Chicago Tribune - March 8, 2005

And yet, resistance in Washington to such efforts has been strong. Congress prohibited the use of federal funds for such programs unless they were found effective by the Department of Health and Human Services. Former President Bill Clinton declined to lift that ban, even though his HHS secretary made such a finding. President Bush has made no move to lift the ban.

And now some in Congress want to cut off American support for international organizations that provide clean-needle exchanges. Given the reach of U.S. efforts on AIDS, for this country to stop funding organizations that provide needle exchanges would be a blow to worldwide efforts to contain the epidemic.

Though Bush's AIDS program is concentrated in Africa, where the virus spreads mostly through sexual contact, AIDS also is ravaging parts of Eastern Europe, Russia, Central Asia and China. There, 50 to 80 percent of the people infected by HIV are drug addicts.

Clean-needle or needle-exchange programs are admittedly an imperfect solution. They don't cure addiction, and narcotics destroy addicts' bodies and minds. But clean needles lessen the chances of addicts contracting AIDS and infecting their sexual partners and their unborn children. Most important, clean needles offer the hope of breaking the chain of contagion.

Rep. Mark Souder (R-Ind.), is leading the effort to restrict U.S. funding for international groups that, an aide says, "distribute paraphernalia for the consumption of illegal drugs." Souder would direct funds only to prevention and drug rehabilitation efforts.

It's not hard to understand the position of opponents--they object to the government providing the means for addicts to feed their habits. Many studies, though, have found that needle-exchange programs help to reduce HIV infections and intravenous drug use.

Souder cites a study of a needle-exchange program in Vancouver that, according to his spokesman, demonstrated the "HIV and hepatitis epidemics exploded in the aftermath of the introduction of needle-exchange programs, as did the drug epidemic."

But the doctors who conducted the Vancouver study wrote, in an April letter to the director of the National Institutes of Health, that Souder's interpretation of the data was incorrect. "For Mr. Souder to take the Vancouver data out of context, is selective and self-serving," they wrote.

Medical and legal groups from the American Public Health Association to the American Bar Association have strongly endorsed needle-exchange programs. They are an essential item to fight the spread of AIDS here and abroad.

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