United Sexualities’ AIDS Summit shares, educates

The United Sexualities AIDS Summit began March 4, with keynote speaker Cleve Jones, founder of The NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt, the largest community art project in the world.

A portion of this quilt, which has 46,000 panels that pay tribute to over 82,000 victims of HIV/AIDS, was on display for the duration of the AIDS Summit in Templeton. United Sexualities handed out ribbons, condoms, and informational pamphlets next to the display, which formed a fort-like structure outside of the Council Chambers.

Jones, who also co-founded the San Francisco AIDS Foundation in 1983, devised the idea for the Quilt in 1985 at a candlelight vigil for Harvey Milk, gay rights leader of the 1970s. As a traveling lecturer, Jones speaks most often about the story of the Quilt. “Somehow hearing that story seems to give comfort and a continuance to what is beyond understanding,” he said on his website. “I tell it swiftly, in 40 minutes, up there at the microphone in front of all those searching faces. I love telling that story. And usually it is enough, at least for the time being.”

On March 5, Professor of Biology Deborah Lycan lectured on the scientific facets of HIV/AIDS, including the biological and medical details of the virus and disease. The lecture, which was designed to be easily understood by people without a background in science or medicine, addressed the process by which HIV/AIDS infects the body, the biology behind the medicines that HIV/AIDS patients use, and “the socio-economic aspects behind HIV/AIDS treatment,” according to the Lewis & Clark website.

Lycan believes that it is important for people to understand the medical side of HIV/AIDS “because they need to know how the anti HIV drugs work to understand their limitations, and to understand how dangerous patient non-compliance is in terms of the evolution of drug resistant strains of the virus,” she said. Knowledge of the virus’ evolution also contributes to the formation of approaches to anti-HIV therapy all over the world.

The biological aspects of HIV/AIDS are also important so people, like aid workers and other volunteers, know “what the potential dangers of providing drugs in medically unsupervised environments could be,” Lycan said.

Biological and medical approaches to the virus could also help prevent its spread. “There may also still be people in the U.S. who don’t know that they can be shedding the virus and not show any symptoms of disease,” said Lycan. “There is a great deal of misinformation about HIV still, despite our public school campaign to educate the young people.”

The AIDS Summit and what it addressed is important for people everywhere, according to Lycan. “Even people who think that they will never be exposed to HIV need to care about these issues,” she said. “I wish more non-science students had come to the talk, as it was targeted to them.”

The Summit concluded on March 6 with personal testimonies from John Motter, spokesmodel for HIV Stops With Me, HIV Program Coordinator for Volunteer Kenya, and Cascade AIDS Project’s Public Policy Coordinator; and Maricela Berumen, a community health worker and staff at Cascade AIDS Project. Motter, who has HIV, spoke about his experiences as a gay man living with the virus. Berumen discussed her work with Kids Connection, a program that helps families affected by HIV/AIDS.