Huck and AIDS

There has been a very interesting story going around about Huckabee and his 1992 run for the US Senate where he answered a question about AIDS from the AP and said, essentially, that AIDS patients should be quarantined.

In 1992, Huckabee wrote, "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."

But my bigger issue is with his current (December 8, 2007) explanation:

Huckabee said in a prepared statement released by his campaign Saturday afternoon that he called for quarantine when there was a lot of confusion about how AIDS is spread. He said he wanted at the time to follow traditional medical practices used for dealing with tuberculosis and other infectious diseases.

"We now know that the virus that causes AIDS is spread differently, with a lower level of contact than with TB," Huckabee said. "But looking back almost 20 years, my concern was the uncertain risk to the general population — if we got it wrong, many people would die needlessly. My concern was safety first, political correctness last."

Let's start by doing a little math. 2007 - 1992 = 15 years. Huck's statement "almost 20 years" is clearly intended to mislead. Also, in 1992 it was well-known that AIDS was not spread by casual contact.

So he was either ignorant at that time or he was being quite prejudicial. And today he is misleading the public about those statements. One of my frustrations about Huck is that he talks about his having a theology degree and he talks about being an ordained Baptist minister, yet he campaigns like any other standard issue politician and seems to have learned those abilities from watching Bill Clinton.

(As an aside: AIDS could be wiped off of the face of the earth in ONE generation if the youth of this generation would commit to live by God's moral standards. It is a shame that we don't feel like our young people can make that commitment.)