AIDS Vaccine Panel Discussion [Minutes]

7-APR-97 PACHA AIDS VACCINE PANEL DISCUSSION - p. 35

other kinds of issues.
This is a complicated business in the sense there is intellectual property. There's
all kinds of things that you have to meld together. I don't want to get into all the
details of that, but basically, having more money available to have better leads may be
useful, and the mechanism to get that is possibly useful, and I think there are some
mechanisms already in place to do that.
DR. LEVINE: Why don't we move on to the next group. At this point, Mr. David Gold will
speak. Mr. Gold is an attorney and co-founder of the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy
Coalition. He has been editor of Treatment Issues for the medical information program
of Gay Men's Health Crisis. He's been active in vaccine issues since 1992. He
currently works as a consultant for AmFAR and for the Rockefeller Foundation related
to HIV vaccines. Mr. Gold?
MR. GOLD: I'd like to thank the committee for inviting me here to speak today. I want to
start by talking about the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition.
Our organization was formed by a group of primarily treatment activists who
were concerned about the lack of activity and focus on AIDS vaccine development by
the U.S. government, by industry, and by community-based groups and AIDS
organizations. In December 1996, AVAC released the report "Industry Investment in
HIV Vaccine Research." In preparing this report, we surveyed researchers from 23
companies with active or once-active HIV vaccine programs. We proposed a series of
recommendations directed at the U.S. government, private industry, and nongovernmental organizations.
Following the release of this report, which was widely covered in the
mainstream medical and community press, we expanded our membership and, with
financial support from the Until There's A Cure Foundation, have launched a series of
initiatives designed to (1) dramatically increase support for HIV vaccine research
among AIDS organizations; (2) expand our efforts to increase industry investment;
and, (3) release a number of additional reports on HIV vaccine research and
development.
Now what I'd like to do is just identify a number of principles, 10 principles that
we believe we would like the Council to consider in preparing its final report.
Number one, pretty much a given from what I've heard here and from what the
recommendations say, is that more resources must be invested in AIDS vaccine
research. We think that's a good place to start. We'd also like to suggest that the
committee identify the need to increase the U.S. government's overall commitment to
biomedical research as a whole. AIDS activists have always taken the position that