Low fidelity

AIDS | International experts deride U.S. abstinence-based fight against AIDS while local experts say it's working | Priya Abraham

TORONTO — Tom Davis raised his arms like a rock star when a few friends clapped and cheered at his unpopular little speech—a gesture of private triumph while the rest of the crowd murmured and heckled him in the cavernous session hall. "I didn't want to go up there," he joked later, taking consoling hugs from his colleagues, fellow workers in the fight against AIDS.

Davis, health programs director with Food for the Hungry, was not a scheduled speaker at last month's International AIDS Conference in Toronto but an ordinary delegate who shuffled up to an aisle microphone at question time. His point: that the Bush administration's worldwide $15-billion, five-year initiative to fight AIDS is doing some good. These days, those are fighting words.