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<< Put Up or Shut Up | Main | Europe Has Spoken- Sort Of >> January 29, 2003Reaction to Bush's AIDS ProposalI was trying to be as positive about Bush's AIDS proposal as possible, but the details are not encouraging. To begin with, Bush is not immediately ratching up funding but "projecting" large increases in future years, while only increasing funding by $700 million for the 2004 fiscal year. See Africa Action Demands Dollars to Match Announcement on AIDS in Africa. The other problem is that the $300 dollars per year cost of treating AIDS patients is only possible by buying generic drugs, whose makers often ignore patents held by pharmaceutical makers. Will Bush actually do that, or diminish the real help by bolstering pharma profits while treating fewer people? Also, domestic AIDS activists are worried that this global compassion is tied to cuts in domestic AIDS spending. Tom Coates, director of the University of California (SF) AIDS Research Institute, noted the administration also plans to cut funding for a program that brings AIDS drugs to Americans who can't afford them. "I've been in Washington, D.C., last week, prioritizing who gets on the waiting list for drugs in the United States."If Bush is cutting most domestic funding and refusing to spend the global AIDS money until years down the road, there is a justified suspicion that this is just a gambit to sell the war, then let the rightwing Congress kill the program in the out-years. Posted by Nathan at January 29, 2003 01:50 PM Related posts: "Greatest Canadian" - Nov 30, 2004
Trackback PingsTrackBack URL for this entry: CommentsI think his rheotric on helping AIDS vicitims was one of the most infuriating of the night's speech considering his party's obfuscation of funding in the past. It's also important to keep in mind that when considering any program that involves the administration of anti-retrovirals a resolution must be made to continue such therapies so long as the clients live. An interview on NPR reminded me of it. Once these drugs are initiated they can't be simply stopped for lack of funding. Well they can but to do so would foster new strains of drug resistant AIDS viruses. A nightmare in the making and since knowing the consequences of such actions going into it, abandoning them would be reprehensibly incompetent. Posted by: Diane Warth at January 29, 2003 02:31 PM Infuriating? At the moment, yes. But he's starting to leave a paper trail. We know who the real liar was in the last presidential election, now the evidence is building to a point where it may finally be too large to ignore. If we only had an opposition party... Posted by: doesn't matter at January 30, 2003 09:31 AM Post a comment
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