Nov. 27, 2012
It is a great pleasure and an honor to introduce a most extraordinary man - a friend, a co-conspirator, and truly one of the giants of Congress Representative Henry Waxman. We are here today to recognize his decades of accomplishments and leadership in shaping the U.S. policy on HIV/AIDS, and I am thrilled to be part of this celebration.
As many of you know, Rep. Waxman began his career in Congress in 1975, more than 35 years ago, representing the 30th Congressional District in southern California.
Although Henry is an unabashed liberal, in his career as a public servant, he has become legendary for always being on the "right," that is, correct, side of the issue: For instance, uncovering fraud and abuse in government, protecting the environment, defending the rights of women, and making health care affordable. In addition to HIV/AIDS, he has been a strong and consistent Congressional leader and advocate on several other important health issues as well, including regulating tobacco, food safety, and nursing care reform.
It is simply impossible to convey the breadth of his enormous contributions to the well-being of the American public and to our nation in just a few minutes. However, I can give you my personal perspective from the standpoint of someone who has had the privilege of being with Henry on the frontlines and observing his extraordinary accomplishments since the earliest days of the HIV/AIDS pandemic.
I have had the opportunity over nearly 30 years to interact with Henry on many, many occasions, primarily after I became director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in 1984 and so I speak from decades of personal experience. According to our records, I have testified at approximately 25 hearings in which Henry participated in some capacity-as chair, ranking member, or member of the committee or subcommittee.
Several of these hearings focused on HIV/AIDS, but these hearings spanned a range of topics, touching on other important health and research issues including drug abuse, tuberculosis, influenza, BioShield, NIH oversight, antibiotic resistance, synthetic biology.
One of my first official appearances before Rep. Waxman at a congressional hearing was in February 1988. I was testifying at a hearing before the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health and the Environment that he chaired titled "Public Health Service Update on the AIDS Epidemic." Of note, Dr. Koop also testified at this hearing in his capacity at the time as Surgeon General.
On several other occasions between 1988 and 1994, I testified before Rep. Waxman's Subcommittee on HIV/AIDS. In 1995, the majority party in the House changed, and so Rep. Waxman became a member of the minority party until 2006. He was not a happy camper during that time. However, back in the saddle again, in 2008, Henry chaired a House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and I again testified before him. At these and other hearings, I would watch him in wonderment and admiration. He is a man of extraordinary integrity and commitment. In his position as subcommittee chair, although always respectful of the proceedings of Congress, he was a true warrior. He gives as good or better than he gets, and he does not take flak from anyone. There would be times when he and some Republican Congressman would be debating an issue, going at each other, and I would just be sitting there watching. I always kept in mind the old saying - "when you are sitting in a rowboat and two people stand up and start swinging oars at each other, the best thing to do is just stay seated. I often sat there and enjoyed the show.
Certainly, Henry is the kind of warrior you want on your side. When he was not in his position as chair, he was constantly pushing the envelope for causes he held dear, particularly HIV/AIDS. The HIV/AIDS community has had no more stalwart elected champion than Henry Waxman.
As a member of the Executive Branch of government I often found myself testifying as the government witness. During the early years, when he was not happy with the response to the HIV pandemic of the administration at the time, he would chide me and tell me to deliver a firm message back to the administration. However, he always did this with respect and always made it clear that he supported what I was doing but he had problems with the administration and he always kept the two separate. After certain Hearings when he was particularly peeved, the "good guy" in him prompted him after the C-SPAN cameras shut off to come down from the dais to me where I was bleeding at the witness table shake my hand and with a twinkle in his eye say: "Tony, you are doing a great job; I hope that you know it was nothing personal." Indeed, we developed a real friendship and mutual respect that I hold dear to this day.
Henry is responsible for many "firsts". On April 13, 1982, Rep. Waxman, who was then the Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health and the Environment, held the first congressional hearing on AIDS. This was the start of his record of 30 hearings on AIDS that he held during his 16-year tenure as chair of this subcommittee. This hearing took place in Hollywood, California, at the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center. It was a little less than a year since the first cases of the mysterious disease were first reported in June of 1981. According to an account in the Washington Blade, DC's gay newspaper of record at that time, Rep. Waxman did not mince words.
"'I want to be especially blunt about the political aspects of Kaposi's sarcoma,' Rep. Waxman said. ‘This horrible disease afflicts members of one of the nation's most stigmatized and discriminated-against minorities.' He continued, ‘There is no doubt in my mind that if the same disease had appeared among Americans of Norwegian descent, or among tennis players, rather than among gay males, the responses of the government and the medical community would have been different.' He noted that the outbreak of Legionnaire's disease a few years earlier appeared to have received greater attention and funding for research and treatment than did the latest outbreaks of Kaposi's sarcoma and pneumocystis pneumonia among gay men."
It became clear after that Hearing that for the growing numbers of a minority group disproportionately affected by this mysterious new disease, Rep. Waxman was a brave and desperately needed advocate, one of the elected officials who rang the bell first, insistently, and clearly. His unfettered honesty and compassion was immeasurably important for a community just beginning to realize an enormous, stunning, and horrific measure of suffering and death in the prime of their lives.
On September 24, 1982, Reps. Waxman and Phillip Burton introduced legislation to allocate funds to CDC for surveillance and to NIH for AIDS research. In May of the following year, the U.S. Congress passed the first bill that included funding specifically targeted for AIDS research and treatment--$12 million for these HHS agencies. In 1993, he authored legislation, signed into law by President Clinton that established the Office of AIDS Research within the NIH to plan and coordinate our AIDS research efforts.
Rep. Waxman's approach to responding to AIDS has always been on-point and comprehensive. In addition to ensuring adequate funding for research, he supported a host of other initiatives and legislation that were needed to ensure a vigorous public health response as researchers worked on understanding the disease and developing new and better ways to diagnose, treat, and prevent it.
To address the stigma associated with the transmission of the disease among homosexual/bisexual and drug-using populations, and practices that put individuals most at risk, he insisted that information about the disease that was developed and disseminated by the government be candid and straightforward, and that the confidentiality of people with HIV be protected. In a statement he issued in May 1995, he wrote,
"In a perfect public health world, it would be better if people just stopped having sex and using drugs until there was a vaccine for AIDS. But this isn't a perfect world, and the federal government needs to acknowledge that many people will have sex or use drugs today, and that preaching abstinence isn't the answer for everyone. It's imperative that we tailor our prevention programs to the affected communities, so that they reach Americans where they live, and how they live."
He also realized that those infected with HIV deserved the best care to help them stay healthy from the time they become infected, and even before they show overt symptoms of disease. He took the lead in promoting Medicaid expansion for early intervention for people living with AIDS, targeting programs to prevent TB, pneumonia, and other opportunistic infections.
He also was an advocate of the parallel track approach, introduced in 1989, which helped to make experimental drugs more widely available to severely ill patients, and to speed the review and approval of licensure of these products.
To complete his comprehensive approach, he authored the landmark Ryan White CARE Act in 1990. This law was named after a brave Indiana teenager who contracted HIV through a tainted hemophilia treatment, was expelled from school, became a well-known advocate for AIDS research and awareness, and died very young of AIDS. The law established a large-scale program of health care services for people living with AIDS, as well as an effort to prevent infection among the uninfected and disease among those already infected. It especially sought to improve the availability of care for individuals with low incomes or inadequate health insurance.
The
Act was reauthorized in 1996, in 2000, 2006, and again most recently in 2009 by President Obama.
Well, Henry is still at it today. Here is a photo of Henry with Nancy Pelosi, Elton John and I at the International AIDS Conference held here in Washington, D.C. this past July. Always the happy warrior, he continues to push us all and is widely respected and honored by a wide variety of constituencies since he early on grasped the tragedy that AIDS would become. With his heart and mind, he understood that the government needed to respond urgently and he appropriately pushed hard. Above all, he wore no moral blinders because of who was becoming infected.
Today, we can speak realistically about an AIDS-free generation in the future. However, Henry knows our work is not over, and now he continues to push for policies that lower the cost of AIDS drugs and offer developing nations more access to generic ARV therapies. His tireless work continues. I can say without hyperbole that we would not be in this position at this time were it not for the extraordinary commitment, support, tenacity, energy, and inspiration of Henry Waxman. Truly a great man and a wonderful human being.
And so at this time, it is my great honor and privilege to express my
personal gratitude to you, Rep. Waxman, and on behalf of all those here
and those in our nation and around the world who have benefited from your
HIV/AIDS advocacy, to present you with the 2012 C. Everett Koop HIV/AIDS Public
Health Leadership Award.
