Edwards Pledges
$50 Billion to HIV Funding

Presidential hopeful John Edwards unveiled a new plan that would provide universal health care, emphasizing a planned fight to end the domestic and international spread of HIV.

The Edwards plan would expand Medicaid to cover HIV-positive individuals before they reach the later stages of AIDS. The plan also would also target African-American and Latino populations, where the rates of infection are high. Edwards also pledged $50 billion worldwide over five years to curb the spread of the disease.

The former North Carolina U.S. senator also said he would end protections for pharmaceutical corporations so that more low-cost generic HIV drugs would become available.

Edwards also outlined a plan for an age-appropriate sex education curriculum across the nation to counter President Bush's concentration on abstinence-only education.

"The loss from HIV/AIDS is almost beyond understanding," Edwards said in a statement Monday. "This is a fight for people's lives. HIV is a preventable disease--but an estimated 40,000 new HIV cases were reported in the U.S. last year, and 4.3 million were reported around the world. What's more, HIV/AIDS is a treatable disease--yet 17,000 Americans and 3 million people globally died from it in 2005. We have a moral imperative to do much more and do it much better." (The Advocate)