The Gem

CHESTERFIELD

SEE ME WITH SOME a BEHIND

Ir SUPPOSE I SHOULD LAPSE INTO SOME SORT OF SEMI- HALLUCIN- OGENIC, ALBEIT PUILO- SOPHICAL, STATE NOW,

SO

MEWIN Aup scopers

SEE ME APPEAR IN A STRIP WITH NO REAL POINT BUT TO SELL OSELESS STOFFEP ANIMALS

OF COURSE, I SHALL ENDEAR THE READERS WITH MY RUDE, ANTI- SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR

By Me!

THer'ee PLAYING HOCKEY

IN THE HALLS AGAIN —

AND & Gor UT

Federal Transfer Payments Boost

Medical Research

Ottawa, on April 2, 1990 Fed- eral Consumer and Corporate Af- fairs Minister Pierre Blais an- nounced payments totalling $25 million to the provinces and ter- ritories to promote medical re- search and development.

This is the third set of pay- ments called for under amend- ments made to the Patent Act in 1987. The fourth and final trans- fer will take place in 1991.

“We amended the Patent Act, in part, to enhance Canadian- based medical research and make the results of that research avail- able to Canadians at affordable prices,”said Mr. Blais. “We have been successful in both areas.”

Information provided by the Patented Medicine Prices Review Board for 1988 indicates that the pharmaceutical industry is no

target in terms of fulfilling it com- mitment to increase its research and development to sales ratio to 10 percent by 1996. In 1988, the industry increased this ratio from 4.9 percent to 6.1 percent. On the consumer increases in drug prices fell to 1.7 percent below the change in the Consumer Price In- dex.

Minister Blais also commented that he was encour- aged by the use to which these funds have been put such as the establishment of the Medical In- novation Program in Alberta and of the Health Research Founda- tion in Newfoundland. “These examples speak well for continued improvements in health caré for Canadians based on work done here at home in labs, clinics, hos- pitals and universities across the country,”said Mr. Blais.

OR ELSE, MELVIN, You COULD BE EATEN

“Sex isn’t right or wrong; it just is,” say the members of Boy With Arms Akimbo. The _ San Francisco—based anti—censorship group is spreading that message across the U.S. with graphic im- ages of fucking, masturbation and nudity on posters, t-shirts and, most recently, a documentary film.

This underground band of cultural activists came together in response to congressperson Jesse

Helms’ recent attempts to prohibit _

federal funding to art he thinks

Boy with arms akimbo

Thursday, April 12, 1990

Graphic/ Arthur

I Gor wT BY A CAFETERIA DOUGHN

“obscene or indecent,” particularly the homoerotic photographs of the late Robert Mapplethorpe.

Boy With Arms Akimbo’s “Just Sex/Sex Is” poster campaign forces the public to examine a broader view of sexuality than the repres- sive Reagan—Bush era deems ac- ceptable.

The campaign is also an outlet for the group’s brand of rebellious creativity. One of their first actions was to cover the San Francisco Federal Building with explicit posters. “[The action] looked so cool, with all [our] arms moving up and down together,” says one Boy. “It was like synchronized swimming.”

The group’s name comes its logo, a picture in a 1940s schoolboy dictionary. It signifies no uniformity of gender or sexual preference, they say — “It was just a groovy graphic.”

Their approach is “intellectual subversion, seizing and manipulating the processes of advertising and mass media — all with the assumption of no budget, with an emphasis on individual and local autonomy and with plenty of

hooligan energy.” (S.M. Thompson, In These Times January 10, 1990)

Last October, one professor objected so much to Boy With Arms Akimbo posters displayed at a Yale gay and lesbian scholars’ conference that he called the cops. One poster showed a woman masturbating, another showed two women embracing, and a third showed two naked men’s pelvises.

_ What followed was a frenzy of gay—bashing and AIDS taunts by New Haven city police. Nine conference participants were arrested, leading to protests by 200 others. It took weeks before all charges were dropped, and the police refused to comment until local gay activists forced repentence through almost—daily rallies.

Yalecampus policenow undergo obligatory AIDS education and sensitivity training, and the new mayor, John Daniels, has promised to support a similar program for New Haven police.

( Paul Bass, The Progressive Feb- ruary 1990)

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