Members of the Dance Marathon Executive Committee on Monday night accepted thanks from the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, this year’s DM charity.
At a reception at the Four Seasons Hotel in Chicago, DM officials were honored by Kate Carr, the CEO of the foundation. Before an audience of scientists and philanthropists, Carr lauded DM organizers for their efforts and thanked them for their financial support.
“You’re going to make the world a better place,” Carr said. “We are so proud to be the beneficiary of all that hard work.”
Joel Goldman, the foundation’s campus fund-raising coordinator, said DM’s donation could have a real impact. He said that with $500,000 – the amount DM raised last year – the student group could potentially save 125,000 babies by paying for the $4 drugs that reduce HIV transmission rates from mother to child.
“To me that’s amazing,” Goldman said before the reception.
The Elizabeth Glaser Foundation held the event to present four AIDS researchers with grants of $700,000 each.
Before the presentation of the awards, Maggie Daley, wife of Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, read a proclamation declaring Monday Elizabeth Glaser Day in the city. The day coincided with the eighth annual Retrovirus Conference, which brought about 3,000 scientists to Chicago this week.
The event concluded with remarks from the foundation’s co-founder, Susie Zeegen, who also will speak tonight at Willard Residential College.
“When we celebrate, we do it with tequila,” Zeegen said, leading the room in a toast to the continued health of Jake Glaser, the 16-year-old HIV-positive son of Paul and the late Elizabeth Glaser, and to the success of the foundation.
“I thought it was very touching,” DM Executive Co-chair Mark Waterston said after the reception. “It helped me learn more about what we’re doing all this for.”
DM executives said they were glad to put faces with the names of their contacts at the foundation and to see where their money will be going.
Waterston said the recognition by Carr caught him by surprise, especially considering the high-profile nature of the event and the foundation itself.
The foundation, which has raised more than $115 million since it was founded in 1988, is one of the biggest charities to which DM has ever contributed.
In 2000, DM contributed to Gilda’s Club, a Chicago-based cancer support center.
“It was exciting having a national organization,” said Waterston, a Weinberg senior. “It was something we had never done before.”
As benefits of the foundation’s size, he praised its strong organization and its ability to involve celebrities in DM events. Organizers expect “Survivor” host Jeff Probst and actor Scott Wolf to participate in DM events this March.
Infectious Disease Prof. Steven Wolinsky, who has led NU’s research in pediatric AIDS since the early 1980s and has received grants from the foundation, said the problem in the Third World is largely one of drug accessibility. Scientists have developed drugs, widely used in America, that cut the rates of HIV transmission from mother to child significantly.
According to Stanford University Prof. David Katzenstein, the difficulty in distributing these drugs to people in the Third World is a key stumbling block in the fight against pediatric AIDS.
“It’s the worst patronizing, racism, ignorance – absolutely the travesty of the century,” he said.
But Wolinsky said existing drugs alone will not completely alleviate the problem of pediatric AIDS.
“Have we done a lot? Yes. Is there more to do? Absolutely,” he said.
