Keynote Speech
Speaker: Hon. Ronald V. Dellums (click here for biography)
Soap Summit 5

Transcript of Proceedings
October 13, 2000

DELLUMS: Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, first let me, um, thank Mr. Fox for his very kind and generous remarks. And to all of you here, I'm both honored and pleased to be able to address you tonight. When I received the invitation, Soap Summit V, in my 30 plus years in public life, I never addressed this audience. But when I thought about it very quickly, spoke with other people, we all understood readily that this is a very powerful audience. So this is a very significant and important podium from which to speak.

I mount it, uh, understanding that. You all understand that perhaps better than I do, so whatever I say here, uh, I'm simply underscoring for the purposes of emphasis. When you couple the magic of story telling and the power that emanates from that with charismatic, creative, artful characterization and the incredible power of the electronic media, you have the audacious capacity to educate, to inspire, to inform, and ultimately to empower millions of human beings. So that's why I'm here. Because you address an audience every single day that needs to be educated, has to be inspired, desperately needs to be motivated and has the right to be empowered.

Um, to start, I would like to beg your indulgence by beginning with a personal reference in order to get into the topic this evening. About 18 months ago, I was asked to become a member of the National Board Of AIDS Action which is a national organization that represents several 100, um, AIDS organizations all over the United States. And after some thought, I agreed to serve, although I am not an expert in AIDS. I am not a scientist, I am not a doctor, I have not run an AIDS organization. I am simply a political activist and a person who had the high honor and great privilege to represent thousands of human beings, uh, in the United States Congress.

But the first day that I reported to serve as a member of the board at their next regular meeting, I was introduced to the members of the board and I was asked to say a few words. I share them with you. I stood up and said to all the members of the board, I'm honored that you have asked me to serve. And I wish to humbly apologize to all of you here. And as I looked around, I could see on the faces of all of my fellow board members that they had no idea where this was going.

And I said, I wish to apologize to you because after three decades of service as a political activist, one of a dying breed, that is someone whose politics was honed in Berkeley in the 1960s, in the left wing of the American body politic, I'd like to feel that I understood as a progressive person the gravity and the magnitude and the significance of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. But it took me leaving the continental limits of the United States going into the developing world, into Africa, to look into the faces of the eyes of thousands of young children with no sense of hope and no, no hope, no scent of the future, tremendous pain and great sense of loneliness to smell death.

To sense pain and anguish. To see little children dying and their parents dying and the world standing by doing little or nothing about it was a mind altering experience for me. Over the course of my adult life, uh, we all have our own belief systems. One aspect of my belief system is that each of us in our own way most assume the responsibility for the knowledge that we possess. And what I was simply trying to say to, to that group was that the level of my knowledge had now expanded and knowledge is power and empowering, but one is also burdened by one's knowledge.

And I was burdened by the reality of what I, what I knew then. And I share that with you tonight. What do we know? Tonight we gather, um, in a place to talk about what I perceive to be a very daunting task because we have the responsibility to address an incredible issues. HIV and AIDS is a global pandemic and there is no middle ground. It either defeats us or we defeat it. Aids is clearly a global pandemic and I do not use the term global as a substitute for the word, international. I use the term global to connote an That we are interrelated, interdependent and mutually vulnerable. HIV and AIDS has no respect for race. No respect for gender. No respect for sexual orientation. No respect for religion, age, class, border or boundary. I used to say, um, in the context of my peace activism and arms control activism that a nuclear weapon was an equal opportunity destroyer. HIV and AIDS is an equal opportunity killer. It is the human family that is threatened because it cuts across all these lines.

It is a pandemic that at this particular moment is manifesting itself most profoundly and most dramatically in the context of the Sub Saharan African, uh, in, in the context of Sub Saharan Africa. That is the present epicenter. Since the first case of HIV and AIDS was discovered in Africa, somewhere between 11 and 12 million human beings have died of AIDS. People in Africa are dying of AIDS at a rate of somewhere between six and seven thousand per day. It is anticipated that over the next 12 months, approximately 2.3 million Africans will die of AIDS. In the first decade of the 21st Century, in excess of 23 million Africans will die of AIDS.

Over twice the number of people who are dying each day in Africa are newly affected with AIDS in Africa. In Sierra Leon [SP?], life expectancy has dropped to 35 and falling. In Zimbabwe, life has fallen below 40 and continuing to fall. All over Southern Africa life expectancy has fallen into the 40s and dropping precipitously. All over Africa somewhere between 17 and 20 years of life expectancy is lost. When I retired from Congress in February of 1998, there were 7.8 million children who were orphaned in Africa as a result of AIDS. As we speak, there are now in excess of 10 million children.

The World Health Organization, the U.N. suggest that perhaps by the end of this year, um, the end of the next 12 months, we will be looking at 14 to 15 million children orphaned as a result of AIDS in Africa alone. We're looking at numbers somewhere between 30 and 40 million children in Africa alone who will be orphaned as a direct result of AIDS. One does not have to be a brilliant Ph.D in Social Science, in Social Science to get a sense of what it would mean for 30 to 40 million children with no family, no sense of the future, no sense of hope, with a great sense of desperation, the habit that can be reaped there is awesome.

It's compelling. It's daunting. It's numbing. It's shocking. So when you compare the, the millions of people dying, thousands of people each day newly affected with AIDS, life expectancy dropping in Africa like a hot rock and the number of children orphaned as a result of AIDS expanding at such a rapid pace, it's an incredible thing. That's where the epicenter is and the world has in one sense stood by quietly and allowed this to happen. But Africa does not have ownership of the issue of AIDS. It is simply the present epicenter.

The next epicenter will be Asia. And consider for a moment in India the population approximately one million. I mean, one billion. Even if the infection rate in India were one half of one percent, that's five million people. China, similar numbers. That's going to be the next epicenter and I would suggest to you that in the next few years, we're going to begin to hear numbers exploding out of India and Asia that will also shake us to our very foundation.

If you look at Russia and Eastern Europe, as a result of increased drug abuse, the economics falling so that prostitution increasing and other factors, you are now beginning to see, uh, the emergence of an epidemic in Russia and Eastern Europe where the numbers will also be very significant. The next epicenter will probably be Latin America. All the conditions are ripe there for a tremendous explosion. In the United States 400 thousand people have died of AIDS. As we speak, there's somewhere between 800 and 900 thousand people in America living with AIDS. Every hour in America two young people below the age of 25 are newly affected with AIDS.

But we've lulled ourselves into a sense of complacency that in some way, we've, we've gotten on top of this issue even in the United States and we have not. So the picture that I paint is one of a global pandemic where indeed the human family is threatened. There is a morally compelling reason for us to stand up, but there also is an incredible mutual self-interest. When the human family is threatened, it is the human family that must come together to grapple with this problem. It is at that level of magnitude and that high order of magnitude that we have to begin to address this issue as a global pandemic.

What then should we do? Two first general points. Move beyond the conspiracy of silence and I think that the world is beginning to do that. We're not where we need to be, but that is beginning to slowly happen. If all of you in this room recall two years ago, Africa dying was not on anyone's radar screen. But now there are articles, there are stories, there are movies, there, people are beginning to talk about these issues. So we're beginning to break the cycle of the conspiracy of silence.

We have to move beyond denial. Some people are, well, it can't be that bad in this place. Maybe it's worse in that place. Both approaches do not address the reality and the reality is that it is progressing. It is building. And make no mistake about it, we are not in the middle of this pandemic, we're not at the end of this pandemic, we are at the beginning. And what we're experiencing, the data that I laid out to you is only at the beginning. This is just a door opener. We have a long way to go and, and, and it's going to get worse.

Thirdly, we have to make the commitment to do something. I've lived in the Washington political milieu for 27 years. And one of the great tragedies of Washington is that we tend to debate how to do something before we ever make the commitment to do something. And so the, my third point is simply that we now must gather ourselves to develop the political will to do something. The resources are there. I chaired the House Arms Services Committee. We spent billions of dollars building monuments to madness.

It is now the human family that we must come to grapple with and we have the, we have the resources. We lack the political will. That's what needs to be developed. Fourthly, this is way beyond the project stage. We can't throw a few dollars at what is now a, a, an issue of such urgency, of such gravity, of such magnitude. So we have to raise our voices to the level of, of that urgency to the perimeters of the, and the dimensions of the problem. And we have to now take a great leap of scale.

And that great leap of scale must be our voices, must be our political will, it must be our financial resources. I believe that we, I have been calling for an AIDS marshal plan, simply stated, we must develop a global public private partnership that puts the resource there in order for us to one, clearly go after as aggressively as possible a quote, cure.

'Til we develop the technology to destroy ourselves and hopefully sanity will be prevail and we'll never use that technology. But we must use the urgency now to take that same energy into saving this planet and to saving the human family. But a cure is, from all I'm gathering, a long ways off. This is a great scientific challenge. So we then move to prevention and everyone is saying, we've got to find a vaccine. And I absolutely agree. So we have to spend whatever billions of dollars to do that in a well-coordinated fashion that brings together all the governmental capability in this country, governmental coordination around the world.

A public private partnership that brings in the private sector as well whatever incentives are necessary so that we do find this vaccine. But again, not an expert, but from all I gather, we're five to 10 years away from that. And even if we developed a vaccine today, millions of human beings would still die because we'd have to go through all the processes to, to make that effective. So what's left then for us as we pursue these two areas with great aggression is prevention. Education and prevention.

What do we know about prevention? It works. It's cost effective. And that preventive measures produce overall better health. And those efforts at prevention have to speak to scientific realities and not political rhetoric. So what am I saying here? We know that sex education works. It's controversial, but we know it works. Scientifically we know it, it works. So we have to move beyond the political rhetoric about sex education because we now have to be guided by the science of what we know.

We know that needle exchange works. It's controversial, but it works. We know that condom use works. it is controversial, but it works. So we have to engage in the most aggressive prevention effort that we can. And it has to be guided by our rationality, our sanity, our passion and our understanding and caring about each other as human beings. What about the millions of people for whom education and prevention are no longer options? They're dying of AIDS now. And in Africa and in the developing world where virtually nothing is being done about treatment, it is a virtual death sentence for those millions of human beings.

So we must develop the capacity to address these issues. I mention the potential of 40 million children orphaned as a direct result of AIDS on, on the continent of Africa alone. We must figure out a way to deal with the problem of all those orphans. But we also have to figure out how not to make them orphans. Because a human being in Africa who is given the opportunity to live 15, 20 years of productive life allows a child to grow with parents. Allows a family to have hope. Allows a community to move forward. They do not have that at this moment.

We talk about the 21st century a global village, are you ready? When millions of human beings living on less than $100 a year. Millions of human beings who stand so far outside of the medical and health advances of the 20th century, let alone the 21st century. How do we make all of that affordable and accessible to human beings? It's morally compelling. We have to do it. We have no option. And so we have to spend resources to do that. But then beyond that. In Africa, for example, Sub Saharan African countries are paying approximately 15 billion dollars annually just to service debts. Many of those debts that emanated from the Cold War. Many of these countries will never be able to pay that debt. Here we could lift the burden off the backs of African countries by debt forgiveness allowing these countries to take that 15 billion dollars and begin to enhance the quality of human life and build the necessary infrastructure necessary. Because what I have also learned is that you cannot treat AIDS in a vacuum. How do you get from Village A to Village B to Village C where there are no roads?

So you have to be in the business of developing roads. And then at the end of that road, there has to be clinics and hospitals and health care infrastructure. So you're in the infrastructure business. At the end of that road, you have to have well trained human beings who are able to carry out the treatment, so you're in the education and training business. At the end of that road, if you're going to teach young people who cannot read, you have to be in the education infrastructure building business.

And so we need to take debt off the backs of these impoverished countries allowing them to build health care infrastructure and health and educational infrastructure and developmental issues. AIDS is not singularly nor solely a health issue. It is a issue that cuts across every aspect of the human condition. In Africa and in the developing world, it has the capacity to cause the collapse of economies. Bring down governments. Cause poverty to spiral out of control. In some places in Africa, there are employers who employ two or three people for the same job because they know the first two or three are going to die. The first one or two are going to die early. There are places in Africa where insurance companies cannot sell insurance because they can't calculate the actuary charts fast enough. There are places in Africa where teachers are dying at a rate faster than the students. And we all know the power of teachers in our lives. I can't recall of one of my teachers dying. I mean they were larger than life people. But in Africa it's a common occurrence for teachers to die. In a country that's, in a world that's attempting to stand up educational systems, I don't have to tell you what the implications of all of that really is.

So I would conclude the way I started. Each of us in our own way must assume the responsibility for the knowledge we possess. For those of you who already know the information that I've shared tonight, I'm simply underscoring it for emphasis. For those of you who have no sense of the gravity and the breadth and the depth and the urgency in this perspective, I burden you with that knowledge. As I burdened myself.

In the hopes that we will in our own way take that, take the responsibility of that knowledge and in the many different ways that we will walk out of this room, whether that's on a very personal level or whether that's on a much broader level. There are powerful executives in this room. There are creative producers in this room. There are extraordinary writers in this room. There are creative actors in this room. You have the capacity to change the world. Not alone. But in this incredible coalition of human beings, we have that capacity.

AIDS is a great challenge, but it, in my opinion, provides an incredible opportunity to bring human beings together in a way we've never been able to do in the past. My wife and I were watching a program last night on Jimi Hendrix. And I said, you know, there was that very brief moment when we almost came together. There was that moment. And we came together for a brief moment. And it was a wonderful thing. But whatever happened, I'll let history figure out what happened at that moment.

But we're, we're now at another moment. Not as wonderful. It's daunting and it's a challenge. But if we step up to it and accept it I think that we, we conquer this problem and we move beyond it and we bring the human family together in a way that we've not been able to do it, uh, in the past. You've been an incredible group of human beings and I join you in the effort to save America and save the world. Thank you.

SONNY FOX: We have a few moments and I would, I think I can convince Ron Dellums to answer some of your questions if you have them. I've got one, though, I'm going to take the droit de seigneur here, if I may, and, and ask him. How do you respond when the President Of The Union Of South Africa says that HIV does not cause AIDS or that AIDS is not that much of a problem and as result of which, people don't go to clinics? Or this other woman who's running around the country and is saying the same thing and convincing people that it's lifestyle and not, not AIDS, uh, that's causing deaths. How do you respond to that?

DELLUMS: When people call it a lifestyle issue, we have to say very strongly, very loudly and very clearly that this is not a moral issue. This is a public health issue. This is a human challenge and we have to move beyond it and get on with it. In the evolution of thought in our communities, in our country and in our world, there are always a few kooks out there. I don't think you put too much energy into that because I think it's important for us to deal with the large body of, of people who understand and who are there and we've got to move them forward.

With respect to South Africa, I've been trying to understand that and I think that maybe in some ways that, let me put the best face on it. Perhaps Tablo Enbecki is not being fully understood. Maybe he's not being articulate in saying what needs to be said. Maybe in some way we might be saying the same thing. First of all, we don't need to be arguing about whether HIV causes AIDS. The science is there. Let's move past that and keep going. The question then is whether or not there are other factors that contribute to
That when people have, don't have clean water, when people are living in poverty, when people are malnourished, their immune system is even weaker. When they are affected with other opportunistic diseases, it makes them weaker. Uh, so all of these factors have to be dealt with. When Tablo Enbecki asks, how do I deal with these expensive drugs when I don't have the infrastructure, he's right. Because we do need health care infrastructure and we don't need high priced medications that don't allow people in the developing world to have access.

It's, it's morally reprehensible and it doesn't speak to the self interest. So the bottom line of what I'm suggesting is, we don't get ourselves sidetracked into sidebar discussions and sidebar, debates. I think we have to keep focused on the reality. This is a global pandemic. It is a challenge to the human family and we have to stay focused on that.

SONNY FOX: Questions from the floor.

Q: Have you in your work come across any more diseases, because this has been predicted to happen because of this rapid growth of population in our time?

RONALD DELLUMS: Well, let me try to answer your question this way. First of all, AIDS as an infectious disease is, as I understand it, absolutely unprecedented. The level of mortality, there's no disease that can compete with it. The level of mortality is extraordinary. The high rate of infection is extraordinary. There's no disease that we've known since human beings have walked this planet that in any way compares to the gravity and the magnitude of this problem. But I also think I understand something else. You cannot treat AIDS in a vacuum. Once you start to deal with the problem of AIDS, you're going to have to deal with all of these other issues. Opportunistic diseases, etc. Thirdly there's one epidemiologist at the World Health Organization who said to me, Ron, remember this. Every time the human family does not come together to successfully combat an infectious disease, that failure is further complicated in their ability to fight the next infectious disease.

For example, we did a horrible job with gonorrhea. We did a horrible job with tuberculosis. Now we are confronted with AIDS. And guess what? Aids is complicated by our inability to address gonorrhea and other sexually transmitted diseases and tuberculosis and opportunistic diseases that, that come on top of, of AIDS. So it's in our mutual self interest to address this problem of AIDS and in addressing the problem of AIDS, you're gonna address the range of other infectious diseases because you will have to do so.

SONNY: Last question.

Q: Recently I heard that the Executive Producer of a show here in Los Angeles say the network refused him showing condoms because the American people wouldn't accept that. What is your view of that? Should networks be more liberal?

DELLUMS: That's an interesting question. This is the way I would answer it. If people understand the gravity, the magnitude and the urgency of what I said tonight, the answer to that question's become the, the answer to that question becomes in my opinion, patently obvious. And I think I answered that question by saying, if we're going to confront the issues of prevention, then we must be guided not by political rhetoric, but by scientific awareness. And we know that condoms work.

And one other thing. We have to grow up. [LAUGHTER] [APPLAUSE] Someone much brighter than Ron Dellums once said, sex is the great leveller. And AIDS is leveling us. And if, and, and if people feel that passion and that urgency and that sense of threat, then it won't be balancing whether they should or they shouldn't. There's no middle ground here. As I said before, this virus is either going to take us or we're going to take it. There's no middle ground here.

I want to burden you with the responsibility of the knowledge. This is a pandemic that is awesome. It is extraordinary. We entitled our report No Time To Spare. We didn't sit down to figure out a gimmick. No Time To Spare was what we believed and what we see out there in a very powerful and strong way. Final comment that I would make on a high note. I cannot believe that it is the human family's destiny to go out this way. Think about the incredible dark poetry of it that if an act designed to enhance the species becomes the act that destroys human life. I cannot believe that's our end. And so in that I am not a cynic. So therein lies my optimism. Therein lies my hope that the human family will come together and we will find an aggressive and progressive and passionate and compelling way to address this problem. We have to do it for our children and our children's children. Thank you. [APPLAUSE]