HIV/AIDS

Floor Speech

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Ms. PELOSI. Mr. Speaker, I come to the floor today to mark World AIDS Day.

I do so in great pride, following my colleague from Ohio, Congresswoman Joyce Beatty, who spoke on the floor about the 60th anniversary of what happened in Montgomery when Rosa Parks, with great courage, refused to give up her seat on the bus. The courage of that woman and all of those who supported her has made such an incredible difference in our country, and it is indeed related to what I want to say about HIV and AIDS.

Many of us had the privilege of knowing Rosa Parks when she worked for John Conyers. We honored her here in the House and are so proud that we have a statue of Rosa Parks in the Capitol of the United States.

We think of her and we think of the courage she had, which led to the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act. And that Voting Rights Act and Civil Rights Act led to our having a much more diverse Congress of the United States.

From there came our Congressional Black Caucus, the Hispanic Caucus, and the Asian Pacific Caucus. The Black Caucus directly related to Mr. Conyers, who was a founding member, and Rosa Parks, who was an inspiration. They were responsible for so much change in the leadership of our Congress. And because so many issues spring from the Congressional Black Caucus, some say ``the conscience of the Congress.''

So the relationship from Rosa Parks, through the caucus, to now we are observing the 25th anniversary of World AIDS Day, the link is Congresswoman Barbara Lee, who has been such a champion in the Congress on this subject. We take great pride in the accomplishments she has had in her capacity as a Member of Congress but also as our representative to the United Nations General Assembly.

Each year, World AIDS Day is observed internationally to reflect the progress that has been made in reaffirming our determination to banish AIDS to the annals of history. We recognize that achieving an AIDS-free generation requires our relentless, energetic, and undaunted commitment to testing, treatment, and finding a cure.

The World AIDS Day theme this year, ``The time to act is now,'' challenges us to act with the urgency that this global epidemic demands.

AIDS, as we know, and the HIV virus is a ferocious and resourceful disease, a resourceful virus, ever-mutating to escape our efforts to destroy it. Therefore, we have to be ferocious, resourceful, and adaptable in our effort to succeed to end HIV. We must bring bold thinking and deep commitment to testing, treatment, and the search for a cure and a vaccine to prevent.

President Bush, with his PEPFAR initiative, took a big advance in how we can help prevent the spread of AIDS in the rest of the world. He and Mrs. Bush, with their Pink Ribbon Red Ribbon Initiative to link cervical cancer prevention with HIV testing and treatment in Africa, was a remarkable initiative.

So we salute the bipartisanship. We supported, of course, President Bush with PEPFAR. We wanted it bigger, and he wanted it strong, and there we were with something that has saved millions of lives and given hope to people.

I visited some of the clinics in Africa where PEPFAR is being administered, and some of the people I met there said, ``I would never have come in to be tested before because there was no reason. I had no hope that there would be any remedy or any maintaining of a quality of life that would have encouraged me to risk the stigma of saying that I was HIV-infected.'' So, again, it is all about the people.

In New York today, Bono will be observing the 10th anniversary of the ONE and (RED) initiatives that have set out to alleviate poverty and eradicate disease, with a heavy focus on HIV/AIDS. We know the work of the Melinda and Bill Gates Foundation and what they have done on this issue, particularly in India.

I, today, also wish I could be in San Francisco, where amfAR will be saluting the work at University of California-San Francisco on HIV/AIDS by establishing a new initiative there.

I am just mentioning a few other observances of World AIDS Day. It is happening throughout the world.

If you go back a number of years, when I came to Congress, we were going to two funerals a day. It was the saddest thing. Now we are going to weddings and helping people make out their wills and all the rest because they have a longer life ahead.

The maintenance of life, the quality of life is really important, but we do want a cure.

So I said it was the 25th anniversary of World AIDS Day; I meant to say the 25th anniversary of the Ryan White CARE Act. That young man, whose name is something that is iconic to all of us, left us, but his mother carries on the tradition, and it has made such a tremendous difference.

My colleague Henry Waxman, who is no longer in the Congress but is still a champion on HIV/AIDS, was so instrumental in leading us to passing that legislation.

So it has been bipartisan. It is global. It is personal. It is urgent that we continue so that, one day, 50 years from now, people will say, ``What was AIDS? What was that?'', and the books will show that it was a terrible, terrible tragedy that befell the world's population regardless of status, of wealth, of gender or of race, and something that is now buried in the news somewhere as a terrible memory but not a part of our future.

Again, as we observe World AIDS Day, may we all wear our red ribbons in sympathy with those who have lost their lives, sadly, before the science took us to a better place on this.

That is what we are counting on, research and science to take us to a better place on this, and also the enthusiasm, determination, and relentlessness of so many people throughout the world to make HIV/AIDS a horrible, horrible memory, again, but not part of our future.

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