History twofer...

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They Won't Give Him Credit

From the beginning of his administration, President Bush has pushed for more aid to Africa. The president has pressed for greater aid to Africa across the board. The original PEPFAR legislation (President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief), which passed in 2003, was the largest single health investment by any government ever ($15 billion).

At the time the initiative was launched, only about 50,000 sub-Saharan Africans were receiving antiretroviral treatment for AIDS. Today, 1.7 million people in the region are receiving such treatment.

In July of this year, the president requested that funding for PEPFAR be doubled to $30 billion. The new funding will be used to train 140,000 new health care workers. It would also address other illnesses, like tuberculosis, that often complicate AIDS. [snip]

But for the beautiful people in America -- the Hollywood and university types, the book and magazine publishers, and of course, the major media -- have shown complete indifference to George W. Bush's dedication to a cause they purport to value. In fact, they've pointedly ignored it...

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WaPo Recycles Myth of Reagan Inaction on AIDS

On the front page of Tuesday’s Washington Post, reporter Anne Hull recalled the devastating trail of the AIDS epidemic as marked by the moving of the D.C.-based Whitman-Walker AIDS clinic. But deep in the piece, in the 35th paragraph, Hull unearthed an old anti-Reagan myth:

Several blocks from the clinic was the White House, where President Ronald Reagan had barely uttered the word "AIDS" in his eight years in office. In 1989, the Centers for Disease Control reported 22,082 deaths from AIDS.

The real Reagan record on AIDS is different. AIDS funding skyrocketed in the 1980s, almost doubling each year from 1983 – when the media started blaring headlines – from $44 million to $103 million, $205 million, $508 million, $922 million, and then $1.6 billion in 1988. Reagan’s secretary of Health and Human Services in 1983, Margaret Heckler, declared AIDS her department’s "number one priority."

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