U.S. Man's Porn Sales Helping Fight AIDS Overseas

(AP) HANOI, Vietnam In the lobby of what Vietnamese delicately call
a "rest house," Phil Harvey sits listening intently as the manager
details how many condoms he passes out each month and how much a
room costs by the hour or night.

This "nha nghi," on a narrow road across the Red River in the
communist capital, is one of about 300 establishments that rent
rooms for sex.

Harvey, 67, isn't the least bit squeamish around such talk. He runs
Adam & Eve, one of America's biggest X-rated mail-order businesses,
selling everything from movies to sex toys. He's also a survivor of
U.S. government court battles aimed at shutting him down.

But in Vietnam and 10 other developing countries, Harvey donates a
chunk of his millions for contraceptives that sell for pennies to
the poor.

"I don't find this odd at all, but a lot of people do," he told The
Associated Press. "I mean, what else would I do with the money? This
is my life's work. I can't think of any more enjoyable way to make
use of those profits."

Harvey is president of Washington-based DKT International, a
nonprofit organization which he says gets about $2 million of his
annual earnings from Adam & Eve's $70 million in sales.

For 15 years DKT has been distributing heavily discounted condoms,
birth control pills and other contraceptives to people in developing
countries. It's called social marketing—advertising and selling,
rather than just giving away, the tools of family planning and
disease prevention. Most contraceptives are sold at a loss, although
programs in a couple countries have broken even.

It was his plan from the very beginning, Harvey says, and Adam & Eve
just happened to be the means to make it possible.

After five years in India working for an aid agency in the 1960s, he
decided to focus on ways of controlling population growth. He earned
a master's degree in family planning administration at the
University of North Carolina, and with Tim Black, another public
health proponent, started a mail-order catalog selling condoms to
Americans—a business that was illegal at the time.

"We would sit down at the end of the week and count the money and
pay the bills and we said, `There seems to be a little money left
over here and that's probably a profit,"' Harvey said. "Then we
started thinking about, well, how can we run a business whose
profits could be used to help support international family planning
programs?"

Adam & Eve evolved from the condom catalog, giving Harvey and Black
the money they needed 35 years ago to start Population Services
International, which today calls itself the world's leading
nonprofit social marketer. Black later started what is now Marie
Stopes International, a London-based reproductive health nonprofit.

Harvey founded DKT, naming it for the initials of D.K. Tyagi, an
Indian pioneer in family planning.

But the Reagan administration hit him with obscenity charges over
Adam & Eve's operations that entangled him in nearly eight years of
legal battles that continued into the Clinton years and cost him
about $3 million. He eventually pleaded guilty to one charge, a
technicality for violating Alabama postal regulations, and paid a
$250,000 fine. The deal required Harvey to drop a civil suit against
the U.S. Justice Department. It ended the case and allowed his
business to continue.

Now he says he's ready to do battle again. DKT is suing the U.S.
Agency for International Development and its administrator, accusing
them of violating free speech by requiring AIDS nonprofit groups
receiving U.S. government funding to sign a pledge opposing
prostitution and sex trafficking.

Harvey and Larry Holzman, DKT's representative in Vietnam, say they
refused to sign because they distribute condoms to prostitutes
and "rest houses," and would be sending a mixed message if they took
a stand against the sex industry.

Last year, money and donated condoms from USAID totaled about $4.4
million of DKT's $50 million budget. Harvey says he can manage fine
without it, but is fighting for a principle.

"The government has no business telling independent American
organizations ... what policies to have," he says.

USAID says the general U.S. policy opposes sex trafficking and
prostitution as dehumanizing and degrading but does not prohibit
AIDS services and other programs for prostitutes. U.S. legislation
requires groups receiving federal HIV/AIDS funding to have a
policy "explicitly opposing prostitution and sex trafficking."

Officials at USAID and the Justice Department declined to comment on
the suit.

Despite his legal battles, Harvey says his porn industry connection
has never seriously hampered his charity work. Donors ranging from
the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to the Dutch government continue
to support DKT. Former President Jimmy Carter praised Harvey's 1999
book, "Let Every Child Be Wanted," as outlining effective methods
for poor couples to obtain contraceptives.

Although communist Vietnam has strong policies against pornography,
with sentences of up to 15 years for possessing or
disseminating "social evils" such as adult movies, its president has
awarded a medal to Harvey's operation for its work combating AIDS
and promoting family planning and child welfare.

Harvey, a grandfather who wears a fedora and blue button-down shirt,
says the combination of porn and health promotion is less of a
problem than some might think. "Besides, for me, it's a fact of
life. I'm not going to give up my business just because it's
controversial. I'm very proud of the business."

Last year, DKT sold about 390 million condoms. Factories, mostly
Asian, churn out the latex, and DKT also receives condom donations,
including from USAID.

In Vietnam, where DKT has operated since 1993, Harvey recently
visited a pharmacy where DKT's red "OK" condom boxes were showcased
in the window and on shelves. The pharmacist has other brands but
says OK is the favorite, with three packets selling for about 6
cents. DKT is also experimenting with colored and flavored condoms,
including durian, a Southeast Asian fruit famous for its sweet pulp
and foul-smelling rind.

Harvey says the key is selling contraceptives, rather than giving
them away. People who buy products, no matter how inexpensive, are
more likely to use them, and vendors have the incentive of a small
profit, he says.

"After 35 years in this business," he says, "I've never seen a
giveaway program that worked very well for very long."

http://cbs5.com/topstories/local_story_283134904.html