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'Big Noise Over a Big issue'
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http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/news
The Guardian's health editor, Sarah Boseley
Already the booing, the cat-calling and the placard waving in front of speakers has begun, and that was only the opening ceremony of the conference, an extraordinary event unlike anything else on the planet that calls itself a medical or scientific meeting. And nobody has yet had time to go near the pharmaceutical company stands with blood-red paint. They will though, mark my words. It's now traditional for Aids activists to let the drug companies know in vivid terms that they consider they have blood on their hands.
This year - the conference takes place every other year because nobody has the energy (or the money) to mount it annually - we're in Toronto, Canada. As in Bangkok two years ago, it's local issues that get people going at the beginning. In Thailand it was discrimination against gays. This evening it was the, one cannot help thinking slightly shortsighted, decision of the Canadian prime minister not to attend. The activists danced about in white sheets with "Stephen Harper is asleep" written on them.
But while they make a good picture, it was the lacerating condemnation of the PM from the platform that will make headlines. It wasn't a shroud-clad activist laying into Mr Harper - it was Mark Wainberg, the highly respectable co-chair of the conference who is a professor of molecular biology and head of the McGill Aids programme in Montreal. That's another extraordinary thing about this conference - even the doctors and scientists become activists.
There will be a few pieces of research unveiled here, particularly about the possible benefits of circumcision in preventing HIV infection and the latest on microbicides - sperm-killing gels - but most of the real science is saved for other meetings. Robert Gallo, one of the most famous Aids scientists, said he would not come because it wasn't a proper scientific conference, but most people say that all the noise, heat and passion is absolutely justified every two years because of what Peter Piot, the head of UNAIDS, calls the "exceptionality" of the disease. With 40 million infected and rising, it needs the highest profile it can get.
One of the big focuses here this time looks like being the subservient position of women in poor countries, which means they cannot negotiate sex or even suggest a condom. But while women are almost non-people in some countries - unable to inherit or have property of their own and turned out of their house if their husband dies and they are not handed over to his brother - that doesn't look likely to change. There are very big issues behind Aids. It's hardly surprising if every two years those involved in the fight make a very big noise.
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