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Stephen Lewis brought the crowd to their feet yesterday in an impassioned speech that shook with rage and spoke of hope.
The speech, which wrapped up the 16th annual International AIDS Conference, was one of the last for Lewis as the UN special envoy to AIDS in Africa.
The negligence of the G8 countries is tantamount to genocide, Lewis charged.
"It's important that the delegates here never let the G8 countries off the hook," he said.
At the end of the week-long Toronto conference, at which hundreds of studies were exchanged and thousands of numbers released, Lewis called for activists to place a temporary moratorium on "the endless ... proliferation of meetings, round tables ... ad nauseum" and concentrate on tangible work.
He also asked delegates to enforce the conference theme "Time to deliver" before diving into a list of recommendations.
No. 1 on Lewis's list: "Abstinence-only programs do not work," he said to a chorus of cheers. "Ideological rigidity almost never works when applied to the human condition."
He also called it "positively perverse" to consider closing Vancouver's free injection site -- the subject of much controversy after the federal government refused to commit itself to renewing the program.
When Lewis called for countries to push circumcision as a preventive measure, he shared a personal vignette.
He said when a Zambian government official told him he belonged to an ethnic tribe that had been circumcised, Lewis revealed that he had been snipped too.
"And there followed a joyous frenzy of male bonding amongst all the circumcisees," he told the laughing crowd.
His speech also touched on poverty, the epidemic of child orphans, sexual violence against children and gender inequality -- the driving force behind the pandemic, he said.
"In my view ... the most vexing and intolerable dimension of the pandemic is what's happening to women ... one area that makes me feel helpless and most enraged."
But Lewis reserved his harshest criticism for South Africa, where between 600 and 800 people die daily of AIDS, calling its government "obtuse, dilatory and negligent about rolling out treatment.
"The government has a lot to atone for. I am of the opinion it will never achieve redemption."
The world is also teetering on the cusp of a huge financial crisis, Lewis warned, estimating $30 billion will be needed by 2010 -- billions we don't have.