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AN OPEN LETTER TO
DR. JORGE A. SAAVEDRA
DIRECTOR OF CENSIDA, MEXICO
Esteemed Doctor Jorge Saavedra,
It was with
great admiration I noted your words on the shameful policy of the government of
George Bush of insisting that abstinence is the only means of preventing HIV/AIDS
(La Jornada, January 16, 2006).
As you know, I am a citizen of the United States from San Francisco, California,
where I worked during the eighties in the fight against AIDS. Today I count
some fifteen years a part of the Frente Común Contra el SIDA in Oaxaca in that
same important cause.
It is
obvious that the government of the United States has no interest in preventing
HIV for two reasons. First, the Christian fundamentalist policies of George
Bush which degrade human rights, gender and human sexuality in general, are for
him solely an electoral issue.
Second, his
financial interests, with its close connections to the pharmaceutical industry,
are averse to the prevention of AIDS, and even less to a cure or vaccine. On
the contrary, every case of AIDS which is prevented is actually robbing money
from the shareholders of the North American pharmaceutical companies with the
loss of future sales of their expensive medicines.
In a rare
moment of honesty, the director of the Center for Disease Control, CDC, in
Atlanta, Georgia, admitted that “there is no incentive for finding a cure for
AIDS in America,” (La Jornada, October, 2005).
Latin
American countries, under orders from the government of George Bush, are paying
an enormous price with the health of their citizens.
In 2003, we
saw the complete inability on the part of Mexico to resist the unilateral
decision by the government of the United States to extend the period of patent
protection for AIDS medicines from ten to twenty years, thereby depriving an
entire generation of the medicines they need.
As we can see, the absurd and meaningless policy of abstinence as a means of
AIDS prevention is only of benefit to the large pharmaceutical companies and to
the Imperialist urges of George Bush.
You have
earned my complete admiration, my support and my sincere thanks for the courage
you have shown in standing up to these shameful policies of my natal country.
Bill Wolf
General Coordinator
Frente
Común Contra el SIDA
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