Activists raising awareness ahead of World Aids Day 25th Anniversary

>>> tomorrow marks the 25th anniversary of world aids day and ahead of that milestone the president issued a proclamation asking americans to stand with those living with aids worldwide. grassroots activists are raising awareness. how to survive a plague. peter is the founder of both the treatment action group and aids meds.com. he joins me here in studio. great to have you here. as i said i was a big fan of this movie and i'm glad to have you here to talk about this as we're about to mark this milestone. yesterday, secretary hillary clinton shared some very good news on the global battle with aids. take a listen.

>> just last week, u.n. aides announced that over the past decade, the rate of new hiv in fecships has dropped by more than half in 25 low and middle-income countries, most of them in subsaharan africa .

>> this is good news when it comes to the battle that's taking place in africa but here at home the cbc came out with this report that shows hiv cases were up 72% -- excuse me 72% among the lgbt community , young men, 57% african-american. why are we seeing lapses backwards?

>> well, we're 30 years in now and it is a completely unique moment in the pandemic. we're filled with optimism. secretary clinton went before aids activists at the international aids conference this summer and, like all the leaders there, said we can end aids. we do have the tools now to actually wind this down. but there's an equal amount of frustration because we're lacking true leadership and we're lacking the dollars. we forget that one of act up's greatest victories was pushing our leaders to spend money on aids research back in the late '80s and early '90s. that money saved the american taxpayer a fortune by saving 8 million lives a year now. we actually can take those therapies now and get them to an additional 7 million people and reduce transmission rates worldwide and slowly end the epidem epidemic.

>> real quickly, when you see the images of people that showed up in boehner's office, what do you think of that?

>> it was brilliant. it 's wonderful to see act up at its best again and playing a very forward-looking game. they had a very specific proposal to actually raise $350 billion a year through a financial transaction tax which could be used for many causes, including ending the aids crisis.

>> peter, great to have you here. thanks so much. check out peter's blog on this and other world aids day -- world aids day issues, pause.com. thanks again. that's going