The "Joe Camel" ads of AIDS?

Though Gallant says he hasn't had problems with patients requesting anti-retroviral drug brands they have seen in advertisements, he is concerned that they send out the wrong message. "The problem is that they give out a message that HIV is no big deal and that positive guys are cool -- they're buff and pretty. If you get HIV, all you need is to take these medications and you'll be cool," he says. "They all want to make their drugs look easy to take. They don't want the image of some guy puking his guts out in a toilet bowl. Instead, the guy just pops the pill twice a day and lives a healthy life because of the drugs."

While Gallant believes the advertisements are contributing to an atmosphere of ignorance and ambivalence that is fueling increased HIV infection rates among young gay men, he concedes that it's difficult to know what to do. "I'm not sure how I feel about regulating the ads," he says, "but I am worried about the bigger issue of nonchalance emerging in the gay community about HIV."

AIDS activists in San Francisco, backed by Supervisor Tom Ammiano, have launched a two-pronged effort -- one aimed at getting the city to ban the ads, and the other aimed at getting the FDA to take action. The FDA issued its order last month as activists in San Francisco stepped up their efforts.

The director of the FDA's HIV/AIDS program, Richard Klein, credits San Francisco activist Jeff Getty of Survive AIDS for drawing the agency's attention to the HIV ads. Though the FDA has been reviewing all direct-to-consumer advertising, it took special note of the HIV drug ads as the controversy stewed. Klein says the FDA reviewed the ads and found that the pharmaceutical companies were "pushing the envelope too far with the models."

"The FDA's move came sooner than we expected, and it was exactly what we asked for," says Getty, a longtime activist whose organization formed out of the wreckage of SF ACT-UP. "They're saying you can't pictorially mislead the consumer, and they've never done this before." For months now, Getty has been leading the campaign against the pharmaceutical giants, dubbing the advertisements the "Joe Camel ads of AIDS." "They misrepresent the way people with HIV and AIDS often look."

He points to an ad for the drug Zerit, which includes a scantily clad man and a line claiming he takes the drug because his friends do. "That's bad advertising," says Getty. "You don't take drugs because you friends take drugs unless it's ecstasy." The advertisements, Getty says, promote HIV as something glamorous. "It's like, 'Come join Club HIV!'"

Forty-three-year-old Getty has had HIV most of his adult life. He became infected with the virus when he was 23, and made treatment history in 1996 when he lobbied the FDA to permit him to have a bone marrow transplant from a baboon. The procedure was ultimately ineffective. "I felt good for about a year," he says, but his condition worsened and his body hasn't responded to the cocktail treatments. "Now I'm very sick," he says.

Given their surprise victory in the advertising battle, Getty says he and other activists in the city are adopting a wait-and-see approach. "The city will look at the new ads. If it turns out the ads are unacceptable, we'll drop" the campaign, he says.

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