The Yale AIDS Network, a coalition of Yale students, faculty and administrators, has released a letter urging President George W. Bush to show leadership in the fight against global AIDS. Signed by over 150 Yale University deans, faculty, and students, and supported by President Richard C. Levin, the letter calls for the US to invest in the Global Fund for HIV/AIDS in proportion to our share of worldwide GNP, to support a strengthened version of the UN General Assembly Declaration on HIV/AIDS,and to commit to treatment, prevention and care as inseparable aspects of a comprehensive response to AIDS.

When President Bush speaks at Yale's tercentennial commencement ceremony on Monday, he will face a sea of red ribbons worn by graduates, faculty, and family, symbolizing the need for US leadership in the fight against global AIDS. In the coming weeks the Bush administration has a unique opportunity to turn the tide of twenty years of inadequate responses to HIV/AIDS. Members of the administration will meet with international delegates in New York next week, and again in June, as part of the UN General Assembly Special Session on AIDS, where the future worldwide goals and responses to AIDS will be determined.

One signatory, Harold Hongju Koh, Professor of International Law and Former Assistant Secretary for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, said: "The fight against global AIDS is the biggest human rights challenge to the world today. It is a fight that requires both serious money and serious diplomacy. The United States has far too much at stake in this battle to wait for others to lead." Network co-founder Elizabeth Tyler Crone, MPH, said: "Students, Deans, Yale's AIDS experts, and even President Levin himself have spoken out in support of the recommendations of this letter. We hope President Bush heeds our call, and provides a dramatic increase in funding for AIDS, and an approach to the pandemic which recognizes the need for both treatment and prevention." Attached is the Yale AIDS Network letter. Signatories include Dean Michael Merson, Dean of the School of Epidemiology and Public Health, previously head of the World Health Organization (WHO) Global Program on AIDS; Dean David Kessler, Dean of the School of Medicine and former FDA commissioner; Dean Anthony Kronman, Dean of the Law School; Dean Catherine L. Gilliss, Dean of the Nursing School; Dean James Gustave Speth, Dean of the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies; and Professor Ilona Kickbusch, Epidemiology and Public Health Division Head for Global Health.

Background on the Yale AIDS Network

The Yale AIDS Network was formed in the spring of this year as an outgrowth of student and faculty pressure upon Yale to respond to the need for cheaper HIV/AIDS treatment in South Africa by relaxing the University's patent on the antiretroviral drug d4t there. The Network joins students, faculty, and researchers from different disciplines with the purpose of coordinating and extending Yale's collective response to the global AIDS crisis.