Tuesday, December 11, 2007
HIV Clueless: What Mike Huckabee hasn’t learned
Washington Post Editorials HIV Clueless: What Mike Huckabee hasn’t learned
IN 1992, Mike Huckabee, then a candidate for U.S. Senate from Arkansas, urged the “isolation” of “carriers” of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. His exact words were: “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. . . . 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.” Now, as a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, Mr. Huckabee said he might phrase it differently but otherwise stood by his 1992 statement. He explained in a Dec. 9 interview on Fox News that the comment was made at a time “when we didn’t know as much as we do now about AIDS, we were acting more out of political correctness than we were about… (more)
