Senators say government has failed on AIDS

Ten U.S. senators, including Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, this week wrote to Health and Human Services secretary Tommy Thompson to call for invigorated domestic HIV prevention efforts, as efforts during the past three years, they said, have "failed to adequately and appropriately address the AIDS epidemic facing our nation." The letter was signed by senators Kerry (D-Mass.), Dick Durban (D-Ill.), Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), Mark Dayton (D-Minn.), Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.), Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.). The senators claim the nation will be unable to meet the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's goal of reducing annual HIV infections from 40,000 to 20,000 by 2005 unless HIV prevention efforts are stepped up and more federal money is devoted to the task. "In the past three years, far too little has been done to carry out the widely supported recommendations of the CDC's HIV Prevention Strategic Plan," the senators wrote. "The result of this failure is self-evident: The HIV epidemic today is far worse than it was in 2001, when the strategic plan was put in force. For some segments of America's most disenfranchised and vulnerable populations, rates of HIV rival those of sub-Saharan Africa. Given these startling statistics, we fear that America is losing the war against HIV/AIDS." The letter asks Secretary Thompson to provide Congress a report of the government's efforts to meet the goals of the 2001 strategic plan by 2005, the estimated cost needed to achieve the strategic plan's goals, ways the federal government will report on the plan when it reaches its target date next year, and plans to invigorate HIV prevention activities in the country.