Topic: Accuracy in Media
Accuracy in Media's Cliff Kincaid, a man with a history of bizarre anti-gay crusades -- from obsessing over Rachel Maddow to demanding that homosexual behavior be treated as a public health hazard akin to smoking -- has embarked on a new one: This time, he's claiming that spending money on AIDS research is a waste.
This attempt at a meme first showed up in an Aug. 15 AIM Report item (repeated in an Aug. 17 column by Kincaid, in which he notes that "the U.S. has spent about $200 billion on HIV/AIDS—and an AIDS vaccine—since 1981," but no AIDS vaccine has been found:
Can you imagine any other federal effort of this magnitude that would be spared from serious criticism? The explanation, of course, lies in the fact that spending on AIDS is politically protected. The more money spent, the better. That was the policy under Clinton and it has been continued under Bush. This "bridge to nowhere" gets more money, not less.
(As we previously noted, this is the same article in which Kincaid also opposed mandatory, and even possibly voluntary, use of the cervial cancer-stopping HPV vaccine.)
Kincaid expanded on this idea in an Aug. 23 column called "The AIDS Scam," in which he declared that "the AIDS problem was exaggerated by the United Nations so that more money would flow through the world body and other international channels to combat it." Kincaid also attack Republican Sen. Bill Frist for teaming with Democrats to "expand the fight against global HIV/AIDS":
Senator Frist, a medical doctor, was attacked by the liberal media when he suggested, based on a review of a videotape of the disabled woman, Terri Schiavo, that she deserved a chance to live because she appeared to be conscious. Her husband later pulled the plug on her. But Frist has never been criticized by the major media for jumping on the AIDS bandwagon. To the media, AIDS is a sacred cause, like the U.N. itself.
As we've noted, the videotape from which Frist made his "diagnosis" was an edited five-minute clip taken from four hours of videotape shot by Schiavo's parents and supporters -- the unedited version of which they have refused to publicly release.
