by Congressman Elijah E. Cummings
Two years ago, at Morgan State University, President Clinton committed America to perfecting an AIDS vaccine within ten years. Last Tuesday, a distinguished international gathering of scientists and other leaders returned to Baltimore for a Morgan State conference co-sponsored by Johns Hopkins and the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative.
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These are people who are working to save our world,@ I thought to myself as I waited to offer the conference my comments about our national AIDS policy.That insight guided my thoughts back in time to 1983, when I was a young lawyer newly elected to the Maryland Legislature. The devastation which the AIDS virus would exact in our communities was not so apparent then. Tragically, AIDS was the killer no one wanted to mention.
Anyone willing to confront the truth, however, could see that people were dying. I began sponsoring an annual AIDS conference to educate the public and myself about defending ourselves against this unmentionable predator. Year after year, the suffering and the deaths in our community - as much as our science - taught us the appalling extent of our peril.
By the time I entered the Congress in 1996, AIDS had become the leading killer of our African American men, ages 25-44, and the second leading killer of African American women in the same age range. By 1998, African-Americans would account for 90% of Baltimore
=s new HIV infections.Increasingly, the human face of the world-wide AIDS pandemic is one of color. Our community has been forced to declare aloud the name of the menace which stalks and kills millions. In this country alone, almost 150,000 African-American families have been tragically attacked - my own extended family among them.
For the present, prevention is our only protection against AIDS and must continue to be the first pillar in our national AIDS policy. President Clinton has responded to Congressional Black Caucus demands by allocating additional federal funding for AIDS prevention efforts within our African American communities - $156 million this year and $171 million more budgeted for FY2000.
The second pillar of our national policy to defeat AIDS must be the development of an effective AIDS vaccine - just as the President announced at Morgan State in 1997.
At the National Institutes of Health, AIDS vaccine funding increased by nearly 80% after 1995, but the search for a vaccine remains only 10% of all AIDS-related NIH research. To redress this imbalance, I support those who advocate a 15% annual funding increase for the National Institute of Allergy & Infectious Diseases over the next 5 years.
Third, we must never lose sight of the fact that people afflicted with AIDS are human beings - not statistics. President Clinton
=s FY2000 Budget includes $1.5 billion for the Ryan White Program which funds life-extending treatment for those unable to pay. We need, and I intend to pursue, even more federal support.During the last 16 years of my education about AIDS, I have witnessed death in the making on Baltimore
=s street corners and death in the millions in those African societies where over 22 million are now infected. Nevertheless, I am convinced that it is within our power to overcome this predator which stalks humanityOur national AIDS prevention efforts, vaccine research and patient care initiatives cannot succeed, however, without the fourth - and most important - pillar of our defense: the active participation of every African American community and religious leader in the struggle against this silent death.
Silence in the face of so much suffering and death would be both suicidal and immoral. Silence about AIDS feeds the destroyer of lives.
-The Honorable Elijah E. Cummings represents the 7th Congressional District of Maryland in the United States House of Representatives.