Posted on June 21, 2017
Source: Time
"Six members of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS (PACHA), a president-appointed group tasked with advising the secretary of Health and Human Services (and ultimately the President) on how to promote the best HIV treatment and prevention strategies, resigned on June 16 in a show of frustration over President Trump’s policies in health care.
'The Trump Administration has no strategy to address the on-going HIV/AIDS epidemic, seeks zero input from experts to formulate HIV policy, and—most concerning—pushes legislation that will harm people living with HIV and halt or reverse important gains made in the fight against this disease,' wrote Scott Schoettes, counsel and HIV Project director at Lambda Legal, in a letter published by Newsweek. Schoettes, along with five others on the 18-member council, resigned from PACHA.
Not all members of the council felt that leaving was the most effective way forward. 'I choose to believe that through our various networks, and whatever means we have, the council will somehow help reason and science to prevail,' says Dr. Ada Adimora, professor of medicine at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a PACHA member who decided to stay."
