Baltimore Alternative, November 1990

Alternative Youth/National Coming Out Day, Special Section POPPERS Effectively Banned At Federal Level — page 5 ТЬе BaMmore NoVEMbER 1990 photo by Joseph Kohl Members of ACT UP/ BALTO pirated the USF Constellation to stage an anti- Helms demonstration at Baltimore’s Inner Harbor Oct. 31. They were immediately removed by National Park Police. There were no arrests. Gay Students Seek to Boot ROTC Off Hopkins Campus Policy Forbids Discrimination Based on “Homosexuality” by Garey Lambert "The Johns Hopkins University does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, homosexuality, nationality or ethnic origin, handicap, veteran status in any student program administered by the University. " — Johns Hopkins University policy “ Homosexuals are considered unsuitable for military service and are not permitted to serve in the Armed Forces in any capacity. His/her presence in a military unit would seriously impair discipline, good order, morale, and security. " —Department of Defense policy The Johns Hopkins Gay and Lesbian Alliance (GALA) wants the Department of Defense, and its ROTC program, to change its policy towards gay men and lesbians, or get off the Johns Hop¬ kins University campus. To achieve that goal, it wants the Uni¬ versity to honor its own policy of not discriminating against “ho¬ mosexuals.” “We’re not going after ROTC because we don’t like the pro¬ gram, or because we want to hurt the students in ROTC,” says GALA President Paul DelGrosso. “We’re going after it because it discriminates against gays. The University’s statement on that kind of discrimination is quite clear, and to let the program con¬ tinue is hypocrisy.” Gala first approached Hopkins’ new President, Dr. William C. Richardson about the apparently obvious conflict of policy. But, his response was “equivocal” according to DelGrosso. “His level of awareness about gays on his campus is ap¬ palling,” said DelGrosso. “In my meeting with him, it just be¬ came obvious that he didn’t know anything about us.” Dr. Richardson did appoint a committee to study the ROTC issue headed by Dean of Students Susan Boswell. But, according to DelGrosso, the committee has yet to meet. President Richardson is apparently not sympathetic to GALA’s position. In his only public utterance on the issue, a pre¬ pared statement, he said that he “does not anticipate a circum¬ stance under which [the University] would sever its ties with the ROTC unit.” Hopkins does more for the Department of Defense than ad¬ minister the small Homewood campus ROTC program. The Uni¬ versity, through its Applied Physics Lab, and other divisions has been a significant military contractor for many years. Dissatisfied with Dr. Richardson’s response, GALA contacted Winston Vaughn, a member of the Johns Hopkins Board of Trus¬ tees. Vaughn, a Hopkins Young Trustee, agreed to present the ROTC issue to the Board at its next meeting, and is sympathetic to the problem, according to DelGrosso Gala has also approached the Baltimore Community Relations Commission and may file a formal complaint against Hopkins and the ROTC program. The Hopkins ROTC program may well be in violation of city law which now prohibits discrimination based on “sexual orientation.” The Johns Hopkins University, School of Medicine, and Hospital are all located within the Bal¬ timore City limits. DelGrosso has also garnered the support of the Johns Hopkins see ROTC, page 2 NIH PROBES GALLO by Paul Varnell The National Institutes of Health has announced that it is opening a full scale, formal investigation into allegations of sci¬ entific misconduct by its best-known AIDS researcher, Dr. Robert Gallo, and a colleague in Gallo’s tumor cell biology la¬ boratory. In a terse one-page announcement is¬ sued on October 5, NIH acting director William Raub said that he had determined that “certain issues” identified during an unprecedentedly long preliminary inquiry “warrant a full investigation.” The action by Raub represents a sur¬ prising reversal of his previous position. Last July he refused a recommendation by an independent advisory panel made up of scientists nominated by the National Acad¬ emy of Sciences to upgrade the preliminary “inquiry” to a formal “investigation.” At that time Raub characterized the rec¬ ommendation as “premature” and noted the absence of any “substantial reason to be¬ lieve scientific misconduct may have oc¬ curred.” While Gallo himself was not available for comment, Dr. Howard Strcicher, who frequently functions as a public spokes¬ person for him, told the New York Times that Gallo was “flabbergasted” that any ev¬ idence might have been found of possible misconduct. Streicher claimed that the is¬ sues the NIH panel would be investigating were “trivial” and “historical and not ones of ethics or integrity or science.” The current investigation grows out of an inquiry begun November, 1989, by the NIH Office of Scientific Integrity into published allegations of a number of ex¬ amples of “misconduct” by Gallo. The OSI was directed to look into some 14 al¬ legations, centering on questions sur¬ rounding Gallo’s alleged discovery of HTLV his name for the virus now called HIV. Gallo had been unable to grow any strain of HIV in continuous cell culture until after he had received two dif¬ ferent shipments of LAV, a strain of HIV isolated by a French team headed by Luc Montagnier of the Pasteur Institute. At a later time, when it became pos¬ sible to analyze the structure of the viruses involved, Gallo’s HTLV turned out to be virtually identical to the French LAV see GALLO PROBED page 22