Nancy Pelosi: “Since the gentlewoman ended on the word AIDS, I just wanted to pick up on that for a moment and say that if you compound…”

“Since the gentlewoman ended on the word AIDS, I just wanted to pick up on that for a moment and say that if you compound AIDS with poverty, you have a very, very deadly formula. These subjects are very definitely related. In the course of the evening we will have an amendment on AIDS, but we will not have as much time to debate that issue. But this issue of the debt forgiveness is not unrelated to the spread of AIDS in these countries which have inadequate access to quality health care and to education and, therefore, prevention. I also wanted to make the point that it is in our national interest because disease knows no boundary, nor does environmental degradation. So I am very pleased that the American Lands Alliance, the Friends of the Earth, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club, the International Rivers Network, Environmental Defense, Rain Forests International, and World Wildlife Fund have all written in support of our amendment, indicating that when poor countries place their environment in jeopardy, they will frequently have to liquidate their natural resources as a quick way to service their debt. We do not want that to happen.”