My Head Just Exploded

by Video of the Day on June 12, 2007 |   Trackback URI   |     Email This Post Email This Post   |   94 Views  

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?

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  • mike

    HIV can be transfered by four fluids: blood, vaginal fluid, semen (pre-ejaculate as well), and breast milk

  • cucu

    While I am an M.D. and I dislike Frist I must point out that “has never been shown to result in transmission of HIV” is precisely the same thing Frist was saying – the possibility can NOT be 100% discarded! (the actual probabilty being 1 in a million is another story). This attack is on the same type as the republicans attacking Gore over the ‘I invented the Internet’ story …

  • http://prosebeforehos.com/alec/ alec

    Cucu: Fair enough, but how about Frist’s stance on Terri Schiavo? He made a judgment that she was still alive/cognisant after watching 30 seconds of video tape:

    Senate Majority Leader, Dr. Frist believed that Terri Schiavo, a brain-damaged woman whose husband wanted to remove her gastric feeding tube, should not have been diagnosed as persistent vegetative state (PVS). In a lengthy speech delivered on the Senate Floor, Frist challenged the diagnosis of Schiavo’s physicians: “I question it based on a review of the video footage which I spent an hour or so looking at last night in my office.” The Washington Post reported that Frist was criticized by a medical ethicist at Northwestern University for making a diagnosis without personally examining the patient and for questioning the diagnosis when he was not a neurologist.[22] After her death, the autopsy showed signs of long-term and irreversible damage to a brain consistent with PVS. Frist defended his actions after the autopsy. Because of his speech and his status as a licensed physician, various complaints against Frist were filed with medical oversight organizations, but those organizations lacked jurisdiction to take any action. However, Senator Frist did not make a diagnosis of Terri Schiavo’s condition, but rather commented in his speech that he had viewed a video provided by her parents and based on his review of that video, he thought further consultation was required.

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