Republican Senator Elizabeth Dole wants to rename the international AIDS legislation after the now-dead arch-conservative, gay-hating racist Jesse Helms. Yes, Helms, who was more than happy to let gay people with AIDS die during the 80s and 90s, did finally embrace the international AIDS cause, in so far as the "victims" that interested him were "innocent children." But that's the only reason Helms got on board, because kids were involved and they were innocent "victims," as compared to the rest of those with AIDS who, according to Helms, deserved what they got. Look, I get the importance of using conservatives to sugar coat and inoculate liberal proposals. It makes it much harder for Republicans to oppose a bill named after Jesse Helms. But at some point, moral decency demands you draw a line. Jesse Helms was a pig. A racist, bigoted pig. He not only represented a crystallization of the worst of America, he went out of his way to promote policies that would have thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of men and women with AIDS in America. To name any AIDS bill, even an international one, after one of America's most infamous AIDS-haters, strikes me as beyond the pale, regardless of how much it might help build support on the right for the legislation. At some point, expediency has to yield to common decency. Jesse Helms, now dead, was a hateful, racist, gay-bashing pig. It's time to bury Jesse Helms, not praise him.
UPDATE: One legacy of the Jesse Helms era was his bill that enacted a ban on foreign visitors with HIV from entering the United States. Amazingly, that is still the law. But, there is legislation to change it in the Senate right now. It would be an amendment to the same bill Liddy Dole is trying to name for Helms. But, the end of the ban would be real progress and one more chance to defeat the Helms legacy of hate. HRC has an action alert here.
In June, I read this post by Gabriel Rotello. It was a great piece questioning the idea that the AIDS epidemic was over in the United States. There hasn't been much coverage of the continuing AIDS crisis in this country, but it's far from over. Coincidentally, in July, I got invited to attend meeting to discuss developing a strategy to end the AIDS epidemic in America. To be honest, I hadn't given the subject much thought. But after spending a day with some of the brightest people in the world of AIDS and other fields, I came away believing we need to step up the discussion.
Of course, to end the AIDS epidemic in America requires leadership. And, we're not going to have leadership until we have a new President. That's why the leading AIDS organizations and their allies "have requested that every Presidential candidate commit to developing a results-oriented national AIDS strategy designed to significantly reduce HIV infection rates, ensure access to care and treatment for those who are infected and eliminate racial disparities." What a concept, huh?
The wealthiest nation in the world is failing its own people in responding to the AIDS epidemic at home. Consider that in the U.S.:
Every year, 40,000 people are newly infected with HIV. The HIV infection rate has not fallen in 15 years. Over a million people are living with HIV. In 2002, an estimated half of people living with HIV/AIDS were not in care. African Americans represent 13% of the population but nearly half of all new HIV infections. In 2004, HIV/AIDS was the leading cause of death among black women ages 25 - 34.
The unsatisfactory outcomes from our country’s response to AIDS have serious human and economic costs. A study published in 2003 found that failure to meet the government’s then goal of reducing HIV infections by half would lead to $18 billion in excess expenses through 2010.
Those are some serious ramifications in both human and financial terms. All of the major presidential candidates are offering their health care plans. Hillary Clinton unveiled her plan yesterday.
Every candidate needs to include a plan to end the AIDS epidemic in America. It's gone on way, way too long.
American professor Robert Bailey spoke at a WHO conference on AIDS about battling the AIDS epidemic with funding for circumcisions which are known to reduce the risk of transmission of the disease by roughly 60%. Instead of spending millions of dollars, a billion in the new Bush plan for Africa, money should be spent on known solutions such as medicine, condoms, doctors, nurses, science and real sex education instead of theory of abstinence which is costly and unproven. We have brilliant scientists and medical doctors around the world so use them instead of Southern Baptist religious leaders to address this problem.
While Congress shies away from a battle with Bush to provide $1 billion for religious theory to fight AIDS, Brazil builds a pharmaceutical factory in one of the harder hit countries of Africa so they can provide the necessary medicine locally. While the GOP continues their efforts to restrict choice in America, Brazil announces a plan to provide morning after pills for the poor, in addition to the existing program to distribute condoms for almost nothing.
It's an interesting sign of the times to see a developing nation be so much more progressive than the so-called world superpower. In no way am I knocking Brazil which is a great country with so many qualities, but in another time it would have been the US would have been out in front with combating serious issues like this. Our leaders kowtow to the religious right, fearing their wrath and leaders in Brazil decide to be leaders themselves, as it should be in a modern democracy.
Sure, that's important but so are condoms, medicine, nurses and doctors which are lagging from her husbands moralistic plan for addressing the problem. If she wants to talk about vegetables and good nutrition, then perhaps she could explain how the hell people are supposed to work to either buy treatment or grow crops to survive when they are dying. I give Bush credit for promoting a lot more money to Africa than most countries but diverting over a billion dollars for moralizing is a senseless waste of money.
If over time the GOP wants to moralize, and they always love to moralize about sex, go ahead with church funds and private donations, but the problem today is trying to keep pace with the people who are dying who struggle to find anything that even remotely seems like medical care for most of us. Maybe the First Lady can spend some quality time with dying parents and orphaned children and report back how relevant veggies and well rounded meals are when people can't even find a doctor, let along a nurse, let alone medicine or a parent. It's great to see her raising the profile of the issues but I'm fed up with responding to real problems with Southern Baptist moralizing, which is a big part of Bush's program.
Considering the bold headline regarding climate change, caution is necessary but let's see if the details are as positive sounding as the headline, but this could be a very good step forward.
Bush and the GOP want to spend over one billion dollars of taxpayer dollars in Africa preaching abstinence, often using the questionable Uganda ABC program as an example. Theory is fine when having a discussion, but when millions of people are dying, practical real-world solutions are needed. In the real world, getting serious about prevention needs to addressed. This means promoting the use of condoms and safe sex, not preaching about supposed morals.
If current trends persist, sub-Saharan Africa, already reeling under the burden of nearly 25 million infected people and in the midst of a population boom, will face 36 million additional new infections by 2015, according to a report to be released this June by the Global H.I.V. Prevention Working Group. Treatment clinics will confront an ever-growing clientele and countless millions will die, said the panel of experts, which was convened by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
“It is like running on a treadmill,” said Salim S. Abdool Karim, who directs the Center for the AIDS Program of Research in South Africa. “The faster you run, the more you stay in place.”
The panel blamed the lack of an intensive prevention effort for the continuing high rate of new infections. To some extent, the panel said, prevention has taken a back seat to treatment in the last several years. Developing nations are spending progressively less on prevention programs, the report said. Studies show donors are also gravitating toward financing treatment over prevention.
“Despite their promise, H.I.V. prevention efforts have received short shrift in the global H.I.V. response,” the report says.
That is partly because treatment programs produce tangible, dramatic evidence of money well spent, while an averted infection is almost impossible to show, even though prevention is more cost-effective in the long run, the panel’s experts say.
Congress needs to update the Bush plan for Africa and add a serious dose of reality to help make it as effective as possible. The religious right experiment has failed so move on.
Spending billions for medicine, nurses and doctors makes sense and should be fully supported and globally, the PEPFAR program is great. Where Congress needs to draw the line is Bush's continuing funding for abstinence programs. HIV rates in Africa are in excess of 24 million people, with some countries in Southern Africa experiencing rates of 20%-30% of the population. Education is obviously important and stressing safe sex is critical but much of the funds for education are for funding the favorite abstinence programs of the US religious right.
The issue today is finding enough medicine to address those in need as well as finding doctors and nurses who can tend to the needs of very sick people. Shortages of medical care workers in these heavily impacted countries are all too common, the end result being overwhelmed staff and people dying unnecessarily. The initial results of the abstinence programs have shown no results whatsoever, with even Uganda (the original case study) showing a resurgence in HIV.
Congress really needs to stand up to Bush and his failing religious experiments that are taking money away from saving people. Let the religious right fund their theories on their own dollar but let's put American tax dollars to work helping people with science, medicine and medical staff.
In April of 2004, Kaiser Networks Daily AIDS/HIV Report noted that Randall Tobias, serving as the Bush Administration AIDS Czar, was promoting abstinence and denigrating condoms:
Tobias, who was in Berlin for the Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS' 2004 Awards for Business Excellence, said that promoting abstinence and monogamy are "far more effective" than distributing condoms for preventing the spread of HIV, according to Agence France-Presse. "Statistics show that condoms really have not been very effective," Tobias said, adding, "It's been the principal prevention device for the last 20 years, and I think one needs only to look at what's happening with the infection rates in the world to recognize that has not been working." PEPFAR has been criticized by AIDS advocates for placing "false hopes" on abstinence and monogamy prevention programs, according to Agence France-Presse.
That outrageous view held by the Bush administration was widely criticized by thinking people.
Today, ABC News reported that the married Mr. Tobias resigned from his post as Deputy Secretary of State after admitting he was a customer of a DC escort service
Deputy Secretary of State Randall L. Tobias submitted his resignation Friday, one day after confirming to ABC News that he had been a customer of a Washington, D.C. escort service whose owner has been charged by federal prosecutors with running a prostitution operation. Tobias, 65, Director of U.S. Foreign Assistance and administrator of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), had previously served as the Ambassador for the President’s Emergency Fund for AIDS Relief.
In a Ted Haggard-like admission, Tobias said he only got "massages."
Abstinence is for the little people, not the loyal Bushies. They don't have to practice what they preach.
Now it's time for Congress to shut this nonsense down. It's pathetic in the US but since this administration has chosen to export this rubbish overseas where the stakes are much higher and people are dying by the thousands, it is downright criminal.
Students who participated in sexual abstinence programs were just as likely to have sex a few years later as those who did not, according to a long-awaited study mandated by Congress.
Also, those who attended one of the four abstinence classes reviewed reported having similar numbers of sexual partners as those who did not attend the classes, and they first had sex at about the same age as their control group counterparts — 14.9 years, according to Mathematica Policy Research Inc.
The federal government now spends about $176 million annually on abstinence-until-marriage education. Critics have repeatedly said they don’t believe the programs are working, and the study will give them reinforcement.
The world has had enough of the American religious right theory and taxpayers have given enough money to their experiments.
Having spent six months driving across southern Africa, I became familiar with the painful though common sight of fresh graves on the outskirts of villages and townships. I also became all too familiar with how US tax dollars were being spent in Africa to combat AIDS. The Bush administration is spends millions on the ABC program (Abstinence, Be Faithful, Condoms) which is modeled on the Uganda experience. The Ugandan "success story" has since been questioned both for its actual success as well as the increasing AIDS rate in Uganda. The main thrust of this campaign is to promote abstinence, with condoms being suggested much later, almost as a last option.
In the real world, where people are dying every day, the ABC program is just more American religious right theory that toys with the lives of people in the developing world. When the cemeteries are filling up at rates like this, people need science and real world help, not religious moralizing and bogus theory. This experimentation with others is sickening, not to mention immoral. And to think that people around the world are suspicious of the Bush administration...
The Human Rights Campaign was able to find AIDS activist (and gay activist) Bob Hattoy's 1992 speech to the Democratic National Convention, and sent it around to a number of us. Bob died this past week. He was the first person with AIDS to openly address any political convention. Bob was also a friend of Bill Clinton, and a friend of mine - he helped me a lot on a number of issues.
But just as important and moving as Bob's speech was for so many of us at the time, it's important to remember that this was 1992. We'd just finished 8 years of Ronald Reagan ignoring AIDS, and 4 years of George Bush, Sr. not doing a hell of a lot more. This was the year that the Republican party launched their culture war against gays and lesbians and so many other Americans. Bob's speech is important for what it signified - finally the public embrace of a person with AIDS (and an openly gay one at that) by one of the political parties, but also it was a huge thing for the Democrats to have done in 1992 when things weren't so great for us. Shortly after Bob's speech, the Republicans felt forced to follow suit and had Mary Ficher, who also has AIDS, speak to their convention. While the Democrats highlighted a gay man with AIDS, the GOP highlighted a woman who got it through her gay husband. Enough said. (Mary has gone on to be a tireless advocate for all people with AIDS, but still, it's interesting to note how the GOP tried to use her disease to bash gays.) Kudos to HRC for posting this on YouTube.
People like this are no better than genocidal dictators, and should be treated as such. (And by that, I don't mean that George Bush should sell him weapons and Donald Rumsfeld should go shake his hand.) From Sky News:
The man is HIV positive, but after a few sessions of this treatment: a rub down with the cream, a splash on the face with another potion and a drink of a murky looking liquid, the President claims he'll be cured.
He's already treated dozens of his people with his traditional medicine, succeeding, he says, where modern medical science has failed.
Sceptics are not welcome.
"Who do I have to convince?" he demanded, jabbing his finger towards me.
"The World?" I suggested....
This 'cure' is sponsored by The Gambia's Department of Health....
The Minister, Dr Tamsir Mbowe, did not think that would be a problem.
"One hundred per cent the President can cure everyone. It is absolutely medically proven," he said....
President Jammeh cures Aids on Thursdays and Asthma on Saturdays, the rest of the time he runs the country he's ruled for 12 years.
Confused about how to respond to AIDS campaigner Gao Yaojie when she was announced to be honored by the Vital Voices Global Partnership in the US for her work, the 80 year old was put under house arrest, making it impossible for her to apply for a US travel visa. After extensive discussions with the highest levels of the communist leadership, Gao's house arrest has been lifted. Now she is being praised by a high ranking communist official for her work and the police who were blocking her house have since moved on.
Gao, who previously had been awarded by the UN and other international organizations but has been unable to leave China because of politics, became a controversial figure when she exposed tainted blood selling schemes in China as well as actively working working with AIDS patients and orphans.
