August 10, 2010

The Obama Administration has been put on the defensive about its flat-funding of Global AIDS programming and the inevitable treatment waiting-lines and deaths-while-waiting that have occurred. National and international press has pounded the President’s AIDS policy, and the US, along with other G8 countries, was excoriated by AIDS activists at the International AIDS Conference in Vienna. In an era of unwise wars, corporate and financial sector bailouts, and Bush-era tax cuts, claims of insufficient resources ring a decidedly false note. Because of the onslaught of negative press, the Administration has launched a publicity counter-offensive relying on White House Health Policy Advisor Ezekiel Emanuel, Global AIDS Ambassador Eric Goosby, Special Assistant to the President Gayle Smith, former President Bill Clinton, and even the President himself. Mead Over, Laurie Garrett, and even Richard Horton of the Lancet are coming to the defense of the President. Although it is clear that the Administration is “hearing” the critique, it is even clearer that it is not “listening.” Instead, it and its supporters continue to publicize a standard set of part-truths that tell a lie – untruths that withhold vital information and misrepresent clearly established facts.  This litany of disinformation is catalogued and rebutted below – not to embarrass the President but to urge greater attention and response to the substance of the activist critique – just at the time when momentum is growing, just when the complementarity between treatment and prevention is crystal clear, and just as the AIDS response is being reprogrammed to intensify positive synergies between HIV, maternal and child health, and health system strengthening, the US cannot and should not put a cap on spending.

Next Page -->