A majority of our nation's attention seems to be focused on various threats to our national security. These threats may be military, as in the war on terrorism, or economic. The amounts of money that are going into Homeland Security and the War in Iraq is substantial and may itself be a threat to our economic security.
I would like to suggest that the biggest threat to our national security comes from RNA viruses. This family of quickly mutating viruses includes both HIV, which we have known for a long time, and SARS, which is very new. The events of 9-11 had a major economic impact on tourism and travel in the US and contributed to the bankruptcy of several airlines. The new threat of SARS has nearly shut down travel in some countries and seems ready to force other airlines into bankruptcy as people stop traveling.
The budgetary appropriations of the Bush Administration, though significantly greater than at any other time, still fall far short of the amounts required to address this problem.
Consider:
Al Qaeda has twice initiated terrorist attacks in Kenya. Kenya has over 1 million children orphaned by HIV-AIDS. How many of these are future teachers and how many are future terrorists?
In his State of the Union Address this year, 'W' proposed spending $10 B. on AIDS relief in Africa. According to Bill Clinton (on camera in Avoiding Armageddon on PBS), this is a drop in the bucket compared to what is required.
At the present time, both the Senate and the House of Representatives are considering bills that will provide the real backbone of this funding. H.R. 1298, co-sponsored by such different personalities as Henry Hyde and Barbara Lee, provides a structure, but puts HIV-AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria in the same bill. The Senate bill S.150 provides very specific HIV-AIDS funding beginning with 2.1 Billion in fiscal year 2004, but has a very different structural component, different agency involvement, etc.
As we sort through all of the 1000s of other things that we might be interested in, care deeply about, organize around or protest, please keep these issues in mind. It has been said that all of the UN Agencies are, in the long run, irrelevant except for the World Health Organization