Coburn Places A Hold On HIV/AIDS Prevention Bill
Coburn Places A Hold On HIV/AIDS Prevention Bill
The Senate has introduced a bipartisan bill tripling funding for President Bush’s program to fight HIV/AIDS. The $50 billion budget over five years would go toward the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which is set to expire in September.
The legislation, however, is being held up by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) and six other conservative senators who object to the fact that the program would direct most of the spending on the “prevention” of HIV/AIDS, rather than just “treatment.” The treatment of HIV/AIDS-infected individuals is “the No. 1 prevention protocol we have” argued Coburn.
Coburn may be an obstetrician, but he seems to be out of the mainstream with other medical professionals on this issue, who say that focusing on treatment as a form of prevention is short-sighted and ineffective:
“Most experts agree that treatment is only one small part of the prevention agenda,” said Denis Nash, director of monitoring, evaluation and research at the International Center for AIDS Care and Treatment Programs at Columbia University. [...]
“The prevention effect of treatment is not likely to be anywhere near the magnitude of prevention through prevention,” including safe-sex education and condom distribution, said Mead Over, senior fellow at the Center for Global Development.
Coburn has a habit of blocking bills funding medical research, and his record on health care is abysmal. Coburn has repeatedly blocked legislation funding breast cancer research, doing so as recently as April, as well as funding to screen returning veterans for signs of suicide risk. In 2005, he proclaimed that silicone breast implants “make you healthier.” When running for Senate in 2004, he suggested the death penalty for abortion doctors.
In a letter to Senate leaders last month, 14 GOP senators urged the passage of the PEPFAR funding bill. ONE has a petition here urging senators to support the legislation.
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Neanderthals.
June 11th, 2008 at 3:12 pmGosh!!!! Idiots like him get to be elected for the Senate…
June 11th, 2008 at 3:12 pmSo is this what we can expect for all 8 years under President Obama and a Democratic contolled congress? GOP obstruction at every turn?
The only way for this country to move forward is to continue to vote these radicals out of office.
The time to act is now!
PEACE
June 11th, 2008 at 3:14 pmA medical doctor who hates science? How did he even graduate? Does Regents College have a medical school too? Lawyers who don’t follow the law; doctors who don’t like to treat patients. What do they learn there? How to be a Bush sychophant?
June 11th, 2008 at 3:15 pmDoes he also think that abortion is the best prevention protocol for teenage pregnancy?
June 11th, 2008 at 3:16 pmInhofe and Coburn, poster boys for dumb-as-dirt Okies everywhere.
June 11th, 2008 at 3:17 pmHe is just being logical. Why in the world would a Repugnicunt want to prevent someone from getting AIDS? Look at the demographic of the people who are the most affected by AIDS.
Their Christian leaders have said that AIDS is God’s way of punishing gays.
These are sone sick puppies we are dealing with.
June 11th, 2008 at 3:17 pmJAYZUS! Can the good sheeple of Oklahoma find any more stoo-pid people than Coburn and Imhofe to send to Washington?
Thanks a lot, Okies!
June 11th, 2008 at 3:17 pmAnother stone ager from Oklahoma. Why am I not surprised?
June 11th, 2008 at 3:20 pmIs it evil to wish for someone to die from cancer?
June 11th, 2008 at 3:22 pmI say death penalty for Republicans but that’s just like my opinion man.
June 11th, 2008 at 3:23 pmHis eyes flash ‘there’s no money in prevention or cure, there’s only money in treatment.’
June 11th, 2008 at 3:23 pmMarie Says:
Is it evil to wish for someone to die from cancer?
Not if it is a mercy killing. Go ahead, we’ll look the other way.
June 11th, 2008 at 3:24 pmis “crapcannon” coburn?
June 11th, 2008 at 3:25 pmnot only did this malpracticing dipsh*t say this, he also said, in reference to silicone breast implants, So bigger really is better? Who knew? what an ass. I wonder how his wife and daughter feel about him not supporting Breast cancer Research, stupid little b*tch.
June 11th, 2008 at 3:28 pmHey! There’s no money to be made by preventing HIV/AIDS.
Sheesh, you people…
June 11th, 2008 at 3:31 pm/snark off
It sounds to me like we need a thorough medical study to determine the cause of the high levels of idiocy that seem to be concentrated in Oklahoma politicians…
June 11th, 2008 at 3:33 pmLeftside Annie Says:
It sounds to me like we need a thorough medical study to determine the cause of the high levels of idiocy that seem to be concentrated in Oklahoma politicians…
I suspect it might be related to the “high levels of idiocy that seem to be concentrated in Oklahoma” voters.
June 11th, 2008 at 3:37 pmso let me get this straight. It’s fine to treat AIDS, TB and Malaria but it’s not ok to teach people what they can do to prevent it in poor countries?
wow, these evils are the true plagues of the world.
June 11th, 2008 at 3:37 pmDaryll’s not here yet?
Can someone page me when he shows? Thanks.
June 11th, 2008 at 3:38 pmAbout the only thing Oklahoma has going for it is the stage production. And even that song sucks.
June 11th, 2008 at 3:39 pmralph, got some venom ready?
June 11th, 2008 at 3:40 pmobviously, all he cares about is profit of the pharmaceutical industries. AIDS meds are ridiculously and abusively expensive.
June 11th, 2008 at 3:41 pmPrevention only costs money, but does not line the pockets of the pharmaceuticals.
June 11th, 2008 at 3:43 pmSo, if you get sick, tough shitzky –
we may deign to allow you to take some pre-approved, profit-making drugs if we have previously made arrangements with your insurance company, who want their cut too.
But providing information and assistance in preventing illness? What, are you crazy? What kind of profit is there in that?
Everyone knows you can’t get AIDS from farm animals. No wonder Okies don’t see the need to spend money on prevention.
June 11th, 2008 at 3:50 pmPrevention requires condoms…a lot of them. I suspect he has a problem with that.
June 11th, 2008 at 3:50 pmThat picture should be edited to have a bible in his hand and preaching from the pulpit at Oral Sex err ….., Roberts U.
June 11th, 2008 at 3:53 pmSuch a frustrating thing to see this issue muddied because there actually is a big problem with accessible treatment. I’ve been HIV positive for over ten years and continue watching new, easier treatments come to market and my ability to access those narrowing dramatically (it’s a completely manageable disease now but if you don’t have access to meds then it’s still, literally, a death sentence). Coburn’s motivations don’t have anything to do with changing that so it’s a blow to both improving prevention and treatment.
June 11th, 2008 at 3:56 pmsacopenapa Says:
Gosh!!!! Idiots like him get to be elected for the Senate…
June 11th, 2008 at 3:12 pm
Coburn’s awful, famously worrying on the floor of the Senate if girls were having lesbian experiences after gym class.
But he’s not a-typical of the social sentiment dominant in Okie-dumb…I spent 30 years in Norman, between 1994 and 2000, visited widely around the state, almost every week, met Okies in their hundreds, and was NEVER surprised by a progressive or liberal thought out of the gums of any of ‘em…
June 11th, 2008 at 3:57 pm@25, nanlichi Says: Everyone knows you can’t get AIDS from farm animals. No wonder Okies don’t see the need to spend money on prevention. June 11th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
Wasn’t it Neal Horsley who bragged his first ‘conquest’ was a stump-broke heiffer…
June 11th, 2008 at 3:59 pmtokin librul,
It was a mule I believe. Jenny baby!
June 11th, 2008 at 4:02 pmHere it is.
He then went back to clear his good name and stepped a little deeper in the pile.
And these people vote, remember that.
June 11th, 2008 at 4:05 pmSorry about a link to Free Republic. Shower anyone?
June 11th, 2008 at 4:13 pmThere are, in fact, thinking, liberal people in Oklahoma. We have to stick together or else suffocate.
It is extremely exasperating on every sort of level trying to reason with these religious nuts. You think Colburn and Inhofe are bad, the Reps are worse, if you can image. I write them on most major issues in an attempt to enlighten them on logical, rational thinking to no avail. Their responses would be funny if the issues weren’t so serious. Try convincing any of them the Pres and VP should be Impeached: O Lord help me turn this water to a vintage-year wine.
June 11th, 2008 at 4:18 pmA few things to note:
Coburn is a child of privilage, married to a very ex-beauty queen, and possessed of a sense of entitlement longer than the Oklahoma pandhandle. He’s a family practitioner, not an OB, and he got his dick in a wringer during his Senatorial campaign because he once tied off a woman’s tubes during a C-section without following the usual protocols for obtaining consent to sterilize. Somehow the right-to-lifers didn’t think that important. Anyway, he seems to think that his education grants him privilaged knowledge superior to that possessed by epidemiologists that actually work in the HIV arena.
Now, knock off the ‘Okie’ stuff. It’s hate speech, and as vile to a life-long Oklahoman as n***** is to an African-American. Use of the word says more about the speaker than it does the native.
June 11th, 2008 at 4:28 pmSorry darkness, that was bad taste. Should have disparaged Repugs, not people from Oklahoma.. Call me a Zonie and we will be even.
June 11th, 2008 at 4:46 pmDarkness is right.
There are progressive and conservatives is Oklahoma who shouldn’t be painted with the same brush as their leadership.
According to the latest polls, (Cole Hargrave Snodgrass & Associates 04/01 – 04/10 500 RV) they prefer McIIIrd to Obama 62% to 21%.
So we can take comfort that 2 out of every 10 voting Sooners would rather not continue with BushitCoIII.
June 11th, 2008 at 4:58 pmDarkness,
I, too, used the O word. Sorry.
But, PULEEZE, promise us you will work at improving your Reps and Senators that represent you and your state in DC, OK?
June 11th, 2008 at 4:58 pmBUT COBURN IS RIGHT!! If you prevent AIDS infections, and your portfolio is heavily invested in Big Pharma, then you aren’t going to see your investments pay off when all those newly prevented-infected DON’T come to get AIDS meds for life saving treatment!
June 11th, 2008 at 6:08 pmHow can the AMerican people in good conscience deprive the FILTHY RICH OLIGARCHS their BLOOD MONEY????
I suspect that Darkness is correct that Coburn is a GP. I checked with ABMS.org, the board of medical specialties, and there is no record of any board certified physician in OK with the name of “Coburn.”
June 11th, 2008 at 6:52 pmI happen to be board certified in Preventive Medicine and am, of course, appalled at the ignorance displayed by this so-called “physician.”
Unfortunately, Coburn is an obstetrician/family practice. He was chairman of Obstetrics at his hospital for a while.
June 11th, 2008 at 7:16 pmHis training, however, has apparently done nothing to promote the health and welfare of his female patients — he’s strikes me as one of those guys who says, just do what I say, you don’t need to ask questions – I know best.
He also has a BS degree in accounting, and therein lies his true passion, I am sure. (No offense to accountants out there.) Coburn and his shortsighted, self-serving agenda have only the portfolios of himself and his cronies in mind.
First, upside99 and others — thanks for noting my objection to the ‘O’ word.
Yes, I do what I can, but I’m not optimistic. I’ve been voting against Jim Inhofe since the 70’s, when he was the ‘boy mayor’ of Tulsa, and it amazes me that his political career has outlasted his face lifts. As far as Coburn goes, we’re stuck. He’s got the Baptists in his back pocket, and God does what the good Senator says.
Our congressional delegation is a life-form unto itself. By now, the whole world knows about little Danny Boren and his refusal to endorse Obama. The remainder are sloganeers and empty suits. They use ‘liberal’ as a pejorative simply because it’s impolite to call us n*****-lovers anymore.
June 11th, 2008 at 9:43 pmBlogwhoring…so sorry.
You’re gonna love this!
Why are YOU voting Republican?
June 12th, 2008 at 12:37 amIt gets worse. Aside from propping up the psycho fundamentalists in Africa to add further stigma and discrimination (which inhibits HIV testing and spreads disease), and turning PEPFAR into a slush fund for Pharma (instead of purchasing MUCH cheaper generics to treat more people), some of the sleazy creeps that run PEPFARt revealed their true nature at a meeting of the UN General Assembly Special Session on HIV/AIDS.
One PEPFAR official, when queried by an official from Botswana about the amount and burden of paperwork, the reply was along the lines of “it’s a cultural thing. Your people have an oral culture and here we have a written culture” [making a writing gesture with his hand].
He might as well have just said, “there, there Boy.”
And hearkened to Natsios (Nazi-os?) who said giving antiretroviral therapy to Africans was pointless since they can’t tell time.
The other Africans who were lauding Bush in the room were all psycho xtian fundies who think there are no gay people in Africa.
It’s beyond despicable. It is part of the economic genocide of people with HIV in Africa and around the world while enriching corporations and spreading suffering through perversions of “the Word.”
That’s what Bush admin has FILLED up every nook and cranny with. Idiots, liars, thieves and murderers.
June 12th, 2008 at 6:43 amA typical re-puke answer.These Reich wingers are so uptight about sex education for anyone is so disgusting and yet they are the one`s lierally being caught with their pants down around their ankles with child porn.Education and wrapping it up are two best ways of preventing S.T.Ds.Abstince is not gonig to work very well when you tell some one not to do something most likely human nature takes over and they try doing it.These OKIES from Ok are just a bunch of hypocrits and tight a$$e$ who pounce on any and all the isn`t REICH it ain`t RIGHT people of the world!!!!!
June 12th, 2008 at 10:16 amVOTE OBAMA!!!!
I have just one tiny observaton. Is Coburn a worse Doctor or a worse Senator? In my opinion he’s a pathetic, incompetent and irresponsible Bush tool, who has no heart, conscience or feelings of any kind. Oklahoma should be ashamed and this disturbing piece of humanity must be replaced in the next possible election. This is a “hypocrite” of major proportions! His motivations totally escape me!
June 12th, 2008 at 10:29 amJust wondering, how much funding goes to AIDS relief vs. cancer research?
June 13th, 2008 at 1:29 am