HIV+Hep in the News

Carl Schmid, the institute’s executive director, told Metro Weekly that Kennedy’s embrace of the theory that HIV is not the sole cause of AIDS is “dangerous” for those suffering from HIV domestically, as such beliefs could lead to the embrace of policies that cut off treatment and prevention measures. “I’m not a scientist or a clinician, but I know enough that these antiretroviral drugs out there, that are keeping people alive and healthy, are going after the virus and preventing it from replicating,” Schmid said. “How are you going to treat people if you don’t know what causes AIDS, and how are we going to prevent HIV if we don’t understand what causes HIV?”

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has raised questions about the science around AIDS. In his 2021 book, “The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health,” Kennedy questioned the “orthodoxy” that HIV is the “sole cause” of AIDS. Francoise Barré-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier won the Nobel Prize for their 1983 discovery of HIV. Current AIDS preventative treatments, which allow patients to live years longer than they did before the introduction of the drugs, work by stopping the virus from replicating. “This is long settled science. It’s just dangerous for him to be saying these things,” said Carl Schmid, the executive director of the HIV+Hepatitis Policy Institute, which sent letters to senators urging them to question Kennedy on the issue.

“President Trump, in his last term, established the Ending the HIV Epidemic initiative and funded. We don’t know what the second term is going to bring,” Carl Schmid, executive director of the HIV+Hepatitis Policy Institute, said in an interview with Managed Healthcare Executive. “You can’t take away healthcare from people living with HIV,” Schmid continued. “It is a lifetime requirement and unfortunately, we don’t have adequate private insurance programs or adequate Medicare programs to ensure that people have that care, treatment and support services to make sure they stay adherent to their medications. I think everything’s on the table right now, and that’s our job is to educate the new administration, educate the new Congress about the value of HIV prevention, research, testing, treatment, PrEP.”