AIDS News Updates: Canadian gay health groups have criticized their government for failing to appoint any gay people to the newly formed National Advisory Committee on AIDS and for taking a business-as-usual approach to the syndrome, which by...

The article reports that Canadian gay health groups have criticized the government for failing to appoint gay people to the newly formed National Advisory Committee on AIDS in August 1983. The AIDS Committee of Toronto sent a letter to committee chairperson Robert Gilmore, calling for gay people, Haitians and hemophiliacs with a qualifying scientific background be allowed to sit on the panel. Ministry of Health spokesperson Jean Sattar had downplayed the need for gay representatives on the panel. Gay Community Health Center nursing coordinator Ron Harris called the reluctance to include gay people on the panel "appalling." The Toronto group is challenging the federal government to provide "emergency funding" for medical research.