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Monday, March 20, 1989 / University Daily Kansan
Gay activist disagrees with national research
- Continued from p. 1
"I suspected he might become famous." Ruhe said.
But fame, Ortleb said, was the furthest thing from his mind. Ortleb said he wanted to be on the forefront of the gay movement while pursuing his newfound talents as a poet.
The gay movement in the 1970s was taking place in New York city, so Ortleb moved there in 1972 after what Grier described as, "a sort of quarrel with someone in the English department."
He joined the Gay Activists Alliance upon moving to New York, but since the AIDS epidemic begun, he has chosen not to be active in any particular gay organization.
Ortleb said that most of the gay alliance organizations had become so infiltrated with government informers, placed within the groups to make an association between AIDS and gay people, he preferred to do his political work through the New York Native.
"There are so many government informants at those meetings it's a wonder they aren't triping over one another." Ortlbe said.
in 1975 he started a monthly magazine, Christopher Street, as a venue for his artistic inclinations, and in 1981 Ortelb started the New York Native, which has become the mouthpiece for Ortelb's opposition to the government's handling of the AIDS epidemic.
That same year Orléb's mission in life began to unfold: Finding out the cause and correlations of AIDS, and ending the epidemic.
Ortleb places the date of the initial publicity of AIDS as June 3, 1981, and the New York Native was quick to pick up on it. The New York Native then corraling gay lifestyle with a cancer outbreak in gay men.
Ortleb said early research on the disease, known today as AIDS, made a possible link to both syphilis and an outbreak of African Swine Fever virus, which occurred the same year in Haiti.
Ortleb said his paper and the gay community supported early research into both syphilis and swine fever until the gays moved on. Ortleb distrusts and criticizes most government AIDS researchers.
Ortleb believes the alleged lie came after research done by Jane
Teas, a researcher in Boston, who had tentatively linked the Haitian outbreak of African Swine Fever in pigs to an illness in the Haitian population, also symptoms similar to the newly discovered AIDS illness.
Picking up on this possible link, Orlteb and others in the gay community asked the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta to test men with AIDS for the Swine Fever virus.
Ortleb said the tests were carried out with little enthusiasm and negative results were returned, which Ortleb said were lies. He said further research showed that many of these patients are not for the Swine Fever virus and that the gay community was tied to.
The lies were to back up a new theory on AIDS being researched by Robert Gallo of the National Institutes of Health, Ortleb said.
Gallo's virus research led to the announcement that the cause of AIDS was the HIV virus.
Despite the popular notion that HIV is the cause of AIDS, Ortleb and others remain skeptical.
Ortleb said research being done on Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, sometimes called "Yuppie Flu" and Barr-Epstein disease, showed a possible correlation between this virus and AIDS.
Ortleb said the purpose of the conspiracy was to downplay the scope of the infection, which he said would manifest itself in all blood transfusions, not just jaygs, drug addicts and recipients of blood transfusions.
"There is a 75 percent chance that you, American citizen, is carrying the AIDS virus," Ortleb said.
Althugh many dispel Ortleb's views as nonsense, other scientists researching AIDS have disputed the link between AIDS and HIV.
In the middle of all the debate is Orlteb. He has started two magazines in the last two years, Theater Week and Operate Month, and is working on a music album, all to enhance his fight against the epidemic.
"I want it to become our fight," Ortleb said.
"Waiting for the world to explode," Ortleb said.
So what else is Ortleb doing until he manages to get the masses to respond to his beliefs?
Spring cleaning
Facilities and Operations housekeepers Gordon Schulenberg.
Lawrence, and Gerald Warren, Overbrook, clean out the traffic on bay Jawhawk Boulevard near the Chi Omega fountain.
Business boosters hit Spring Break beach
The Associated Press
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Companies ranging from breweries to Playboy enterprises to AT&T now view the "The World's Most Famous Beach" through green-tinted glasses.
Instead of seeing a half-million tanned and sunburned college students in town to party until they drop, they see dollar signs — lots of dollar signs.
Students spend big bucks on their annual excursion to the sand, surf and bars of Daytona Beach, a fact increasingly recognized by entrepreneurs large and small.
During the five-week period between March 4 and April 1, students here for spring break will spend an estimated $100 million on such things as hotel, food and beer, according to Evelyn Fine, director of the Mid-Florida Research and Business Center in Daytona Beach.
And since Fort Lauderdale cracked down on the merrymaking in that sun capital a few years ago, Daytona Beach has become a mecca for students from all over the country.
"We're the biggest spring break destination in the world," Fine said. "Fort Lauderdale bitterly regrets losing the spring break market."
And if the college students are here, can busi-
nesses be far behind?
Playboy magazine, which featured "The Women of Spring Break" in its April issue, is one of the companies with an active beach presence, handling out samples of products advertised in the magazine, including condoms, and bringing in a couple of playmate plaques of the month to sign autographs.
"Playboy is here because we're No. 1 in the college market. It's a great party," said Cindy Rakowitz, a spokeswoman for Playboy Enterprises. "The majority of our readers are in the 18-to 34-year-old range and that's the market that's here."
While Playboy was using sex to push its products, AT&T was trying to appeal to minds.
A 10,000-square-foot, open-air, 7-foot-high plastic contraption known as the AT&T Maze sits on the beach challenging students to use their wits and legs to make it through in record time, and incidentally to see AT&T advertising posters as they go through.
they go through.
"Lots of people are ying for the attention of the college students, and I feel this is a healthy and positive event as compared to some of the things
spring break is known for," Gail Piceirail, in charge of marketing for AT&T, said from Ridley Falls.
She added she hadn't come to Daytona Beach as a student because "my father would let me."
a student becomes it’s easy to understand why parents might not want their sons and daughters at the annual rites of sun, sex and sunds. Although alcohol is not allowed on the beach or streets, there’s plenty flowing in the local bars and hotel pool decks.
On the Penrod pool deck, bikini-clad young women, in the shadow of a giant inflatable Spuds McKenzie, serve service tables lines of benches, daily wet T-shirt, bikini, "bests bunts," and belly浮 contests take place.
Independent condom salesman Loy Piatti of Oklahoma City was selling Rubber Ducky condoms from the back of his van, along with T-shirts and mugs displaying the Rubber Ducky logo. Piatti said he had sold a few $15 T-shirts, but very few condoms.
Other products and companies plugged here during Spring Break include Plymouth, Pontiac, Miller beer, Coors Light, Parker Brothers, Coca-Cola, Aluminum, Chrysler, Cars, and Crystal Light.
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