Jesse Helms speech: The AIDS Coverup

From the Congressional Record:

THE AIDS COVERUP (Senate - January 24, 1990)

Mr. HELMS . Mr. President, the January 22 edition of Time magazine included a most enlightening report, 'The AIDS Political Machine,' in which Time describes the activities of a well-oiled special interest lobby which has distorted the statistics of the public health apparatus of the U.S. Government.

It is important that an objective assessment be made of the question raised by the magazine: Have AIDS activists distorted the national medical response to the disease? It is essential that all of us review the following facts and decide for ourselves whether the militant AIDS lobby has not in fact skewed the national health care agenda to the detriment of millions of other critically ill Americans who do not have, nor will ever, have AIDS.

Mr. President, the Centers for Disease Control will shortly announce that the number of Americans infected with the AIDS virus is far below the alarming numbers projected in the middle 1980's. In fact the predicted--circa 1986--1.5 million infections may turn out to as low as 650,000. Despite the dire warnings, there has been no AIDS outbreak in the heterosexual community.

Federal AIDS funding is now at $1.6 billion per year. Compare that with the $600 million allocated for heart disease--which kills millions. There are 4 million Americans with Alzheimer's disease. Each one will die a distressing death, yet Alzheimers funding is a mere drop in the bucket compared to AIDS. Cancer kills half a million people each year, but cancer research is shortchanged in the headlong flight to appease the AIDS lobby.

The dollar figures used for AIDS research represent more than excessive Federal attention to the disease. Slowly but surely money and talent are being diverted from other projects to AIDS research. Because AIDS research is so singularly focused, chances for spinoff medical discoveries are remote. As Doctor David Korn, dean of the Stanford Medical School, told Time, '...target money too narrowly, you exclude other areas that may prove very fruitful.'

Mr. President, the AIDS lobby has forced Government to do away with proven public health measures which have successfully controlled deadly diseases in the past. Activists demand quick Federal funding, and approval of untried miracle cures, thereby leaving the door open for quacks and snake oil salesmen. Approval of AZT was rammed through the FDA system in less than 4 months. James Todd of the American Medical Association noted that 'penicillin couldn't get through that fast.' (The average drug approval time is more than 2 years.)

Mr. President, I have yet to mention the political agenda which keeps the AIDS machine rolling along consuming dollars and traditional values as it goes.

AIDS is on the way to becoming a legal handicap for discrimination purposes. The Americans With Disabilities Act, which passed the Senate in September, extends civil rights protections to HIV carriers even though upwards of 90 percent of them caught the disease through unlawful conduct and warped 'life styles.'

Homosexual activists hailed the passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act. We may shortly see the Hate Crimes Statistics Act, which leaders of the radical homosexual left proclaim as the most important step toward including 'sexual orientation' in the Civil Rights Act.

Mr. President, compassionate Americans have seen their Government make concession after concession to the AIDS lobby, and to the homosexual movement which supports it. What originally began as a response to a public health emergency has become a battle for the transformation of the American value system. I doubt that many look with favor upon that.