The monkeypox epidemic reflects what we have not learned from the AIDS movement.

Indeed, the response to monkeypox shows that some doctors, public health officials and political leaders are learning valuable lessons from HIV/AIDS. for example, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Guidelines for Monkeypox Emphasizes “harm reduction” and advises people on how to reduce the risk of sexually transmitted infections. This approach recognizes that abstinence-only messages tend to be ineffective, and has been suggested by Michael Callen and Richard Berkowitz inhow to have sex in fashionbased on little-known information about AIDS in 1983, it offered gay and bisexual men advice on how to practice a wide variety of sexual practices as safely as possible.

Public health officials have also shown a genuine desire not to replicate the kind of gay stigma that undermined the early response to AIDS. President Biden Nominates Demetre Daskarakisgay doctor and ex Assistant Health Commissioner for HIV Prevention in New York City who The city is famous for offering HIV testing and counseling in gay sex clubs and bathhouses.to become deputy coordinator of the White House Monkeypox Response Team.

In fact, the U.S. health care system has improved in providing care to LGBTQ people, and this reflects a degree of social acceptance and real political interest in terms of LGBTQ rights and legal protections. . It’s important that doctors and public health officials have gotten better at speaking and talking to queer people about health, and that progress is due in no small part to the work of AIDS activists.

But early AIDS activism did more than create an effective message about safe sex. AIDS activists also wanted to transform the health system so that everyone got the care they needed. And monkeypox shows how far we have fallen short of their vision of an equitable health care system at home and a humane vision of global health abroad.

From the time doctors first identified what became known as AIDS among gay men in 1981, activists have linked the new disease to a larger battle to reform and strengthen the U.S. health care system. As part of that understanding, some saw an opportunity to harness the energies of AIDS groups in the fight for universal health care and banded together under the slogan ‘Health care is a human right’. Others have tried to realign national priorities by shifting public spending from the military-industrial complex to medical research and healthcare. From the 1980s into the new millennium, these activists demanded “money for AIDS, not war.”

The slogan was coined in 1983 by queer activists who organized against US intervention in Central America. As historian Emily Hobson has revealedAt the time, while the Reagan administration was supporting right-wing governments throughout the Western Hemisphere, more and more Americans were falling ill and dying from complications of AIDS. It highlighted what they saw as a terrifying truth. Instead of saving lives at home, the federal government was using its power to destroy lives abroad.

Looking at the numbers underscored their point. The Reagan administration spent his $1.2 billion on policing Central America and the Caribbean in 1985 alone. Political scientists Joshua Cohen and Joel Rogers estimate the real cost to be about eight times that.. in the meantime, The 1985 federal budget proposed by the White House allocated only $95 million to fund AIDS research and treatment.In the years that followed, federal spending on public health remained a fraction of spending on defense, and the gap widened even further after 9/11.

Since the late 1990s, the United States Activists began organizing for people in the global South who wanted access to highly effective treatment for HIV.They did so not because they viewed AIDS as a threat to national security like US intelligence agencies did, but because the US has a humanitarian duty to help sick and dying people in other parts of the world. Because I believed If Americans were benefiting from life-saving HIV drugs, it was immoral to deny others the same.

U.S. officials used trade policies to prevent South Africa and other countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America from making or obtaining cheaper generic versions of these treatments. , used direct action to force these policies to change. sabotage Vice President Al Gore’s campaign And it occupies the office of the United States Trade Representative.

Even after George W. Bush took office in 2001, activists continued to pressure the federal government to provide HIV drugs to poor countries.they took me down the street US Agency for International Development Director Andrew Natzios has suggested that such treatments would not work in Africa. “I don’t know the Western calendar”

In the context of both the “war on terror” and the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, AIDS activists Demanded ‘money for AIDS, not war’ By advancing critical US commitments to fight AIDS in Africa. Bush chose to fund both.

When President Bush pledged billions of dollars to fight AIDS in Africa in the form of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) in 2003, activists said their efforts were often erased from history. If so, they considered it to be the result of their own years of organizing. program. Since then, US pledged more than $110 billion to PEPFAR,this is Saved an estimated 20 million lives. In contrast, Academics estimate the war on terror cost $8 trillion — more than 70 times — and directly caused the deaths of nearly a million people.

PEPFAR may have taught you the value of America’s commitment to global health. Instead, the federal government Hoard resources badly needed elsewhere In the name of national defense and security.

Consider the example of Gynneos, a vaccine currently used to prevent monkeypox. After 9/11, in fear of future bioterrorist attacks, US government spent over $1 billion developing Gynneos as an effective smallpox vaccineThe work was done by the Danish company Bavarian Nordic.

At one point, the national stockpile held 20 million doses of the vaccine. This is several times the amount experts believe would be necessary to vaccinate all Americans considered at high risk for monkeypox. But almost all of these doses were allowed to expire, presumably because they were developed for national defense rather than public health.

While the U.S. held doses of Gynneos, people in Africa were getting sick and dying of monkeypox. Outbreaks in West and Central Africa over the past few decades have resulted in thousands of cases – officials suspect the real number may be much higher – and at least 75 deaths.This also shows that we have not been able to learn from the history of AIDS activism.

Today, the Jynneos vaccine is in short supply in the United States. Dr. Carlos del Rio of Emory University School of Medicine said: “hunger game approach” to vaccine distribution. actually, The country may soon face a ‘vaccine cliff’ More than 1 million people will be at risk of monkeypox.

What we can learn from the history of AIDS is how to invest time, money, and the ability to protect and promote the health of not only Americans, but people around the world, by ensuring that everyone gets the care they need. means a true investment.