Political Quotes

“I want to focus on one issue and that is the failure to use multilateralism when it comes to AIDS policy. The unilateral approach we see here that we do not have a global approach to AIDS any more than we have the kind of global approach we need to war and to terrorism. In both, lives are at stake. The Global AIDS Fund is applauded all over the world because it is a low cost administered fund with great accountability, philanthropists serve on it. And what have we done? It is not clear whether we are setting up a new fund, a new entity. What is clear is we are giving only a billion dollars rather than the more than $2 billion that should go to that fund, so where is the rest of our money going to? Why are not we using this multilateral approach which would get the most bang for our dollar? I think the reason is we do not want to play by the same rules that the rest of the world is playing by. We want the global gag rule and the way to make sure we get a global gag rule is to pull our money out and deal with our money ourselves. That is a tragedy to take the gag rule and apply it to AIDS treatment. Imagine in Africa what AIDS means. It means a terrible stigma that you cannot get treatment in the same place that you get family planning is going to mean that many people will not get treatment at all.”