Burnt Orange Report

At least it ain't just us

By Christina Ocasio

Guest Post by Christina Ocasio

In news of the unbelievable, Senate Majority leader and medical doctor Bill Frist was unable to refute the claim when asked if one could get HIV from sweat and tears . Why would he even be asked such a question? Thanks to some serious dective work done by Rep. Henry Waxman's office, it has come to light that several of the leading federally funded abstience only programs are teaching our children just such "facts." But what takes the cake is when an board certified MD is unwilling to speak the truth about medical matters. For the record, it is impossible to catch HIV from sweat and tears.This past sunday Frist was on ABC's This Week and had the following exchange with George Stephanopoulos.

"STEPHANOPOULOS: Now you're a doctor. Do you believe that tears and sweat can transmit HIV?
FRIST: I don't know. I can tell you --
STEPHANOPOULOS: You don’t know?
FRIST: I can tell you things like, like --
STEPHANOPOULOS: Wait. Let me stop you there. You don't know that, you believe that tears and sweat might be able to transmit AIDS?
FRIST: Yeah, no, I can tell you that HIV is not very transmissible as an element, like compared to smallpox, compared to the flu, it's not.
(snip)
STEPHANOPOULOS: ...Let me just clear this up though, do you or do you not believe that tears and sweat can transmit HIV?
FRIST: It would be very hard...for tears and sweat to -- I mean, you can get virus in tears and sweat. But in terms of the degree of infecting somebody, it would be very hard."

Can someone please explain this? A simple no would have done just nicely.

This is a guest post by Christina Ocasio. Christina is a scientist and writes her own blog at http://www.apathyiscool.com and can be reached at christina at apathyiscool dot com.