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Statement of Virginia M. Apuzzo, Executive Director of National Gay Task Force

My name is Virginia Apuzzo.

I am grateful for the opportunity to testify today. But I am saddened and, yes, I am angered by the necessity, a necessity brought on by what we perceive to be the Federal Government’s policy of gestures and not actions.

Quite simply, from our point of view, Mr. Chairman, the Federal Government’s response to the AIDS epidemic reveals that the health care system of the wealthiest country in the world is not equipped to meet the needs of its citizens in an emergency, however brief or extended that emergency might be.

Further, if we take a look at the Federal Government’s response to the AIDS crisis it leads unavoidably to the conclusion that within this administration, there is a sharp contrast between the rhetoric of concern and the reality of response. That failure is underscored when one looks at the record of the lesbian and gay community in filling the gap….

The National Gay Task Force survey of community voluntary organizations found that $2.3 million was budgeted for AIDS projects in 1983 for the gay and lesbian community, with another $6.8 million being projected and budgeted for 1984 in the gay and lesbian community. These figures do not include local and State government grants to these groups, nor do they include the value of hundreds of thousands of voluntary hours in these programs.

Indeed, the National Gay Task Force last October opened up a crisis line, an 800 number, that would enable members of the community and the public at large to seek information about AIDS. We are getting in excess of 3,000 calls a day that we cannot respond to. And we are open 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, until 9 o’clock at night, so that we can take care of the concerns and the questions from the Western part of the country….

My written testimony submitted to your committee details the failures of the Federal Government’s response in, first, setting out requests for research projects to study AIDS, second, in funding those projects which pass its review programs, and third, in even identifying such crucial study areas as the cause or etiology of AIDS, now set for funding for the first time, Mr. Chairman, in October of 1983….

Because of its mysterious nature, and I submit, because of the groups associated with it, AIDS has generated something just short of a public panic. A good deal of that panic has been fostered by homophobes bent on turning a public health crisis into an opportunity to attack the gay and lesbian community….

The hysteria created by those ill-intentioned people cannot be handled by the limited public health education efforts the Federal Government has put into effect; leaving us again very vulnerable. The Federal AIDS hotline, which started with only three lines and now fortunately has added five more, is still capable of handling only a fraction of the 10,000 calls that attempt to get through to it daily, and none of the calls after 5 p.m. eastern daylight savings time, when the hotline is shut down.

Federal public education efforts such as there are concentrate on the general public. That is good. But education about AIDS must also reach affected groups, persons with AIDS, and those who work in very close contact with persons who are from high-risk groups.

We have heard much about health care workers, about morticians, police officers, and others who are fearful of close contact. Most of those fears are unjustified. But it is hard to blame people who have not received clear-cut guidelines and concrete information to assure them. The Public Health Service should be taking a much stronger, a vitally needed lead role in this area.

Perhaps the one issue that is most inciting of hysteria has been concern about our Nation’s blood supply. Let me restate the gay community’s position on the issue of blood donations. At every possible forum, we have urged that those in our community who feel they might be at risk to AIDS or feel unwell to refrain from donating blood. We have felt that that is the responsible position. Recent reports about dangerously low blood supplies directly result from the Government’s failure to investigate the transmissibility of AIDS through blood, to develop a marker for AIDS in blood, to test surrogate markers, or to study the safety of the blood supply and giving blood.

The negative effect of this has been that blood donations seem to have endangered more lives by virtue of the lack of blood supply than AIDS itself…