The Huckabee AIDS flap continues to develop. The day after the story broke Huckabee went on Fox News, where he was questioned about his comments. The video of this interview is on YouTube, and has been embeded here.
As the video shows, Huckabee dances around this issue while refusing to admit he was wrong and making claims that do not jive with reality. When specifically questioned on the quarantine remarks, he says he never said "quarantine" just "isolate" but does not explain the difference. Then, after a pause to think up a new answer, he threw out the Kimberly Bergalis case (the woman who claimed to have been infected by her dentist). Of course, Huckabee didn't do his homework here either. Evidence suggests that Ms. Bergalis was less than truthful about her virginity, unless, of course, she also caught genital warts from the same oral surgery she claims to have gotten AIDS from. To be fair, Huckabee could not have know this when he made the statement originally, but he could have known it now, had he or his staffers bothered to do some fact checking. Instead, he used it as an excuse to try and further justify his disturbing views.
Yesterday Joe Solmonese of the Human Rights Campaign, along with A. Gene Copello, president of The AIDS Institute sent a letter to the Huckabee campaign. In this letter, Mr. Solmonese and Mr. Copello requested that Huckabee sit down with the Jeanne White-Ginder, mother of Ryan White, the teenager who died of AIDS in 1990 having contracted the disease through contaminated blood products, to hear from her, first hand, the pain and suffering that such ignorance causes to people who suffer from HIV/AIDS and their families. Huckabee responded to this letter by saying that, "I would be very willing to meet with them, I would tell them we've come a long way in research, in treatment."
Sometimes you really have to wonder if Huckabee engages his brain before running his mouth? Ms. White-Ginder has had a child die of this disease. She also sits on the board of The AIDS Institute. Who does Huckabee think he is that he has anything he can teach her regarding HIV or AIDS? There is one person who needs educated on HIV, and it certainy is not Ryan White's mother
The HRC letter points out that four years prior to Huckabee's statement, the Department of Health and Human Services was issuing brocures explaining that HIV could not be spread by casual contact. This, and the multitude of other evidence available at the time demonstrate that Huckabee is more committed to his world view of AIDS being a sinners disease than to what is true and what is right.
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