COLUMN: US puts HIV on backburner

Published: Thursday, December 4, 2003

Harsh criticism has engulfed the Bush administration since the 2000 election, and because I take a middle ground between the guns and granola, I have to take the time to both praise and scold President Bush for his anti-AIDS program.

This program, which many thought would never get off the ground, sets aside $15 billion over the next five years for HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment in 14 underdeveloped foreign countries. With this plan, 2 million HIV-infected world residents will receive the most modern drugs and 10 million infected children will be properly cared for.

The anti-AIDS program sets its sights on 12 African countries and two Caribbean countries. With HIV infection levels soaring to nearly 40 percent in adults in Botswana, this plan shows that American philanthropic endeavors can continue to be at their strongest even when intensive military action is being questioned scurrilously.

The only thing that could have improved Bush's plan would have been to reverse the anti-AIDS budget with the Iraqi spending budget, which when combined with the recently allotted $87 billion is nearing the $150 billion mark.

Many may contest that military operations and issues of global health parallel the proverbial "apples and oranges" argument. However, the two are united in several ways: concerns of comfortable living, physical and environmental threats, interests of securing public health and, of course, money.

A simple mathematical analysis shows that the post-war $87 billion would have been better spent on the anti-AIDS program.

The current population of Iraq is 26.3 million. The current number of people infected with HIV is 1.6 times that number - 40 million. If it seems conspicuous that the American government is willing to spend $150 billion dollars in less than one year for "freeing" 26.3 million people from the grip of a tyrannical dictator and only $15 billion on research and treatment that will benefit 40 million people over five years, consider yourself a humanist. Intuitively, it makes more sense to spend more money to save the lives of more people. However, such is not the case. In regards to Iraq, we've spent more money on fewer people and in a shorter period of time. Simple utilitarian ethics tell us that we should strive to increase the quality of life for the greatest number of people, not the greatest number of people living on top of fossil fuels.

HIV/AIDS is a pressing issue that is immediately threatening the biological security of every nation on the planet. To ignore the HIV virus is to ignore the preliminary evidence of a 21st century Black Death equivalent

It is projected that within the next year, 11.6 million people will become infected with the HIV virus. How many people were projected to be an immediate lethal threat as a direct result of the regime of Saddam Hussein in the next year? Unless Hussein was planning on injuring roughly half of his country's population, HIV/AIDS should have been a higher priority for the "conscientiously minded" American government. Instead, we used backward sophistry in determining which matter took precedence.

If you see a dying man in the street, are you going to stop and correct the errors in the judicial system he lives under before offering medical assistance? Before we can correct the philosophical and ideological transgressions of other nations, let's first confront practical concerns and bring the pragmatic technology - medicine and the like - of other nations up to par with first world countries.

While Hussein was unarguably a terrible threat, was he as big of a threat as the HIV virus? Did he need to be taken out sooner rather than later? The answer to these questions is a resolute, "No!" HIV is a more burning issue than Iraq was, and while the current government may have no problem with putting it on the backburner for the time being, at least they're not turning off the gas altogether.



Howerton is an English-Philosophy and Psychology double major. Send scathing remarks to erichow@unm.edu.