Associated Press
Copyright 2002: Associated Press

January 23, 2002

Laura Meckler

Former Rep. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) will head the Bush administration's Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS along with Louis Sullivan, former President Bush's Health and Human Services secretary. Administration officials confirmed the appointment yesterday.

Sullivan has a reputation as a moderate Republican. Coburn's choice is more controversial, partly because of the conservative credentials he honed over six years in Congress and partly because he challenges some of the orthodoxy surrounding AIDS prevention. "We have a prevention strategy that's failed," Coburn said in an interview Tuesday.

Coburn, an obstetrician who has returned to his family practice in Muskogee, Okla., was a leader on health care issues in Congress. He was the primary sponsor of legislation renewing the Ryan White CARE Act, and he joined with Democrats to support a patient's bill of rights. He was a fierce abortion opponent and a supporter of teaching sexual abstinence and excluding discussion of birth control. In 1999, Coburn single-handedly held up popular legislation helping uninsured women pay for cancer treatments because he insisted that the government put labels on condoms warning that they do not prevent the spread of human papillomavirus. Coburn left the House at the end of 2000, fulfilling a pledge to serve just six years in Congress.

On Tuesday, Coburn said that his personal views would not dictate the work of the panel, but he promised to challenge the national focus on condom use to prevent the spread of HIV. "Condoms are fairly effective against HIV if people will use them," he said. "We have to ask a question: Are people going to use them? ...We have had a strategy that says that's the answer. We've spent hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars and HIV infection is going up." Government statistics show that HIV infection overall has been stable in recent years, though studies suggest rates are rising among certain groups, including poor black women and young gay men.

AIDS activists offered mixed reaction to the appointment. Darin Johnson of AIDS Action said, "You can't hate the guy because he's always been out front advocating for the issue." But he asked, "Will the committee be a true, honest voice or is a council being put together that can basically give a green light for moving a lot of conservative HIV policies?" Coburn said he would direct the council, whose first meeting will be in March or April, based on science and public health, not any political agenda.