McHenry County Blog

I wonder how many thousand lives have been lost because the Centers for Disease Control has waited 18 years to follow the recommendations of President Ronald Reagan’s AIDS/HIV Commission.

That's almost two decades of lost opportunity to inform those with the disease of their HIV-infected and HIV-infectuous status!

Yesterday, the CDC, which I think could be more appropriately be called the Centers for the Spread of Disease, recommended routine testing for HIV for those from ages 13-64.

When Penny Pullen was negotiating the recommendations in the commission report from the public protection side of the issue, she got unanimous approval for routine testing. (I assisted her when she served on the commission.)

How shameful that the CDC delayed almost two decades to implement that sensible recommendation.

I see in the Friday page 3 Chicago Tribune article that Illinois folks who are not on the public protection side of this issue still don't get it:

"What they really want is not so much routine testing as what I call stealth testing," (Executive Director of the AIDS Legal Council of Chicago Ann) Fisher said.

It seems some are still stuck in the age that considered AIDS/HIV a politically protected virus, rather than a disease that needs to be treated like any other.

Here's another article with background on how the future AIDS Czar for President Bill Clinton and Pullen reached agreement in 1988.