In 1987, Helms added an amendment to the Supplemental Appropriations Act, which directed the president to use executive authority to add HIV infection to the list of excludable diseases which prevent both travel and immigration to the United States.[210] The action was opposed by the U.S. Public Health Service. Congress restored the executive authority to remove HIV from the list of excludable conditions in the 1990 Immigration Reform Act, and in January 1991, Secretary of Health and Human Services Louis Sullivan announced he would delete HIV from the list of excludable conditions. A letter-writing campaign headed by Helms ultimately convinced President Bush not to lift the ban, and left the United States the only industrialized nation in the world to prohibit travel based on HIV status.[211] The travel ban was also responsible for the cancellation of the 1992 International AIDS Conference in Boston.[212] On January 5, 2010, the 22-year-old ban was lifted after having been signed by President Barack Obama on October 30, 2009.[213][214]
The New York Times stated that Helms was "bitterly opposed to federal financing of AIDS research and treatment",[215] which he believed was God's punishment for homosexuals. Opposing the Kennedy-Hatch AIDS bill in 1988, Helms stated, "There is not one single case of AIDS in this country that cannot be traced in origin to sodomy".[216] When Ryan White died in 1990, his mother went to Congress to speak to politicians on behalf of people with AIDS. She spoke to 23 representatives; Helms refused to speak to Jeanne White, even when she was alone with him in an elevator.[217] Despite opposition by Helms, the Ryan White Care Act passed in 1990.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#Social_issues
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