Are people dying today while on ADAP waiting lists?
Arnold: People do die on waiting lists. We’ve had one official death in the last month, and three to four deaths [were unofficially reported], but only people on the ground know the actual circumstances. In the last crisis, we lost two people in Kentucky and three in West Virginia that were publicly acknowledged and five in South Carolina who were not officially acknowledged.* Here’s the rub: It means two things. They were on the waiting list, and they died. They might have been on meds and have died. There are a number of people in my circle who have been on waiting lists, and some of them went off drugs for two or three months. Are ADAP waiting lists a barometer of the state of our national HIV/AIDS epidemic? Carl Schmid: HIV waiting lists are the tip of the iceberg. ADAP is probably the thing the state will protect the most, so if you’re at a situation where a state cuts [funding for] ADAP, that means it has probably cut prevention funding and other HIV funding before that, which is
