1st Report From Vancouver - July 4

I left NYC today at 8 AM and arrived in Vancouver at 1 pm. It's now 12 midnight Vancouver time and I'm back in my hotel exhausted and about to go to sleep. But I thought I'd give a brief report about the day. Vancouver seems to be a beautiful city. The temperature is cool, the sun is shining, the city is clean, new and sparkles and it is surrounded by water. I'm two blocks from what they call a beach but by my standards it doesn' measure up to a real beach, although it's on the bay and lot's of young people gather in this area to walk, bike, sunbathe, swim in the pool or bay, go boating, etc.

The Int'l. AIDS Conference doesn't start until the reception opens it up on Sunday evening, but Sunday morning the "satellite symposiums" start. The first is sponsored by Merck 9 am Sunday morning. The participants will be David Ho, Emilio Emini and Jeff Chadokowitz of Merck. The title of the symposium is "The New Paradigm" (see "Can HIV be Eradicated from the Infected Individual?"). I will report the highlights of this meeting to you. As well, I will be reporting other important highlights on a regular "real-time" basis. So look for my regular reports. I will try to report developments as soon as I can. I expect some important treatment news to be presented here: early results of the combination protease study of ritonavir and saquinavir; extended data results from Crixivan and Norvir studies; more data on 1592U89, Viracept, the combination of ddI/d4T; more data from saquinavir studies, etc.

However, today Friday and Saturday over at the Univ. of Britsh Columbia, 500 community representatives from all the developed and developing world are gathering for the purpose of sharing activist experiences. So far, my understanding of the proceedings are that American activists are to listen to the issues, concerns and needs of representatives from these foreign countries, which include many third world countries, and then for us Americans to share our experiences with activism and our suggestions for them. The purpose is to help raise the awareness and skills of the activists in these foreign countries. Some Americans said, "I have my hands full trying to serve the needs of Americans. We can't even get protease inhibitors to all of our citizens." A more idealistic American activist said we are here to try and help these third world countries to learn from us.

So, Friday and Saturday 100 American activists, who were selected to help them, will meet with 400 foreign reps to discuss all these concerns. It is a very ambitious goal because in many of these countries, they can't meet basic needs like PCP prophylaxis, which is very inexpensive. It seems to me that the leaders of the governments in these countries could very well afford to pay for these basic needs.

Good night. See you tomorrow, I am going to watch "Law and Order" on TV.

Jules Levin NATAP