inform, community-based research, buyers' clubs,
and other activist groups, which give voice and weight to the public
interest when the real decisions are made.