1 December 2007
Dear Friend of TAG,
Fifteen years ago I became acquainted with the Treatment Action Group (TAG) and joined their ranks as a volunteer because I wanted to contribute to their activist work: speeding up research for better treatments, a vaccine, and a cure for HIV. But that was a long time ago-which is good news from my point of view-because my partner and I are still here today to explain how TAG helped extend our lives.
To do so, I'd like to take you back to the mid-90s and tell you a story.
After taking TAG's crash course on AIDS treatment activism, which included training on everything from government advocacy to clinical trial science, I was both knowledgeable and empowered enough to protect my own health and also that of my partner. At one point, his health provider recommended he take a notoriously underpowered anti-HIV drug that TAG had raised questions about. It would have offered a short-term benefit but with longer-term harmful effects. My partner thankfully held out for a more powerful regimen.
Later on, by speaking with researchers, meeting with drug companies, and serving on two government advisory panels, I witnessed firsthand how TAG's intelligent policies influenced not only patients but also key decision makers in the worlds of scientific research and government. TAG's work pushed the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to maintain strict evaluation standards that encourage drug companies to produce effective and safe drugs at proper dosages, while at the same time ensuring flex-ibility to provide preapproval access and to approve drugs faster, thus allowing them to be studied both rigorously and rapidly.
While it remains a small and tightly focused advocacy group, TAG now operates on a global scale. I ask you to imagine how my personal experience illustrates TAG's capacity to help save-not just one life-but perhaps thousands and eventually millions. It's all too clear that most people with HIV in the world do not have the opportunities and good fortune that I have enjoyed.
Let me give you five reasons why TAG's work must continue and get stronger in the years ahead:
1. AIDS research is threatened by Federal budget cuts.
The 1990s saw big gains in the U.S. AIDS research budget and big gains in treatment research and access. Over the past four years, however, U.S. AIDS research funds have been stagnant due to the federal government's misplaced priorities at home and abroad. TAG works with activists around the country to urge Congress to increase U.S. AIDS research and treatment budgets.
2. After more than 25 years of AIDS, prevention programs continue to fail.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are poised to announce that HIV infections in the United States are 50% higher than previously estimated. This means that up to 60,000 new HIV infections occur each year. Most of these infections are preventable, but government policies have restricted access to proven HIV prevention tools such as condoms, clean needles, and sex education for young people. TAG works to increase U.S. investment in HIV prevention research and programs.
3. AIDS vaccine research is back to square one
This year, two major studies of the most promising potential HIV vaccine were halted. The results were grim: not only did the vaccine fail to protect, but more people receiving the potential vaccine may have become infected than those receiving placebo shots. Such failures have the potential to provide useful knowledge but no one yet fully understands why the results were so bad. TAG works to increase and accelerate scientists' understanding of how HIV interacts with the immune system to cause disease. This work will lead to better vaccine candidates and-one day-a cure for AIDS.
4. AIDS treatment access is woefully inadequate
In the United States, almost half of HIV-positive people who need anti-HIV treatment do not have access to it. Around the world, the situation is even worse-over three-quarters of the nearly 7 million HIV-positive people who need treatment today can't get it. TAG is one of the world's leading activist groups working toward universal access to HIV treatment by 2010 for all those who need it-in the U.S. and internationally.
5. People with AIDS in the United States and around the world depend on TAG's work.
TAG is the only group working with both U.S. and global activists to speed up research, accelerate progress toward universal treatment access, integrate HIV prevention and treatment research, and deepen our understand-ing of HIV's deadly interaction with the immune system. Further, TAG serves a critical role in delivering HIV community concerns to the U.S. government, the World Health Organization, and others whose decisions will affect the fate of millions of people living with HIV and those at risk.
* * *
In the coming year, U.S. elections will set the framework for the next four years of progress or stagnation in the fight against AIDS. Treatment Action Group will play a vital role educating candidates from both parties about the best possible policies to follow in the world's struggle against AIDS.
TAG's work in the fight against AIDS has contributed to scientific and policy advances with the power to save millions of lives.
Whether challenged with a life-threatening illness or not, each of us can be grateful for TAG's vital work.
By supporting TAG, you can also play a part in stemming the global AIDS pandemic.
That is why I am writing to ask you to step up your support for Treatment Action Group.
Yours truly,
Paul Dietz
TAG is a non-profit corporation with 501c(3) status. Contributions are tax deductible to the extent allowed by law.
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