The Daily Background

A new report from the Institute of Medicine says that “President Bush’s $15 billion plan to fight AIDS globally is seriously hampered by restrictions imposed by Congress and the administration,” according to the New York Times tomorrow. The three key problems cited in the study are the following:

-The requirement that 33 percent of all money for prevention be spent teaching chastity and fidelity, even in countries where most cases are spread by drug injection.

-The need for separate Food and Drug Administration approval of AIDS drugs that the World Health Organization has already approved.

-Laws forbidding the use of taxpayer money to give clean needles to drug addicts.

More here. As for the first point, I think this policy obviously should change, and probably will if the next President is Democratic.

The second point, that twice-classification is needed seems valid as well, because if people are already dying of AIDS, and the drugs have been approved by the WHO, then what’s the point of delaying their treatment just because the FDA (which has been increasingly politicized during the Bush Administration, particularly with regard to bending to big pharma’s will, denying certification to cheaper generics, etc) isn’t satisfied yet.

As for the third point– the free needles for addicts– I have conflicting feelings about this one, and I’d rather see money that would go to that go to developing anti-drug programs that are actually effective.

Filed under: Z-TDB Blog