This article was Chapter XXI in The AIDS War (1993); it was first published in the New York Native, 30 July 1990.


When I was in San Francisco last month I interviewed Ben Gardiner, founder and system operator of the AIDS Information Bulletin Board. Ben is a long-time San Francisco resident, who has been active in the fight against AIDS since the very beginning. Born and raised in Maine, and graduated from Harvard, he still speaks with a New England accent, soft and precise. He is an individualist of the old school who has almost single-handedly created and maintained a valuable resource, which deserves to be more widely known.
    The AIDS Information Bulletin Board is a computer or electronic bulletin board. These are known as BBSs, the initials standing for Bulletin Board System. A BBS allows people with computers to communicate with others, and to retrieve information from computer databases.
    The unique usefulness of the AIDS Information Bulletin Board lies in an apparent paradox: We suffer from both too much and too little information about AIDS. One the one hand, we suffer from information overload — we are constantly bombarded with “news” about AIDS, until we become thoroughly sick of the topic. Much of this “news” is nothing more than propaganda, rumors, fantasies, delusions, misinformation, disinformation — the endless reiteration of the same old things, over and over. On the other hand, much of the real information that we need either does not exist, or is hard to find. For example, readers of America's premier newspaper, The New York Times, would be unaware that a number of important scientists are now convinced that HIV could not possibly be the cause of AIDS.
    The AIDS Information Bulletin Board not only contains a vast amount of valuable and hard-to-find information, but organizes it in such a way that it can easily be retrieved. Electronic storage of data is also much more economical than hard copy — just a few floppy disks can hold the equivalent of thousands of pages of printed documents.


About Modems
    A few words about modems may be in order here, though I'm no expert on the topic, and readers who are already knowledgeable might just as well skip to the interview with Ben Gardiner below.
    In order to communicate with BBSs you need a computer, a modem, communications software, and a telephone line. Prices of modems have plunged in the last year or so. You can get a 2400 baud modem for as little as $70, including the communications software. ProComm 4.2 came bundled with my modem, and it works just fine. [2]
    Don't even consider a modem slower than 2400 baud. The few extra dollars in cost are quickly paid back in savings on long-distance telephone charges and bills from those BBSs that charge by the minute. If necessary, a 2400 baud modem can also retrieve data at the slower speeds of 1200 or 300 baud.
    There are two kinds of modems: internal or external. An internal modem mounts in one of the expansion slots inside the computer. I prefer internal modems, which I have in both my desk-top computer and my laptop, because they become part of the computer and don't add to the clutter on the work table. Internal modems are also cheaper. The argument for an external modem is that it requires no installation, but just plugs into a serial port in the back of the computer. (Actually, the installation of an internal modem is quite simple, although some people are afraid of opening the case of their computer.) Also, an external modem can be moved from one computer to another, if this is required.
    With a modem you can tap into vast databases of every description. Research can be done in minutes which would take days or weeks if you had to trek around to research libraries or rely upon written correspondence. In addition, such services as CompuServe's Executive News Service enable you to read news dispatches from the major news services before this news is reported in the newspapers. (And sometimes such dispatches are never reported at all, if they are politically incorrect.)
    Some people use modems to find others who share their own special interests. For them, modems are a way to communicate with others, to make friends, not just to retrieve information.



John Lauritsen: First of all, Ben, could you tell me when you founded the AIDS Information Bulletin Board, and what your objectives were?

Ben Gardiner: It started in 1985. The first uninterrupted operations began on July 25, 1985. I was part of Mobilization Against AIDS, I was one of the founders of that, and among the many ways we were trying to reach people with information about AIDS was hard copy. There was DARE, there was John James' Newsletter — and as I had computers, I thought let's start a bulletin board, and that's what I did. I got a free program from Tim McCrary, and I got the FOG [First Osborne Group] to give me an interface, and I started it on a tiny Osborne I, serial number 666, the Devil's own number. And it ran for two years on that tiny little machine.
    After this I built it up. I discovered first that people wanted stuff out of the newspapers. Earl Galvin gave me a lot. There were no newsletters at that point, there was very little information in the newspapers, so there was a lot of hearsay and gossip. People put messages on there — “Do we know about this, do we know about that?” — and the answer was usually that we don't know.     The year before [1984] Margaret Heckler had come out with her drunken episode when she announced the discovery of the virus that killed people with AIDS, and we were still suffering from shock from that horrifying event. Later in 1985 there was a dispute as to whether Gallo had discovered it or Montagnier, and so on and so forth. All these rather irrelevant actions were overlaid on the real need for information. People were dying all over the place. One person died right in this house, May 31st 1985, shortly before I got the bulletin board going. And so it was a time of great upset, of great uncertainty. And as I said, I ran it for two years on this tiny machine.
    Then I needed a holiday very much, so I left town and was gone for two weeks, and when I got back the computer was burned up, not functioning. And I had lost my best client. Again, that was a time of great upset. By then I had found another machine, which had been donated to me by Altos Computers, a very generous old corporation making computers down in Palos Altos, San Jose. But I hadn't found anybody to help me install the machine, so it was sitting here, doing nothing. Most of that summer of 1987 the machine was down — the one that had burned up was not functioning and the new one wasn't in operation.
    Then I ran across Mark Pearson, who the year before had donated a terminal to me. Mark had been dying when he gave me the terminal in 1986. In 1987 he seemed better, and I said, “Mark, what happened to you? I thought you were getting ready to die?” And he said, “Well I was, until I took this stuff called AZT.” And he agreed to help me.
    He installed the machine, and I had a program that I'd got from Ohio. Mark and I put it on the machine — it was the only program that would run on the Xenix system — and we discovered that it was about the most hostile program that we could imagine — user hostile, I mean this thing was barnacles and porcupines. It was incredibly difficult to use. Mark looked at the source code, and decided it would be better to write an entirely new program, rather than try to salvage theirs. So in a few months he did that. And in January 1988 we started up with his new program, which is much better — very friendly — people can call and get right to the point.
    Since then it's been my problem to operate the machine, and also edit the material. Because of its start, when we didn't know anything, it has been necessary to re-organize the material two or three times, each of which has been drastic surgery. Rather painful. It means that nobody could find anything for awhile. For one thing, I did not expect that the Open Forum would be twice as popular as everything else put together. That was a real surprise. I thought they wanted to read published articles, newsletters, and statistics. I found they wanted to read each other's messages much more — that's the Open Forum area. So I have set the thing up on the basis that the Open Forum is now the most popular thing, and all the other stuff is available. I've made an index and put in a thesaurus and an acronym translator, and various other little features.
    Mark continued to polish the program, but unfortunately, as with most people who take AZT, his time ran out. He ended up in the hospital with a permanent plug in his chest. And one night he decided it was enough. He told his attendants, “Tonight at midnight, pull out the plugs”, in effect terminating his own life. By then he had set up the program so that with what I had learned I could continue to polish it and operate it without his assistance. It was very difficult at first. I did learn more, though, and this is now over two years later — he died in 1988.
    And I've had a great deal of help from a few people. It's difficult to get the kind of help I need — high-priced and extremely skilled people. It's not like a personal computer, where you can get help down at the corner store. Xenix is complex. I need Xenix because it can do multi-tasking, and it's capable of tremendous expansion, which has proved necessary. My work has been to learn to do things I already know how to do in other languages — to learn how to do them using the Xenix system. I've now got it almost completely automated. It makes its reports — usage statistics, and things like that which are good for fund-raising purposes and for publicity. But the operation of the machine — I don't have to do anything about that — it functions pretty well by itself. Altos Computer Company supports the machine, and gives me help, technical assistance when I need it.

JL: Could you tell me more about the features of the Bulletin Board, for example, how many responses there've been in the Reader's Forum, and also the different things offered in the way of statistics, periodicals, and so on? Also, the range of dialogue, the different viewpoints?

BG: That's a whole lot of questions piled together, and I don't remember them all. But I'll take the ones I remember first. What does the AIDS Information Bulletin Board offer? It has one very large section called Reading Matter. There are six years of Wall Street Journal articles there, which have been trimmed to eliminate the irrelevant material. This is a donation from the Dow Jones Company, on the basis that the whole system is free. Then there are articles from various people, including your own work and Peter Duesberg's — let's see, who else? — John James' writings from the very beginning, before he published them in the form of a newsletter. I have the GMHC (Gay Men's Health Crisis) Treatment Issues from New York. And I have Dr. Dodell's newsletter, which comes over INTERNET — one of my users puts that on, and I move it to a display position.
    I have statistics on AIDS. I used to overwrite them — I would replace each old report with the new report. Now I add them on, because I have much more storage space. I would say that there are now about a year of them on display. It gives people a chance to see the changes in statistics, not just the current ones. And that's important now that the pandemic appears to be topped out.
    And besides that I have certain permanent documents that have proved to be useful — for instance, I have blank forms for wills, power of attorney, legal documents like that, that many people with AIDS want, though they can't afford a lawyer — and they don't need to pay a lawyer. Those are prominently displayed.  Also displayed are studies that are available to people with AIDS — studies they can apply for, but often don't know about. I get reports from the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association about drug studies, about what is the state of research on a particular drug. There are about a hundred of such studies now in progress. They send me that information every three months, and I update it. I also have AmFAR's Directory, which unfortunately is much too long for the whole thing to be typed out. What I have is a summary of it. They haven't sent me an update for about a year now — I guess I'm on their blacklist.
    In addition I have news — occasionally I cover conferences, but I don't consider myself primarily a reporter. I'm an editor, and I rely on other people's reports as  much as possible. Because of copyright restrictions I have often referred to a particular publication, rather than trying to report the content of it. I let people get it themselves. Most of my callers don't want to go that deeply into subjects. They want to know what's going on, but they don't want all the detail from, say the New England Journal of Medicine. They don't want to read the article, they just want to know what's in it. And that's the basis of my work as an editor — to convey that information and give them the proper reference.
    In addition to that, I have telephone and address references for as many as possible locations nearby where they can get more information or treatment, all over the United States. I get calls from all over the world. The ones that bother me are the ones that call from rural areas in the United States, where there may be nothing for fifty miles, and they don't know anybody else who has any problems with AIDS. And yet in almost every state there is something, so I try to connect those up.
    Another thing I do is to carry a calendar of AIDS conferences. I get that from a source in the East, and it's extremely detailed and very thorough. It shows a conference about every week somewhere in the world. And that's the kind of stuff that I've got.

JL: In general, what approach does the Bulletin Board take towards controversial issues? There seem to be many viewpoints expressed, including those of Peter Duesberg and me, who say that HIV is not the cause of AIDS, as well as the viewpoints of others who say that it is.

BG: I use two identities for that. As editor I am impartial. I will print things that I think are repugnant. I will not publish things that are indisputably incorrect. But where there's a question, where there's a dispute, I'll publish both sides. And I go to a little trouble sometimes to get the opposing side on some issues. However, I take my own identity, which is Ben Gardiner, and I will argue on one side or the other on any question. I reserve that right, to have an opinion. A couple of my users object to this. They say, “You're the system operator, who is known as SysOp, but we know perfectly well you're Ben Gardiner, so why don't you just say so?” And my answer to that is that when I sign as SysOp, that's the editor, but when I sign as Ben Gardiner, I have the right to a personal opinion. And that's the way I separate those things.

JL: Finally, could you tell our readers what they should do to contact the Bulletin Board — the numbers, the settings they should use on their modems, and so on.?

BG: The telephoning is very simple. You telephone (415) 626-1246. That's the primary line number. It's actually several telephone lines, but you don't need to know that. And you will be instructed what to do when you make contact. The settings are standard: 8 bits, 1 stop bit, and no parity. These settings are standard for almost all bulletin boards. Now, if you want to download, you need a special kind of program that's called Modem 7. But you can also download from screen: if your modem program has a feature to download from screen, you can take anything you want from the Bulletin Board. Republishing it is another matter. Some of the stuff is copyrighted. Some of the copyrights give permission to reprint, and some do not. I ask people to respect the copyright restrictions. Dow Jones, for instance — they sell that service someplace else, and it is not permissible to republish that material. But most of the rest of it — people have already granted permission to reprint, as long as you're not making money off of it.


Afterword - JL   
    Unlike most BBSs with large data databases, the AIDS Information Bulletin Board does not charge for its services. The only expenses in using it come from telephone tolls to San Francisco. Being free, the AIDS Information Bulletin Board is dependent upon contributions. The address is: AIDS Information Bulletin Board, 159A Noe Street, San Francisco, CA 94114. The BBS telephone number is (415) 626-1246. (Now that Ben is dead, the address and number are no longer valid.)


NOTES
1. This article was published in the New York Native, 30 July 1990, and was reprinted as Chapter XXI in The AIDS War (1993). The AIDS War is still in print — for descriptions of this and other Pagan Press books click here.

2. The original footnote: “As of late 1992, a 2400 baud modem can be bought for as little as $50. A modem that can also send and receive faxes is about $100.”  Now in 2010, with DSL and cable broadband connections, a 2400 baud modem would be intolerably slow. In retrospect, the old Bulletin Board Systems (BBSs), which consisted of words and numbers, seem almost quaint. They have been supplanted by broadband-greedy websites that are heavy on graphics, videos, and audio, not to mention advertising.