[GPCA Updates] GP RELEASE: Greens urge comprehensive US plan to fight AIDS

[Green Party of California Updates]

GREEN PARTY OF THE UNITED STATES
http://www.gp.org

For Immediate Release:
Friday, December 8, 2006



Greens call for a comprehensive U.S. plan to fight AIDS

• An AIDS Cure Project; national health insurance; strong health care work 
forces for nations hit hard by AIDS; prevention and treatment policies free 
of corporate demands and ideological restraints


WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Green Party leaders called for a comprehensive U.S. plan 
to fight AIDS nationally and around the world, as the numbers of people 
living with AIDS rise to 40 million, with 25 million already dead.

Greens listed several urgent steps, calling them the necessary basis for 
national AIDS policy:

• The U.S. must initiate a comprehensive project to find a cure for AIDS.

"To cure AIDS, we need a focused effort that gathers the best minds and 
gives them the best resources, comparable to the Manhattan Project and the 
space program.  We'll cure AIDS when we give it the same national priority 
the U.S. gave to defeating Japan and placing a man on the moon," said Tim 
Casebolt, secretary of the Lavender Green Caucus, which represents the 
party's lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer membership.

Further information: ACT UP AIDS Cure Project Papers, 
http://www.actupny.org/ACP/ACP.html

• Only a single-payer national health insurance program can meet the health 
care demands of the AIDS crisis in the U.S.; the Green Party places national 
health insurance at the top of its list of priorities.

"We need a national health insurance program to guarantee that AIDS 
medicines and treatment get to everyone who needs them," said Starlene 
Rankin, Lavender Green Caucus delegate to the Green Party's National 
Committee.  "The U.S. may have some of the best medical treatment and 
technology in the world, but we trail other industrial nations in medical 
access.  Over 45 million Americans lack health insurance; millions more are 
undercovered.  The prevalence of AIDS and other diseases among poor and low 
income Americans who lack coverage, especially among people of color, makes 
it urgent that we guarantee quality health care and AIDS treatment on demand 
to every American, regardless of prior medical condition, income, or age.  
Furthermore, a national health insurance plan will give the U.S. government 
a greater stake in AIDS prevention."

Further information: Physicians for a National Health Program, 
http://www.pnhp.org

• The U.S. must give AIDS treatment and prevention international priority 
over corporate profits, intellectual property rights (patents for medicine 
and genetic information), and privatization of services and resources (e.g., 
health coverage and treatment; access to clean water), and must help address 
the critical shortage of health care workers and weak health systems in 
countries hit hard by the AIDS crisis.

"In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the Clinton and Bush administrations 
sought economic sanctions against nations in Africa, Asia, and Latin America 
that tried to make low cost and generic AIDS drugs available," said Aimee 
Smith, co-chair of the Green Party's Peace Action Committee.  "The U.S. must 
ensure that human needs, including the need to prevent and treat AIDS, are 
more important than corporate power and profit.  President Bush has sent 
more U.S. financial aid to AIDS-affected countries than any president before 
him.  For such funding to be effective, it must be free of the demands of 
corporations, ideological restraints, and bureaucratic red tape, and we must 
guarantee that a strong health care work force can put the money to work in 
countries currently without adequate health care."

Further information: Health GAP (Global Access Project), 
http://www.healthgap.org/index.html

• Greens also call for an end to ideologically based AIDS prevention schemes 
that have been proven ineffective, such as abstinence-only education and 
denial of AIDS prevention assistance to nations that fund family-planning 
programs that allow abortion and contraception.

"We know what works: needle exchange; AIDS prevention education that 
acknowledges realities like pre-marital sex and same-sex behavior; programs 
that help give women power to make their own choices.  The Green Party 
supports these strategies, just as we support full gay rights and equality 
and uncompromised women's reproductive rights in the U.S. and throughout the 
world," said Alison Duncan, 2006 Green candidate for Lieutenant Governor of 
New York.


MORE INFORMATION

Green Party of the United States
http://www.gp.org
1700 Connecticut Avenue NW, Suite 404
Washington, DC 20009.
202-319-7191, 866-41GREEN
Fax 202-319-7193

Green Party national platform: section on AIDS/HIV
http://www.gp.org/platform/2004/socjustice.html#1004542

Lavender Green Caucus
http://www.lavendergreens.us

Database of 2006 Green candidates and election results 
http://www.greens.org/elections
Green campaign listings, news, photos, and web sites 
http://www.gp.org/2006elections
Video clips of Green candidates http://www.gp.org/2006elections/media.shtml
Green Party News Center http://www.gp.org/newscenter.shtml