Bush's Other Losing War: AIDS

[Ian David]

Bush's Other Losing War: AIDS
Doug Ireland
December 01, 2006

Doug Ireland, a veteran political journalist, can be reached through his blog, DIRELAND, at http://direland.typepad.com/direland/.

Today is World AIDS Day—and it's sad to have to report that, thanks in part to George W. Bush and the Republicans, we are losing the fight against the pandemic. And it's time for the Democrats to repair some of the damage.

The world has failed miserably to meet the goals for AIDS prevention education set in 2001 by the United Nations General Assembly Special Session on HIV-AIDS. For example, the U.N. said then that, by 2005, 90 percent of young people were supposed to know how to prevent AIDS—yet, today, the latest U.N. figures show that only 20 percent of young women in the world, and only 30 percent of young men, know how to stop the spread of HIV.

That lethal situation is one direct result of Republican legislative earmarks and Bush policy restrictions that are shifting funds away from science-based sex education to "abstinence-only" sex-ed programs. A March 2006 Government Accountability Office report showed that restrictions on AIDS prevention funding in the original legislation for the President's Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief—restrictions imposed by the Republicans at the demand of the anti-condom Christian Right—were undermining AIDS education and prevention.

Take the example of Uganda, where some 32 million quality-approved condoms remain impounded in government warehouses while the U.S. government ramps up financing for abstinence-only approaches to HIV prevention. Religious groups, to whom U.S. AIDS-fighting money has been ladled out as political patronage, are undermining confidence in condoms throughout the country and contributing to misinformation about their effectiveness. The Republican-imposed restrictions on awarding AIDS-fighting dollars are also affecting other countries hard-hit by the AIDS epidemic, such as Nigeria, South Africa and Zambia. The failed fantasy of abstinence-only sex-ed has helped make sub-Saharan Africa—where two-thirds of the world's AIDS cases occur—a killing field.

More:
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/12/01/bushs_other_losing_war_aids.php