My Head Just Exploded

Via C&L and FireDogLake, I learned of One Vote ’08. As described by famous Hollywood Actor Matt Damon, One Vote ’08 is a campaign to reach voters and make the fight against global disease and extreme poverty a key issue in the 2008 presidential election. While I praise the idea of making global issues at least on the agenda for future elections, I’m really baffled by the choice of One Vote to team up with Bill Frist (says their page: “We’re kicking off the campaign with a press conference on June 11th at 11:15am with Senators Tom Daschle and Bill Frist”).

Frist was a physician and is a former Republican Senator from Tennessee who was for a time the Senate Majority Leader. Apart from his years of public service, Frist is most known for his lack of knowledge regarding the transmission of HIV: In a December 5, 2004 interview on “This Week with George Stephenopolous”, when asked whether HIV could be transmitted via sweat or tears (a suggestion made in a sex education study funded by the White House), Frist refused to reject the possibility, even though the Centers for Disease Control state that, “contact with saliva, tears, or sweat has never been shown to result in transmission of HIV.”

Now, I’m no doctor, but I’m almost positive that HIV is a sexually transmitted disease, yet somehow, Frist, a medical doctor, wasn’t sure how HIV/AIDS was transferred. And here we are, Frist joining the One Campaign to raise awareness of global disease and poverty when AIDS is at the forefront for international concern, especially in Africa. Needless to say, AIDS has ravaged Africa both physically and economically, with resources being consumed by overwhelming health burdens created by the epidemic:

Inhabited by just over 12% of the world’s population, Africa is estimated to have more than 60% of the AIDS-infected population. The economic impact of AIDS is noticed in slower economic growth, a distortion in spending, increased inflows of international assistance, and changing demographic structure of the population. There are also fears that a major long-term drop in adult life-expectancy will change the rationale for economic decision-making, contributing to lower savings and investment rates.

Bill Frist, a politician who doesn’t know how HIV is transmitted, is on a campaign to make ‘global disease and poverty’ a national issue. Couldn’t One Vote have found someone more knowledgeable?