My intention hasn’t been to blog solely about Tax Hike Mike, but every night I’ve come home it’s been in my inbox. So, here we go with Huckstupidity (one word now) again.

As a candidate for a U.S. Senate seat in 1992, Huckabee answered 229 questions submitted to him by The Associated Press. Besides a quarantine, Huckabee suggested that Hollywood celebrities fund AIDS research from their own pockets, rather than federal health agencies.

“If the federal government is truly serious about doing something with the AIDS virus, we need to take steps that would isolate the carriers of this plague,” Huckabee wrote.

“It is difficult to understand the public policy towards AIDS. It is the first time in the history of civilization in which the carriers of a genuine plague have not been isolated from the general population, and in which this deadly disease for which there is no cure is being treated as a civil rights issue instead of the true health crisis it represents.”…

When Huckabee wrote his answers in 1992, it was common knowledge that AIDS could not be spread by casual contact. In late 1991, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said there were 195,718 AIDS patients in the country and that 126,159 people had died from the syndrome.

Two absolutely stupid points in there:

1. Hollywood should be responsible for funding AIDS research. Why? Who Knows.
2. AIDS patients need to be isolated from the general public.

Why would AIDS patients need to be isolated from the public? Here’s his claim today about what he said then:

“In the late 80’s and early 90’s we were still learning about the virus that causes AIDS. My concern, as a Senate candidate at the time, was to deal with the virus using the same public health protocols that medical science and public health professionals would use with any infectious disease.

Before a disease can be cured and contained we need to know exactly how and with near certainty what level of contact transmits the disease. There was still too much confusion about HIV transmission in those early years. Recall that in 1991, Kimberly Bergalis testified in front of Congress after contracting HIV from her dentist, and that summer a study was published showing that HIV was transmitted through breastmilk more easily than had been thought. But the federal government provided some guidelines: Also in 1991 the Centers for Disease Control recommended restrictions on the practice of HIV-positive health care workers.

At the time, there was widespread concern over modes of transmission and the possibility of epidemic. In the absence of conclusive data, my focus was on efforts to limit the exposure of the virus, following traditional medical practices developed from our public health experience and medical science in dealing with tuberculosis and other infectious diseases.

We now know that the virus that causes AIDS is spread differently, with a lower level of contact than with TB. But looking back almost 20 years, my concern was the uncertain risk to the general population – if we got it wrong, many people would die needlessly. My concern was safety first, political correctness last.

My administration will be the first to have an overarching strategy for dealing with HIV and AIDS here in the United States, with a partnership between the public and private sectors that will provide necessary financing and a realistic path toward our goals. We must prevent new infections and provide more accessible care. We must do everything possible to transform the promise of a vaccine and a cure into reality.

Furthermore, I am proud that the United States has led the global battle against HIV/ AIDS. We have both a strategic interest as the world’s only superpower and a moral obligation as the world’s richest country to continue to do so until this scourge is a memory.

I supported the current Administration’s proposal to double our initial commitment from $15 billion to $30 billion over the next five years for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). PEPFAR has already done an extraordinary amount of good, by providing drugs for over a million people and care for four-and-a-half million people, but it expires in 2008 and must be reauthorized. I support an increase in our commitment to the Global Fund. Through PEPFAR and the Global Fund, we can do our fair share to meet the Millennium Development Goals we affirmed in 2000, which include universal access to HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment, and care.”

So, his assertion is that we simply didn’t know how it was transmitted, so it’s acceptable that he believed they should be quarantined. Hmm. Allah points to this. It’s written by C. Everett Koop, Surgeon General under Reagan. All caps, sorry.

BUT NEW INFECTIONS CAN BE PREVENTED IF WE, AS INDIVIDUALS, TAKE THE RESPONSIBILITY OF PROTECTING OURSELVES AND OTHERS FROM EXPOSURE TO THE AIDS VIRUS. AIDS IS NOT SPREAD BY CASUAL, NONSEXUAL CONTACT, IT IS SPREAD BY HIGH RISK SEXUAL AND DRUG RELATED BEHAVIORS–BEHAVIORS THAT WE CAN CHOOSE TO AVOID. EVERY PERSON CAN REDUCE THE RISK OF EXPOSURE TO THE AIDS VIRUS THROUGH PREVENTIVE MEASURES THAT ARE SIMPLE, STRAIGHTFORWARD, AND EFFECTIVE. HOWEVER, IF PEOPLE ARE TO FOLLOW THESE RECOMMENDED MEASURES–TO ACT RESPONSIBLY TO PROTECT THEMSELVES AND OTHERS–THEY MUST BE INFORMED ABOUT THEM. THAT IS AN OBVIOUS STATEMENT, BUT NOT A SIMPLE ONE. EDUCATING PEOPLE ABOUT AIDS HAS NEVER BEEN EASY.

Emphasis added. Year written? October 1986. Keep in mind, at that time Koop was the United States Surgeon General. How widely available was this famous report? In 1988, it was mailed to every household in America – the largest mailing up to that time in history. Allah sums it up well:

That doesn’t eliminate Huck’s point about the Bergalis case but it does suggest he would have or should have known at the time that cases like that were outliers, if the fact that there were still “only” 200,000 cases as of 1992 and not the tens of millions we would have seen by then if the disease was transmitted by air hadn’t already convinced him.

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