Speech on a cure for AIDS to the Philadelphia Town Meeting.

Local medical students listen to Dr. Kostman at our town meeting.  
Photo by Harvey Finkle.

There's lots more to say than this--I could talk about the need to actually support (and not just say one supports) new ideas, and back them up with funding. Like the idea that has, so far, cured the Berlin Patient of AIDS. Or the new idea that is curing mice in Southern California. Even if those ideas come from regular doctors, and not AIDS researchers. Or from brilliant researchers who are starved for funding simply because they live in Europe and not the US.

I could talk about the obstacle course thrown up by funders, institutional review boards, the FDA, and other bureaucracies in front of even the best researchers and the most brilliant ideas. We need the brightest scientists, not people who are smart at negotiating red tape or gaming the system because they have to. We are at a pivotal moment in the AIDS pandemic--a moment of great opportunity, if we recognize it, and act.

A cure for AIDS, whether it is developed in Bethesda or Madrid, would save 30 million lives and the US government $17 billion per year. Yet the NIH is spending only $40-$60 million on AIDS cure research. Where are the great philanthropists to support a cure? We need you. We also need President Obama, federal officials, and drug companies to step up. We saw that President Obama called for a cure for AIDS in his World AIDS Day proclamation--the first time a cure has been mentioned since at least 2005. But without the proper support, including more funding, we will lose an opportunity to save millions of lives. 

Can we be the generation that ends the AIDS pandemic?

Here's what I said to our friends in Philadelphia, many of whom are AIDS prevention activists, at our town meeting on a cure.