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October 26, 2007
ON PINS AND NEEDLES
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Hill, don't make the same mistake as Bill |
Last April, Housing Works president and CEO Charles King tried to pin down 2008 presidential frontrunner Senator Hillary Clinton about her position on lifting the ban on federal funding for needle exchange. Six months later—despite a high-profile story on the website Politico and frequent bird-dogging to get Clinton to release her plan to fight AIDS—advocates are still left to wonder what action Clinton will take on needle exchange, and why she seems so hesitant to lead on the issue.
Besides Clinton’s exchange with King, the Update found virtually no other public comments from Clinton on the issue. In that exchange, Clinton said, “I want to look at the evidence on it,” referring to whether needle exchange would prevent the spread of HIV without increasing illicit drug use. If so, said Clinton, “states and localities should have the option of doing it.” King reminded the senator from New York that her own husband’s Health and Human Services Secretary, Donna Shalala, had “certified” the safety and effectiveness of such programs in 1998.
“And then she refused to order it, as you remember,” Clinton shot back. In fact, Bill Clinton allowed Shalala to announce that a “meticulous scientific review” had “proven” needle exchanges were safe and effective but maintained the federal ban on funding them. When King corrected Clinton, she admitted, “We knew we couldn't maintain it politically. I wish life and politics were easier.” (To see the whole battle click here.)
Director of National Affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance Bill Piper confirmed that Clinton’s position on lifting the ban remains unknown. “I don't know what her position is and I don’t expect that to change. Hillary is the frontrunner, and frontrunners tend not to take positions on tough issues,” Piper said...
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SAN FRANCISCO FOG
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Trolley to a safe injection site? Not if DeMint has his way |
It was rough going for the City by the Bay this week. First, South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint attached an amendment to the Labor, Health and Human Services and Education appropriations bill prohibiting the use of Health and Human Services funds for any cities that create legal safe-injection drug sites. It passed unanimously, without a single senator speaking up against this reactionary scare tactic.
Advocates believe that DeMint dreamed up the amendment after reading an Oct. 18 Associated Press article "San Francisco Considers Injection Drug Site" , which wrote about a San Francisco city government forum where participants discussed the possibility of some day creating a safe-injection site as a way to reduce overdoses among the city's estimated 11,000 to 15,000 intravenous drug users. San Francisco is only in the early stages of talking about such a program.
In a press release by DeMint, subtitled, "DeMint amendment prohibit (sic) cities, like San Francisco, from creating taxpayer-subsidized safe havens for illegal drug users" DeMint said, "The Senate sent a clear message to cities that it's beyond ridiculous to ask Americans to pay for drug addicts to inject themselves with heroine and cocaine. The officials in San Francisco that gave credibility to this absurd idea should be embarrassed."
DeMint is the one who should be embarrassed. Safe-injection sites are used in 27 countries, including one site in Vancouver. The Vancouver program, despite early opposition, has proven successful in getting drug users off of the streets and preventing overdoses among an estimated 700 users a day....
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COUNT WOMEN IN
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Ten smiling briefing attendees telling CDC marriage is an HIV risk factor |
After Dr. Bishop Joyce Turner Keller was raped in 1995, she was tested for STDs—but not HIV. It was only after she was in a car accident and developed a staph infection that she demanded an HIV test, which came back positive. "Had I not continued to seek answers, because I am a woman who does not fit the CDC surveillance criteria, before you today would be a woman with only one leg and a crutch," Keller, the Campaign to End AIDS National co-chair, told the crowd at Monday's Congressional Breakfast Briefing, Women and AIDS: Federal HIV-Reporting Policy and Its Impact on Women, sponsored by National Women and AIDS Collective (NWAC).
Sixty percent of women are classified as "no identified risk" under the Centers for Disease Control's transmission risk guidelines, a designation that affects funding priorities, prevention efforts and who is and who isn't tested for HIV. But over the last year NWAC (founded by the Ms. Foundation in 2005) with the help of the National Association of People With AIDS (NAPWA), organized the Congressional briefing as a first step in plans to raise awareness and to pressure legislators to push CDC to change the policy.
These organizations want the CDC to include all heterosexual sex as a risk and revise the transmission risks to accurately capture socioeconomic and environmental data, such as where one lives, post-incarceration rates, poverty and homelessness. Such factors play a role in high HIV infection rates among women of color, who make up 82 percent of all new infections among women, and low income women. Staffers from the offices of Hillary Clinton, Edward Kennedy and Yvette Clark, were all in attendance at the breakfast.
"The system is broken"
Currently, people who test positive for HIV are typically classified in one of the follow transmission categories (in order of risk):...Read the rest: "COUNT WOMEN IN"
THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM
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Ask Mitt anything—though he might not want to talk about it |
Although the Dems tend to be a little more accessible, AIDS activists are just as eager to corner Republican presidential candidates at meet-and-greets throughout the country to demand they explain their positions on domestic and global AIDS issues. With a little ingenuity, bird-doggers have gotten close to the GOP's would-be nominees—only to find out that, in some cases, HIV/AIDS is barely on their minds.
When Luke Messac, a Harvard senior, and ten of his closest friends attended two "Ask Mitt Anything" campaign events earlier this month in New Hampshire , they found that just because they could ask Mitt anything, didn't mean he had to give a straight answer. When one of Messac's crew asked Romney to name the dollar amount he'd commit to funding global AIDS, Romney said he hadn't made a budget—and that when he does make one, global AIDS won't be his first priority. When another bird-dogger asked Romney if he would commit $50 billion over five years to fighting global AIDS, Romney kept bringing the discussion back to the war on terrorism.
According to Messac, Romney grew so frustrated with the AIDS questions that the ex-governor of Massachusetts remarked, "We have to get our own house in order first, of course," and then went on to talk about giving money to countries with moderate politics and significant Muslim populations. When pressed further, Romney appeared agitated, asking "Is this really the most important issue to you? More important than military spending?"
For Messac the answer is yes. "At the end all we're asking for is one-fourth of one percent of the U.S. budget for one of the greatest catastrophes of all time, and it's an issue that's not getting play in Romney's campaign," Messac told the Update. "With Obama, even if he wasn't perfectly in line with everything, he'd definitely done his homework, and was versed on global AIDS. If Romney has done his homework, he didn't display it."...
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