Huckabee wanted to isolate AIDS patients - Yahoo! News
As a candidate for a U.S. Senate seat in 1992, Huckabee answered 229 questions submitted to him by The Associated Press. Besides a quarantine, Huckabee suggested that Hollywood celebrities fund AIDS research from their own pockets, rather than federal health agencies.
“If the federal government is truly serious about doing something with the AIDS virus, we need to take steps that would isolate the carriers of this plague,” Huckabee wrote.
“It is difficult to understand the public policy towards AIDS. It is the first time in the history of civilization in which the carriers of a genuine plague have not been isolated from the general population, and in which this deadly disease for which there is no cure is being treated as a civil rights issue instead of the true health crisis it represents.”
This is purest assholery today but, far more important, it was equally pure assholery in 1992 when Huckabee said it. And if he was too stupid then to understand just how assholish it was, he’s too stupid to be elected president today.
UPDATE:
The Corner on National Review Online
The Huckabee statement Byron posts below is exceedingly disingenuous. By 1992 it was well understood that AIDS could not be transmitted by casual contact. Citing concerns about breast milk or exposure from health care workers in a medical context are not particularly relevant.
Yes I’m a Thomspon supporter, but I would think Huck’s comments were indefensible no matter who I supported.
Yes, exactly.
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Quarantining Hucksterbee and other True Believers from the human race does sound like a good idea.
As for H’s point, in the late 1980s, Cuba shipped all identified patients with HIV to a special camp. Some report on this approvingly while others say it’s a terrible thing but all the US’s fault. SFAIK, Michael Moore hasn’t acknowledged it.
I would like to point out that most State today can quarantine people for small pox and TB. Some States even have the ability to place a patient in medical arrest if they present a risk to the public. So why should AIDS be any different? Especially if someone is using their ailment as a weapon against others.
Comments like this shake my respect for your opinions, John.
In answer:
Get back to me when you can catch “AIDS” the same way you can smallpox or tuberculosis.
Jebus.
HIV should be treated differently because it is different.
Actually, among morons, it’s treated differently because it is a disease primarily contracted by homosexuals. But that’s a rant for a different day.
Not a bad idea, actually. Better than ‘em funding treason.
Bill, AIDS is no longer a homosexual only disease. Link.
To hold that the State should not have the tools necessary to hold for medical necessity is placing one’s head in the sand. Link.
Link.
Right now heterosexual transmission of AIDS is low. But mutation of the disease does not guarantee that in the future. Were this to occur to the point that procreation makes the possibility of survival of the species suspect, then will you still maintain the view? That in fact is very close to the situation in segments of Africa.
I just see the threat differently.
link.
link.
Heterosexual population with AIDS.
Once a significant portion of the population is an AIDS carrier, the situation ravages thru the population over time. that is what is being experienced in swaths of Africa today.
I don’t really care one way or the other, but I might as well throw this in for you, John
John, I’m still calling bullshit. Hickabee was calling for quarantining all AIDS patients, after it was well known that HIV was transmitted in the same way as syphillis and gonorrhea, by exchange of fluids rather than simple casual contact.
So, unless you are not [corrected - ed] ready to recommend that the state lock up everybody suffering from syphillis, gonorrhea, and hepatitis, then you are as full of it as Hickabee.
People who deliberately and knowingly use their carrier status to infect others with a terminal disease can be handled in other ways - I believe the justice system is using various laws against assault to deal with that (quite rare) situation.
Now, your cites: the KC-Kings County chart boils down to this: the number of heterosexually transmitted cases increased by 14 per year in the 2002-2004 period, as compared to the 1996-1998 period, and the heterosexual percentage of all HIV infections increased from 6 to 11%. In other words, even with the increase, almost ninety percent of all hiv infections occur among homosexual men - I don’t think that contradicts my contention that HIV is primarily a disease of gay men.
From another of your cites:
AEGiS-UPI: Woman accused of attempted murder by AIDS virus had negative blood test
I don’t know how you think this supports your positions - do you recommend quarantining people who don’t have HIV as well?
AEGiS-WSJ: The Charge Is Murder, the Weapon AIDS
As I say, I don’t think we need to uselessly quarantine tens or hundreds of thousands of people to deal with something the state already has tools to deal with - and which, in any case, isn’t much of a problem in the first place. Ten cases?
As for Africa, here’s something relatively new to those who don’t follow the politics of HIV, as I do:
U.N. drops AIDS estimates - - The Washington Times, America’s Newspaper
Now, the politics of AIDS: Those who organized to seek a cure for HIV understood early on that the fact that it was primarily a disease of gay men, and that gay men were pariahs in American society, which meant that HIV would be a political, not a medical issue. They understood that the larger straight society for the most part wouldn’t give a shit what happened to HIV sufferers - they could be quarantined, blacklisted, lose their civil rights, die in droves, whatever - and most people wouldn’t care. “God’s punishment for their sins,” “we have to protect decent people,” etc. would - and did - become watchwords for significant segments of the population - led by yahoos like Huckabee and the rest of the religious right.
These organizers and activists also understood that if they could somehow legitimize the notion that HIV was a disease of everybody, not just gay men, they could get a lot more support for finding a cure and for treating HIV sufferers in a decent manner.
So the whole “HIV doesn’t know sexual orientation” meme was launched and promulgated, and while I understand why this was done, it doesn’t make it any more accurate. HIV was, and remains, primarily a disease of gay men and drug abusers who share needles. If you are a straight male who has sex only with straight women, and neither of you share needles, your chances of contracting HIV are minuscule. Although the woman’s chances are slightly higher, they are also extremely small.
HIV in Africa became part of the propaganda effort when it became too obvious to ignore that, in America, HIV was still (stubbornly) primarily a disease of gay men. The thinking was, well, right-thinking straight people can’t turn away from the suffering of millions of African straight people with AIDS.
Except that may turn out to be a lot of hooey as well. Africa, so riddled with failed states, primitive superstitions, barbaric religions, and non-existent public health systems, suffers from a host of pandemics. UN researchers did their surveys among high-risk populations like prostitutes, and then extrapolated those to normal populations. It wasn’t immediately obvious because people in sub-saharan africa already die from so many other things - HIV was just lumped in with the rest of the noise.
Yes, handling HIV as a purely medical problem would be nice. Of course, a purely medical approach would entirely rule out such stupidity as quarantining HIV carriers, but never mind. It was doomed to politics from the start, when it was first announced as GRID (gay-related [emphasis mine] immunodeficiency disease), and forever fixed in the public mind as a disease of those despicable, loathesome faggots.
Humorous aside: When a local evangelical called AIDS god’s plague on gay’s for their ‘abomination.’ The local doctor’s response was: ‘Well if that’s true, then lesbians must be god’s chosen people.’
the cat got let out of the bag when good old diane feinstein refused to close the bath houses when we knew that was primarily where the disease was spreading. The then state health officer, Ken Kizer, recommended it, and was denied by Diane.
Much of the west coast/san fran epidemic can be laid squarely at her feet….and of course the feet of the gay community that initially refused to accept that their behavior was responsible for the primary spread of the disease at all.
Two different breeds of cat. And once again, you’re wrong, Pete, even when you’re half right. The bath-houses weren’t the problem, it was the behavior that went on inside them.
Of course, a great deal of the infection had already been done long before anybody even knew it existed. I agree that there should be small sympathy for anybody who contracts HIV after it became common knowledge how it was spread, and that condoms and safe sex could stop about 99.9% of new infections. But closing bathhouses is rather like blaming guns for shooting people. Oh, wait a minute - doctors like to do that, too, don’t they?
well you got me there….it certainly WAS the behaviour. But the closure issue came up well after the etiology of the disease spread was well known…
In the 50’s, the bay area sheriffs used to close the brothels when a case of the clap was reported if the girls didn’t all go down to the health department for a check up. So lets just say the bath houses “greased the wheels” (pun intended) for the deadly behavior.
And lets not paint with too broad a brush here….I have a ccw and use it…..
I know your position is that the AMA is a minor medical organization, hardly worth paying attention to, but…is this a broad enough brush for you?
The Claremont Institute - The AMA’s Epidemic of Deceit
Actually, I can dig up lots of cites about doctors who regard mere gun ownership as a medical problem whose cure is either confiscation or the strictest of controls.
Good on the CCW, by the way. I wish I could get one here in San Francisco.