LOS ANGELES, APRIL 16, 2004 -- A broad coalition of AIDS advocates and patients will come together in protest over Abbott Laboratories' recent unprecedented 400% price hike on Norvir (ritonavir), their key AIDS drug. The activists and AIDS advocates will hold a 34-hour vigil and protest in front of Abbott's South Pasadena site (820 S. Mission Street). AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), the Southern California HIV Advocacy Coalition (SCHAC), Bienestar, Whittier Rio Hondo AIDS Project (WRHAP) and many individual AIDS activists and patients will join in this vigil. In addition, the Organization of HIV Healthcare Providers, nationwide group of doctors & providers, has lent their support.

Abbott's price hike has prompted an unprecedented outcry from AIDS advocates nationwide, and led to other protests and boycotts of the company by activists and physician groups. This in turn prompted the opening of antitrust investigations by the Attorneys General in Illinois and New York, as well as government hearings on Abbott's actions by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the National Institutes of Health in Washington, and gave rise to the filing of private antitrust and false advertising lawsuits against Abbott by AHF.

In addition, overburdened and under-funded state Medicaid programs such as Medi-Cal, may be adversely affected by this huge price increase. To date, Abbott has been unwilling or unable to publicly explain how, if at all, this price hike will not affect such Medicaid programs in cash strapped states like California.

Norvar plays a central role in the treatment of HIV. While the number of patients receiving Norvar as a booting agent has grown over time, there has been a steady decline in sales due to the significant reduction in dose, with the majority of patients taking 100 mg daily, as opposed to the initial 1200 mg daily. At the same time, the value of Norvar to patients with HIV has increased significantly. Abbott has taken this re-pricing step with Norvar in order to come to terms with these economic realities, while others have addressed thought premium pricing of their new drugs.

Imagine a different November 4, 1979, in Teheran. Shortly after Iranian terrorists storm the American embassy and take some 90 American hostages, President Jimmy Carter announces that Islamic fundamentalism is not a legitimate response to the excess of the Shah but a new and dangerous fascism that threatens all that liberal society holds dear. And then he issues an ultimatum to Teheran’s leaders: Release the captives or face a devastating military response.

When that demand is not met, instead of freezing Iran’s assets, stopping the importation of its oil, or seeking support at the UN, Carter orders an immediate blockade of the country, followed by promises to bomb, first, all of its major military assets, and then its main government buildings and residences of its ruling mullocracy. The Ayatollah Khomeini may well have called his bluff; we may well have tragically lost the hostages (151 fewer American lives than the Iranian-backed Hezbollah would take four years later in a single day in Lebanon). And there may well have been the sort of chaos in Teheran that we now witness in Baghdad. But we would have seen it all in 1979—and not in 2001, after almost a quarter-century of continuous Middle East terrorism, culminating in the mass murder of 3,000 Americans and the leveling of the World Trade Center.

Help U.S. Marines Equip TV Stations in Iraq

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News broadcasts in Iraq can be biased, inaccurate and incomplete - to put it mildly. Your contribution will create a television alternative owned and operated by Iraqis. This will provide better information, counter efforts to provoke and help reduce tensions.

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Any amount helps! [Spirit of America]

It is essential to success of the Marine Corps' mission in Iraq that the Iraqi people understand our sincerest desires to help them rebuild their country and lay the foundation for a viable and free democratic society.

Your (Spirit of America) gifts will reduce adversarial relationships and bridge cultural gaps. You have significantly impacted our ability to do good and, I fervently hope reduce the potential for combat.

You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out. I know I had no hand in making this war, and I know I will make more sacrifices to-day than any of you to secure peace. But you cannot have peace and a division of our country. If the United States submits to a division now, it will not stop, but will go on until we reap the fate of Mexico, which is eternal war. The United States does and must assert its authority, wherever it once had power; for, if it relaxes one bit to pressure, it is gone, and I believe that such is the national feeling. This feeling assumes various shapes, but always comes back to that of Union. Once admit the Union, once more acknowledge the authority of the national Government, and, instead of devoting your houses and streets and roads to the dread uses of war, I and this army become at once your protectors and supporters, shielding you from danger, let it come from what quarter it may. I know that a few individuals cannot resist a torrent of error and passion, such as swept the South into rebellion, but you can point out, so that we may know those who desire a government, and those who insist on war and its desolation.

You might as well appeal against the thunder-storm as against these terrible hardships of war. They are inevitable, and the only way the people of Atlanta can hope once more to live in peace and quiet at home, is to stop the war, which can only be done by admitting that it began in error and is perpetuated in pride.

Over a decade ago, new nuclear weapons production ended. Plutonium fabrication--a key requirement for making nuclear weapons--came to an abrupt halt when Rocky Flats shut down in 1989 and is just now planned to be restored at very modest levels. Nuclear testing stopped in 1992 and the U.S. continues to observe a testing moratorium. A sense of "nuclear drift" characterized the early post-Cold War period, with falling budgets, personnel upheavals, no clear mission for the nuclear complex, and the like. . . .

. . . The current vision for the nuclear stockpile is focused on refurbishing legacy nuclear weapons from the Cold War, and modifying some to lower yield. What has been severely curtailed, however, is work to push the envelope in nuclear design. For deterrence to be effective, we at a minimum must be seen as having the capability to destroy what an adversary values most, as well as having the will to use this capability. We join others in judging that a credible force should include, for ex-ample, some nuclear weapons that cause much less collateral damage to achieve their desired effects against the highest priority targets. The problem is that the current plan embedded in the SSP consumes virtually all available resources simply to sustain the aging stockpile of declining relevance. The sole exception is the proposed Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator (RNEP), including the low-yield options, which is a step in the right direction. . .

. . . We envision a future nuclear stockpile that retains (1) some legacy weapons (by which we mean the high-yield weapons that were designed for the Cold War threat), (2) some legacy weapons modified for lower yields, and (3) some number of new weapons based on previously tested nuclear devices and designs. Currently the plan is almost exclusively oriented toward refurbishing the legacy weapons through life-extension programs and the more recent RNEP activity. We would significantly scale back on the former effort in order to shift focus, and free up resources, for acquiring weapons based on previously tested devices and designs that have quite different characteristics than the legacy weapons: lower yields, special effects (all with greatly reduced fission yield), robust performance margins, and ease of manufacture and maintenance under today’s conditions.

"Pre-emptive nuclear war, that's what they're pushing, and it's absolute madness," said Bob Peurifoy, a former Sandia National Laboratories weapons manager. "Nuclear weapons are the absolute weapons of last resort. If we're losing American cities, then we should respond (with nuclear strikes). Short of that, I can't see any use of weapons with any nuclear yield, I don't care how low."