Many, many people in the Bush administration support lifting the unique discrimination against HIV in immigration and tourism. But I’m immensely heartened by and grateful for Yuval Levin’s post at the Corner today. I’m also in agreement with Michael Gerson on the broader PEPFAR question and know how much he personally did to help people with HIV around the world. We have our differences, pretty deep ones, but Michael will be remembered in history for the work he has done on AIDS and HIV, for the countless lives he has literally saved. So will the Bush administration, which, despite skepticism (some of it from me), pioneered PEPFAR as a model of its kind. Everyone who has battled this disease should acknowledge the Bushies’ contribution – as profound as it was not inevitable. Here’s Levin’s post:
The ban now on the books is not only unreasonable (given what we now know about how the disease is and is not spread) but utterly unenforceable, and creates a dangerous perverse incentive, encouraging people with HIV to go untreated and unreported—thus increasing, not lowering, the risk they will spread the disease. When I was in the White House, we made inquiries on the Hill (at the President’s personal request, if I’m not mistaken—though I don’t recall that with certainty) about removing the ban by statute, and found a mix of (mostly) disinterest and (a little) hostility on both sides of the aisle. There is now a bipartisan effort to attach a provision removing the ban to the PEPFAR reauthorization bill. I hope it succeeds.
I hope Coburn relents.
The Dish 