Moving Mountains

In her new book, journalist and activist Anne-Christine d’Adesky argues that access to AIDS medicine is a fundamental human rights issue.
Anne-Christine d’Adesky
Interviewed By Peter Meredith


Anne-Christine d’Adesky has been reporting from the front lines of the global AIDS epidemic since before it became a major story. A foreign correspondent stationed in Haiti in 1984, she began writing about HIV when it was still "something whispered about." Returning to the United States, she continued covering global AIDS and politics for the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Nation, The Advocate, and OUT, where she was editor for AIDS, health, and science.

"Moving Mountains," her second book, examines the challenges of providing treatment to the 40 million HIV-positive people worldwide. The book compiles dispatches from developing nations whose treatment programs have met with mixed success. D’Adesky begins with Brazil, where domestically made generic HIV drugs and universal health care have made the country a model for treating AIDS. She discusses innovative programs—such as Haiti’s accompagnateurs, lay caregivers who counsel rural HIV patients and help them adhere to their treatments—as well as barriers to treatment. D’Adesky assails regulations that discourage production of generic drugs,


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Shipyard benefit doesn't apply to all workers
A Northrop Grumman Newport News policy offers medical benefits to salaried employees' domestic partners but isn't available to hourly workers.
  BY PETER DUJARDIN


NEWPORT NEWS -- If you're a salaried worker at the Northrop Grumman Newport News shipyard, you can qualify for domestic-partner benefits - medical, dental and vision care coverage - for an established live-in heterosexual or homosexual partner, married or not.

But if you're an hourly worker, you can't.

Under the terms of the new 52-month labor contract signed in June between the yard and the United Steelworkers of America, coverage for hourly workers is limited to a married spouse and children.
Alton H. Glass Sr., president of Local 8888 of the Steelworkers union, which represents 8,500 hourly workers at the yard, said union members who attended a series of internal meetings this spring, in advance of negotiations, never mentioned domestic-partner coverage as something they would like to see in a new contract.



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Massachusetts court to hear gay marriage case


Boston-AP -- Another challenge to gay marriage in Massachusetts goes to court today.

Eight out-of-state couples are seeking a preliminary injunction against a 1913 law that prohibits marriages that would be unlawful in a couple's home state.

They argue the law creates the same discrimination ruled unconstitutional by Massachusetts' high court.

Gay marriage became legal in Massachusetts in May after the Supreme Judicial Court ruled that banning same-sex unions violated the state constitution.


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Bush's policy for fighting AIDS comes under attack
By VIJAY JOSHI
The Associated Press


BANGKOK, Thailand — President Bush's policy of fighting AIDS by promoting abstinence ran into strong opposition yesterday from scientists, activists and policy-makers who touted condoms as the most effective weapon in the fight against AIDS.

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni was the only big-name speaker at the International AIDS Conference to support the Bush administration's ABC policy: abstinence, being faithful and condoms, in that order.

Museveni said loving relationships based on trust are crucial, and "the principle of condoms is not the ultimate solution."

"In some cultures sexual intercourse is so elaborate that condoms are a hindrance," he said. "Let the condom be used by people who cannot abstain, cannot be faithful, or are estranged."


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Senate mulls two versions of gay marriage amendment


Capitol Hill-AP -- Senate Republicans have been unable to agree on how best to get a vote on a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage -- so now they have two versions of a proposal.
Neither proposal is likely to get a direct vote.

A vote is set for Wednesday -- but it's a largely a procedural one aimed at forcing the Senate to decide whether to act on the amendment.


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M. Charles Bakst: Senate fiasco: Chafee, Reed on gay marriage

01:00 AM EDT on Tuesday, July 13, 2004
How sad that the Senate, doing the bidding of George Bush and right-wing allies, is debating a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.

This is a fool's errand. Everyone knows the votes aren't there; a two-thirds majority is needed.

Senators Lincoln Chafee and Jack Reed are poised to vote no.

The Senate exercise is intended to rev up Mr. Bush's base, appeal to undecided voters who oppose gay marriage and put Democrat John Kerry on the spot. Kerry opposes gay marriage but says the topic should be left to the states. I'd feel better if, at the state level, Kerry favored legalizing gay marriage. Indeed, thanks to a state Supreme Court decision, it currently is legal in his own Massachusetts, but Kerry backs a state constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage there and instead have civil unions.