Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee said that he won’t “run from” his statement 15 years ago that people living with AIDS should be isolated, reports the Associated Press (ap.google.com, 12/9).

“I don’t run from it, I don’t recant it,” Huckabee said of his statements, adding that he would phrase his position differently if asked the same questions today.

As a Senate candidate in 1992, Huckabee told the Associated Press (AP) that “we need to take steps that would isolate the carriers of this plague” in order to end the spread of HIV/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,” he said.

In a December 8 interview on Fox News Sunday, Huckabee said that his statements were not a call to quarantine HIV-positive people. The AP reports, however, that he did not specify what isolation would mean.


In response to Huckabee’s refusal to recant statements stigmatizing those living with HIV/AIDS, the National Association of People with AIDS issued a statement today, December 10, urging all presidential candidates to oppose AIDS stigma and discrimination.


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