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POLITICAL IRONY


Joycelyn Elders Fired By Clinton

One week after her participation at the United Nations World AIDS Day 1994 events, Surgeons General Joycelyn Elders was fired by President Clinton supposedly for comments on masturbation.

"Our children have seen 15,000 hours of TV to only 11,000 hours of reading, writing, and arithmetic. We've not used the most powerful medium -- that's our television -- to educate our people [against AIDS]. That says our country has really not made a commitment."

United States Surgeons General Joycelyn Elders    
United Nations, World AIDS Day, December 1, 1994


As a candidate for President, Clinton had spoken in support of public education's role in preventing AIDS by saying that children "should be told in blunt, clear, but sensitive terms how people get AIDS and how to avoid it."

After 12 painful years of genocide from Reagan/Bush NEGLIGENCE, there was hope that AIDS would finally be addressed by the White House with Clinton's appointment of Joycelyn Elders as Surgeon General because of her forthright and frank advocacy in the fight against AIDS.

When Joycelyn Elders was asked to speak at the United Nations on World AIDS Day 1994, she heard from a high school student who had not been allowed to graduate because he had passed condoms out at a high school prom. The speaker suggested that the U.S. government could do more to reach the administrators in the school to address the AIDS crisis.


Half of all new HIV infections occur in youths younger than 25 years of age.

The first question that happened to be asked of Joycelyn Elders at this United Nations World AIDS Day Conference: "...if masturbation might be taught as a way to prevent AIDS?"  Joycelyn Elders replied: "masturbation is something that is a part of human sexuality, and is a part of something that perhaps should be taught."  *

* later she said, "masturbation is really something you don't have to teach."

Joycelyn Elders was fired by President Clinton one week later
for
"values contrary to the administration."

After all Clinton's sexual proclivities, it would be only benignly ironic except for the political negligence and malfeasance in the fight against AIDS -- with the consequences leading to increased diseases, suffering and death.







                              X X X




Early Figures Show AIDS on Rise Again

The number of new AIDS cases appeared to increase in the United States last year after seven years of steady decline, prompting some experts to worry that Americans are taking the deadly disease less seriously. The nation's health departments reported 42,008 new cases in 2001, up to 8 percent from the 38,864 in 2000, according to preliminary numbers released yesterday by the CDC. Much of the increase came along the East Coast. ... Researchers cautioned that the 2001 numbers are considered raw data that are likely to change. But the past six years' worth of the same preliminary reports ended up close to the final figures. The CDC figures showed jumps of 59 percent in Kentucky, 41 percent in Georgia and North Carolina, 10 percent in Pennsylvania and 4 percent in Florida. New York City, which reported separately from upstate New York, had a 47-percent increase. Rates dropped by 28 percent in Michigan, 22 percent in Kansas and 9 percent in California.




WANTED New York City public high school students to serve as AIDS Education Monitors.   
Help us make sure your school is doing it's job!  Fill out a survey once every three months to let us know what's going on with AIDS education in your school.
To sign up, contact   katebarnhart@cs.com




    
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