[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 3]
[House]
[Page 3598]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



 WOMEN'S HISTORY MONTH; AND THE HIV/AIDS VIRUS AS IT AFFECTS WOMEN AND 
                                CHILDREN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Gilchrest). Under a previous order of 
the House, the gentlewoman from Maryland (Mrs. Morella) is recognized 
for 5 minutes.
  Mrs. MORELLA. Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to be here this 
afternoon for this important special order to celebrate Women's History 
Month. I know my colleague, the gentlewoman from Illinois (Mrs. 
Biggert), will be continuing with this special order.
  I would like to point out that, as we approach a new century, there 
is no doubt that women have made great strides in business, the 
professions and trades and as leaders in government. Society is the 
richer for it.
  Although women have made enormous strides, discrimination in the 
workplace still exists. So does discrimination in health research and 
in the delivery of health care or the lack thereof, steadfastly 
remaining our problem, ``a woman's problem.'' We have to continue to 
improve the lives of women and children, which ultimately will benefit 
everyone.
  Mr. Speaker, we are going to hear from my colleagues the history of 
women's health, and I do want to say that women are not little men. I 
am pleased, with my colleagues many years ago, we celebrated the 10th 
anniversary of the Office of Research on Women's Health at the National 
Institutes of Health. Prior to that time, women were not included in 
clinical trials or protocols.
  There was the famous aspirin test with regard to cardiovascular 
disease. It was done with about 44,000 male medical students. Yet the 
extrapolation was that this is the way women would be affected by it. 
Well, there is breast cancer, ovarian cancer, osteoporosis, lupus. We 
now are beginning to concentrate on research with regard to women and 
the implications of those diseases and diagnoses and treatments.
  But I thought that I would devote my time now to speak about a silent 
epidemic which is not often spoken about, a kind of silent genocide, if 
you will, the death and dying that no one is really addressing: those 
that occur to women and children who carry the HIV virus and represent 
the growing face of the AIDS epidemic.
  We are at a crossroads in the history of the AIDS epidemic. Thanks to 
dramatic new treatments and improvements in care, the number of AIDS-
related deaths has begun to decline. However, while we have made great 
strides, the crisis has not yet abated. Continued research is needed to 
provide better, cheaper treatments and eventually a vaccine or a cure.
  Remarkable medical advances have done nothing to stem the rise in new 
infections among adolescents, women, and minority communities. In fact, 
the well-publicized success of new drug therapies has encouraged some 
to believe that the epidemic has peaked, making it harder than ever to 
reinforce the need for prevention among those who are most at risk.
  As a result, HIV/AIDS remains a major killer of young people and the 
leading cause of death for African Americans and Hispanics between the 
ages of 25 and 44. Across this country and around the world, AIDS is 
rapidly becoming a woman's epidemic. Women constitute the fastest-
growing group of those newly infected with HIV in the United States. 
Worldwide, almost half of the 14,000 adults infected daily with HIV, 
for example, in 1998, were women, of whom nine out of the 10 live in 
developing countries.
  In Africa, teenage girls have infection rates five to six times that 
of teenage boys, both because they are more biologically vulnerable to 
infection and because older men often take advantage of young women's 
social and economic powerlessness.
  Statistics of the economic, social and personal devastation of HIV 
and AIDS in subSaharan Africa are staggering. Now 22.3 million of the 
33.6 million people with AIDS worldwide reside in Africa, and 3.8 
million of the 5.6 million new HIV infections occurred in Africa in 
1999. By the year 2010, 40 million children will be orphaned by HIV and 
AIDS. Children are being infected with HIV and AIDS, many through 
maternal-fetal transmission.
  Biologically and socially, women are more vulnerable to HIV and AIDS 
than men. Many STDs and HIV are transmitted more easily from a man to a 
woman and are more likely to remain undetected in women, resulting in 
delayed diagnosis and treatment and even more severe complications. 
Yet, more than 20 years into the AIDS crisis and at a time when the 
incidence of HIV and STDs is reaching epidemic proportions, the only 
public health advice to women about preventing HIV and other STDs is to 
be monogamous or to use condoms.
  I have been working very hard and we have had many results with 
regard to the development of microbicides to help to prevent the spread 
of HIV and other STDs and have legislation to do so. So much more needs 
to be done.
  I do hope that all of us in Congress will look at what we can do to 
stop that hemorrhage of HIV and AIDS, especially in women and young 
people.

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