An Aug. 23 Washington Post cover story on the Ryan White CARE Act, which indicated that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) was holding up its reauthorization because the proposed funding formula would favor Republican-leaning Southern states at the expense of larger, more urban ones, prompted a letter from the executive director of Washington-based AIDS Action.

Rebecca Haag criticized the report as "misleading and divisive" in her letter, which was not published. Haag said the HIV/AIDS organizations represented by AIDS Action are active in areas as diverse as Massachusetts, Texas, California, and Tennessee, and they reject the idea of pitting one region against another.

"I think we would all acknowledge there is a growing need for more services and care in rural areas of the country, particularly in the South, and I think all advocates would support additional funding to address that need," Haag said. She added, however, "Pitting the North and South against each other is not the way we're going to find the right solution here."

Haag, who is also executive director of the Massachusetts-based AIDS Action Committee, said many lawmakers, not just Clinton, believe the reauthorization bill needs changes before it is passed.

Dr. Stephen Boswell, president of Boston's Fenway Community Health, expressed similar sentiments: "Many of us would argue that the best way to handle the need for additional resources for new areas like the South is to allocate additional resources to them, not to take away resources from locations like New York and California which have done an outstanding job of responding to the AIDS epidemic."

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