Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Lengthy Seaside) is asking on Well being and Human Providers Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to elucidate why the Trump administration has repeatedly ordered cuts to HIV/AIDS applications each at residence and overseas.
In a letter to Kennedy dated Thursday, Garcia asserted that the cupboard secretary has a historical past of peddling misinformation in regards to the virus and illness, and that the deliberate cuts — which he referred to as “alarming and unprecedented” — would value lives.
“We are concerned that your motivations for disrupting HIV funding and delaying preventative services and research are grounded not in sound science, but in misinformation and disinformation you have spread previously about HIV and AIDS, including your repeated claim that HIV does not cause AIDS,” wrote Garcia, the rating Democrat on the Home Oversight Committee.
Well being and Human Providers officers didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark Thursday morning. Kennedy couldn’t instantly be reached.
Each President Trump and Kennedy have beforehand defended the sweeping cuts to Well being and Human Providers applications and workers beneath Kennedy’s management. Company spokespeople have stated they’d permit for a larger deal with Kennedy’s priorities of “ending America’s epidemic of chronic illness by focusing on safe, wholesome food, clean water, and the elimination of environmental toxins.”
Kennedy has stated the division beneath his watch “will do more — a lot more — at a lower cost to the taxpayer.”
Garcia’s letter — which he co-wrote with Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-In poor health.), the rating Democrat on the Well being Care and Monetary Providers subcommittee — requested that the well being division produce a listing of all HIV/AIDS-related funding it has lower and a proof for the way these funds have been recognized for elimination, in addition to different documentation and communications round a number of of the most important cuts.
The letter is the most recent try by Democrats, in coordination with well being consultants and LGBTQ+ organizations, to problem what they see as an inexplicable but coordinated effort by the Trump administration to dismantle public well being initiatives aimed toward controlling and finally ending one of the devastating and lethal epidemics in human historical past.
It comes the identical day that Senate Republicans agreed to a Trump administration request to claw again billions of {dollars} in funding for public media and overseas assist, however declined an earlier White Home request to incorporate in these cuts about $400 million in HIV/AIDS funding for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Reduction, or PEPFAR, which is credited with saving tens of millions of lives in a number of the poorest nations world wide.
The Home had beforehand voted for an earlier model of the measure that did lower the funding for PEPFAR, which was began by President George W. Bush in 2003. Nonetheless, senators pushed for the restoration of the funding earlier than agreeing to signal the broader rescission bundle.
The Home should now approve the Senate model of the measure by Friday for it to take impact.
In an interview with The Occasions, Garcia stated he has lengthy seen Kennedy as a harmful “conspiracy theorist” who has “peddled in all sorts of lies” about HIV, vaccines and different medical science. Now that Kennedy is Well being secretary, he stated, the American folks need to know whether or not nationwide and worldwide well being choices are being pushed by his baseless private beliefs.
“Folks need to understand what he’s trying to do, and I think that he has to be responsible and be held accountable for his actions,” Garcia stated.
Of their letter, Garcia and Krishnamoorthi famous that latest scientific developments — together with the creation of latest preventative medication — are making the eradication of HIV extra attainable than ever. And but Kennedy and the Trump administration are pushing the nation and the world in the wrong way, they stated.
“Since taking office, the Trump Administration has systematically attacked HIV-related funding and blocked critical HIV-related services and care for those who need it most,” Garcia and Krishnamoorthi wrote. “These disruptions would threaten Americans most at risk of contracting HIV, and many people living with HIV will get sicker or infect others without programs they rely on for treatment.”
The letter outlines a lot of examples of such cuts, together with:
The elimination of the HIV prevention division of the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention and termination or delay of billions of {dollars} in HIV prevention grants from that workplace.The termination of a $258-million program throughout the Nationwide Institutes of Well being to discover a vaccine to forestall new HIV infections.The termination of dozens of NIH grants for HIV analysis, notably round stopping new infections amongst Black and Latino homosexual males who’re disproportionately vulnerable to contracting the virus.The concentrating on of HIV prevention initiatives overseas, together with PEPFAR.The U.S. drawing again from the World Fund to Combat AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
Many within the medical and overseas assist neighborhood expressed grave issues about Kennedy being appointed as Well being secretary, partially due to his previous remarks about HIV/AIDS. Kennedy advised a reporter for New York Journal as just lately as June 2023 that there “are much better candidates than H.I.V. for what causes AIDS.”
Of their letter, Garcia and Krishnamoorthi referred to as out a selected idea shared by Kennedy that the leisure drug often called “poppers” might trigger AIDS, somewhat than the HIV virus, writing, “We are deeply concerned that the Trump Administration’s HIV-related funding cuts are indiscriminate, rooted in a political agenda, and not at all in the interest of public health.”
Kennedy’s skepticism in regards to the hyperlink between HIV and AIDS conflicts with properly established science that has lengthy been accepted by the medical institution, and by the federal authorities. Research world wide have proved the hyperlink, and located that HIV is the one frequent consider AIDS instances.
In August 2023, a couple of week earlier than Kennedy threw his help behind Trump, his presidential marketing campaign addressed the controversy surrounding his “poppers” remark, stating that Kennedy didn’t consider poppers have been “the sole cause” of AIDS, however contended they have been “a significant factor in the disease progression” of early sufferers within the Nineteen Eighties.
Garcia and Krishnamoorthi additionally famous a profitable effort by native officers and advocates in Los Angeles County to get about $20 million in HIV/AIDS funding restored final month, after it and related funding nationwide was frozen by the Trump administration.
The restoration of these funds adopted one other letter despatched to Kennedy by Rep. Laura Friedman (D-Glendale) and different Home members, who cited estimates from the Basis for AIDS Analysis, often called amfAR, that the nationwide cuts may result in 127,000 extra deaths from AIDS-related causes inside 5 years.
Garcia and Krishnamoorthi cited the identical statistics of their letter.
In his interview with The Occasions, Garcia, who’s homosexual, additionally stated the LGBTQ+ neighborhood “is rightly outraged” at Kennedy’s actions thus far and deserves to know if Kennedy “is using his own conspiracy theories and his own warped view of what the facts are” to dismantle public well being infrastructure round HIV and AIDS that they fought for many years to construct.
