Russ Feingold: “this amendment strengthens America's contribution to the Global Fund for HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, the…”

“this amendment strengthens America's contribution to the Global Fund for HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, the plagues of the 21st century, and some of the foremost threats to security in the world. To pay for this funding increase, my amendment would make additional rescissions in procurement funds for the troubled V-22 Osprey program. The global HIV/AIDS pandemic threatens security and stability around the world in a chillingly comprehensive way. As Dr. Donald Berwick movingly wrote last month in the Washington Post: The earth has AIDS; 36.1 million people at the end of the year 2000. In Botswana, 36 percent of adults are infected with HIV; in South Africa 20 percent. Three million humans died of AIDS in the year 2000, 2.4 million of them in sub-Saharan Africa. That is a Holocaust every two years; the entire population of Oregon, Iowa, Connecticut or Ireland dead last year, and next year, and next. More deaths since the AIDS epidemic began than in the Black Death of the Middle Ages. It is the most lethal epidemic in recorded history.”