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News Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 13, 2003
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FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT:
Joel Bales, Media Relations
(800) 523-2372 Ext. 13046
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Activist Graves nominated for Jonathan Mann Award
WASHINGTON DC - Human rights activist Boyd E. Graves has been nominated for the 2003 Jonathan Mann Award for Global Health and Human Rights. The annual award was created by the Global Health Council following Jonathan Mann’s 1998 death aboard Swiss Air flight 111. The Mann award recognizes remarkable individuals continuing Mann’s call for attention to the vital links between health and human rights.
Graves’ nomination follows eleven years of AIDS origin research and judicial activism calling for the immediate review of a formerly secret federal virus development program entitled, ‘The U.S. Special Virus.’ Graves’, an African American law school graduate, began pursuing review of the U.S. Special Virus program following his own HIV diagnosis in 1992.
“We believe the review of the 15 progress reports of the U.S. Special Virus program will garner our best opportunity to begin the process of dismantling another federal program of human subject experimentation gone awry,” Graves said. “The United States must account to the American people and the people of the world for the U.S. Special Virus program.”
Graves said he is honored to be nominated for the 2003 Mann Award and if selected will use the $20,000 grant to continue his activism and research into the human rights violations evidenced inside the formerly secret U.S. Special Virus Program.
Graves’ research has uncovered decades of missing medical history including 20,000 virus development papers published between 1948 and 1978. These official government documents continue passing intense international scientific scrutiny and continue to generate renewed public and scientific interest into the true origins of HIV/AIDS.
Graves’ most recent federal petition calling for the immediate review of the U.S. Special Virus Program was filed in the U.S. District Court for Southern California on Dec. 6, 2002.
“We are greater than any federal virus program,” Graves said. “We are the human race.”
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Resources:
2003 Jonathan Mann Award Nominees
http://www.globalhealth.org/awards/mann_info.php3#nominees
Boyd Graves v. The United States case no. 02 CV 02396
http://www.boydgraves.com/
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