Abstract

The Bush AIDS Machine

The article focuses on the HIV/AIDS policies of United States President George W. Bush. Four more years of AIDS under George W. Bush does not add up to four more years of complacency and denial. That is because midway through his first term Bush made AIDS his own. Bush rewrote AIDS as a story about orphans, abstinence and faith. The Bush Administration's AIDS conservatism has been on vivid display in its attacks on the Global Fund to Fight AIDS. In September 2004, several top U.S. AIDS officials, including global health adviser and Bush family friend Bill Steiger, held a briefing on Capitol Hill at which they charged that the fund was descending into chaos. These developments are ominous for several reasons, not least that the fund is active in 127 countries, while Bush's global AIDS initiative serves only fifteen. Meanwhile, Bush's neglect of the domestic epidemic has borne fruit. A climate of fear now prevails among AIDS service organizations, most of which depend on government grants to offer HIV prevention and care.