Free Republic

As another World AIDS Day dawns this morning, prepare for the usual media blitz of stories designed to promote more spending on failed approaches to HIV/AIDS, and more bashing of the Bush Administration despite increases in spending by the billions each year.  Here are some of the questions that the media probably won’t ask the professional HIV/AIDS lobby, which grows ever fatter while the human tragedy rises: • What have American taxpayers gotten for the $20 billion per year (and rising) government spending on HIV/AIDS? • What has happened to the more than half a billion condoms that the...

New Jersey has the fifth highest number of AIDS cases in America, and yesterday became the last state to allow intravenous drug users to get clean needles, hoping it will slow the spread of the deadly virus. Gov. Jon Corzine ended a 13-year stalemate by signing a law to permit six communities to host needle exchange sites, where clean syringes and referrals to drug treatment will be available. The bill includes $10 million for drug treatment and counseling programs. "This is an historic day for public health," Corzine said, calling the law "a potential bridge to hope for addicts." After...

ASSOCIATED PRESS CHICAGO -- Pediatricians should speak out in support of needle exchange programs to reduce the spread of HIV among injection drug users, the American Academy of Pediatrics says in a toughened policy statement. Doctors also should discuss HIV risk with their teenage patients "with a nonjudgmental approach" and offer confidential help if local laws allow, the group says in the statement appearing Monday in the journal Pediatrics. "If we can help young people avoid a chronic illness that we have no cure for, I would hope people would embrace that idea," said the lead author, Dr. Lisa Henry-Reid...