Baltimore Alternative, December 1991

pJ2 к. . м ALTERNATIVE December1991 ▼ Volume 6, Number 12 ▼ Serving The Baltimore /Was№NGton Community Since 1986 Macy's Gives HIV+ Santa The Boot Sympathetic Santas Chain Themselves to Store BY JOSHUA LOWE _ THE ALTERNATIVE ore than 20 AIDS-activists dressed as Santa wreaked havoc to Macy’s in New York November 29, chaining them¬ selves together inside and forcing store personnel to call police. Macy’s firing of Mark Woodley, an HIV-positive Macy’s Santa, prompted the ersatz Santa blitz on the traditional first-day of Christmas shopping. Nineteen were arrested and charged with criminal trespassing. Woodley, 34, who is suing Macy’s, trounced the retailer in court when Macy’s attorneys moved to have his wrongful firing lawsuit thrown out last month. Woodley did not however win his pre¬ liminary injunction to be reinstated as Santa, and will have to wait at least one more year to get his seasonal job back. Woodley claims the large retailer fired him from their famous Herald Square, 34th Street store for being HIV-positive. Although he is asymptomatic, the store refused to reconsider his case, instead forcing a most unchristmas-like court battle. The lawsuit charges that Macy’s is discriminating and asking that he be re- hired and also awarded $2.75 million in punitive and compensatory damages. The store claims that they refused to re-hire Woodley because he is taking Prozac for depression. Prozac has been at the center of a controversy for several years now focusing on accusations that the drug can cause sudden severe mood See SANTA page 5 SCIENCE Nature Editor Questions Cause of AIDS BY PAUL VARNELL _ THE ALTERNATIVE ONDON — The editor of the presti¬ gious British science magazine Nature has stirred up a major furor by calling attention to recent research which he says suggests HIV does not directly cause AIDS. In a September 26 editorial headed AIDS research turned upside down. Nature editor John Maddox writes, "Prof. Peter Duesberg of the University of California at Berkeley is probably sleeping more easily at night now.” Maddox goes on to two recent research reports suggesting that AIDS may be an “auto-immune disease" in which HTV indi¬ rectly causes T-cells to kill one another: “None of this would imply that HIV is irrelevant to AIDS." Maddox acknowl¬ edges, “but that an immune response to for¬ eign cells, most probably lymphocytes, is also necessary.” One such study develops the fact that one HIV surface protein called gpl20 resembles Class II MHC antigens, a type of protein that constitutes part of the immune system itself. Thus in producing antibodies to attack gpI60, the body may be producing antibodies which attack part of the body’s immune system itself. Maddox's departure from AIDS ortho¬ doxy was immediately attacked by some sci¬ entists for being “misinformed" and many researchers told the American magazine Science that they were writing protest letters. Even Prof. Duesberg told Science that these studies have nothing to do with (my posi¬ tion)." Duesberg has claimed that HIV plays no role whatsoever in causing AIDS. Maddox, however, is sticking by his guns, telling Science "I’m not for a minute saying Duesberg is right in all parts. But 1 feel sorry that Nature has not done more to give his views prominence. It would have hastened the process by which the scientific community is coming around to the view that the pathogenesis of AIDS is more com¬ plicated than the baby talk stories we were all given a few years ago. Maddox's clear reference was to the stan¬ dard model of AIDS pathogenesis proposed by Robert Gallo, Anthony Fauci and others who have insisted that HIV directly destroys T-cells, though they have never fully explained the mechanism by which that happens. Baltimore County Council May Soon Debate Gay Rights BY JOSHUA LOWE _ THE ALTERNATIVE allimore County is preparing for a gay rights show down as County councilors get set to debate the addition of sexual orientation to Title 19 of the Baltimore County Code. Title 19 is the county provision which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, creed, religion, etc. in housing, educa¬ tion, public accommodations, employment and financing. Council Chairman Doug Riley is plan¬ ning — barring unforsccn circumstances — to introduce the measure at the December 16 meeting of the Council. Riley was the first councilmember to opcnll support the measure. Riley said that debate and a decision on the measure could be heard as early as their second meeting in January, which falls near Martin Luther King Jr.’sBirthday. The Council made its decision based on a report submitted by the County Human Relations Commission in October, recom¬ mending sexual orientation be added to the County Code. But that report was not without its own controversy, as a number of commissioners submitted a. minority report, refutting the official recommendations. That document, dubbed "the minority report,” took issue with gay rights as a whole, claiming that it would be a waste of See COUNTY GAY RIGHTS page 7