Treatment Advocacy Gets a Boost

New York City'based Treatment Action Group has received a $1 million grant from the Michael Palm Foundation, an AIDS and gay rights charity, to step up its HIV research advocacy, with the goal of quickly uncovering promising new therapies and treatments. The money, to be disbursed over four years, will be used by TAG to establish the Michael Palm HIV Pathogenesis and Prevention Research Project, named after the New York businessman and philanthropist, who died of AIDS-related complications in 1998. The project, says TAG executive director Mark Harrington, will help the organization better push for intensified research to unlock the mysteries of how HIV destroys the immune system and to discover more potential immune-based treatment strategies, vaccines, microbicides, and other biomedical prevention tools. 'Despite over two decades of research, the AIDS pandemic continues to outpace the best efforts of researchers worldwide,' Harrington says of the state of global AIDS research'and the need for advocacy to continue to drive it. 'HIV research funding levels are stagnant in the United States, a dangerous situation that threatens to delay the search for a cure and a vaccine.' TAG, founded in 1992, fights to ensure that all people living with HIV receive necessary treatment, care, and information by encouraging research, drug development, and improvements in the U.S. and global health care delivery systems.