[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 15]
[House]
[Page 20066]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1100
                     REAUTHORIZE THE RYAN WHITE ACT

  (Ms. NORTON asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute.)
  Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, the international war chest of AIDS is black 
Africa, and in our country it is black America. How did half the cases 
become African American? Even worse, new cases are overwhelmingly 
black.
  We have seen this disease stereotyped as homosexual and now as black. 
The one constant is its spread. Yet, unlike many diseases today, AIDS 
is preventable and can be contained and defeated.
  The answers are not complicated, beginning with far more visible and 
substantive leadership, leadership on testing--I will be tested on the 
Capitol complex grounds in a D.C. health van this afternoon to set an 
example to help prevent the epidemic spread of this disease among 
African Americans--leadership on safe sex and condoms; leadership on 
overcoming homophobia, which is in league with this disease in the 
black community; and above all, leadership from the Congress of the 
United States, which must not go home without reauthorizing the Ryan 
White Act.

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