Mike Huckabee's AIDS Solution

In 1992, Mike Huckabee urged that HIV positive people be quarantined. This idea is so bad that members of Free Republic think it's a horrible idea.

Oh, it’ll impress some hur-hur “jail the queers” good-ol-boy types, but it will not help Huckabee’s chances in the general election. It’s hard to read “quarantine” as anything but “concentration camp”, and that’s how the media and the Dems will play it up.

Another commenter points out that the Huckster has no idea what he is talking about.

It should be very concerning to any Republican that Huck proposes government action without bothering to understand the issue.

Most people don’t show symptoms for 9-10 years after infection. Back then, once you developed symptoms, you had very little time left to live.

Best case scenario, a quarantine does nothing (the public health damage would already be done by the time you knew a person was infected). The more likely scenario is that HIV transmission would skyrocket. With a quarantine in place, nobody in their mind would get tested for HIV.

Gee, you think. This is how Huckabee believed HIV positive people should be treated.

"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."

Huckabee is so utterly unserious about policy that he urged that the government should cut AIDS research funding and Hollywood should pick up the slack. AIDS is not an exclusively gay disease. Nor does Hollywood has any interest in medical research. Huckabee shows an unwillingness to learn. That is a quality he shares with George W. Bush. Sadly, I wouldn't be surprised if Huckabee wins Iowa.