Stephen Lewis speaks on the threat from cuts in funding of HIV projects : Shared by Niloufar Pourzand
"We can also unite the country around a different ethos. An ethos of public health," said Stephen Lewis on June 10, 2025, at the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS national summit of medical and HIV experts to raise the alarm about the immense threat that U.S. funding cuts to HIV programs pose to millions at risk of disease and death globally, and the need for Canadian leadership to help prevent a resurgence in AIDS.
Video from the Canadian Treatment as Prevention (TasP) Summit, June 2025Key points include:
- A New National Ethos: Lewis suggests Canada can unite the country around a different ethos—one of public health and a strong response to the "human predicament around infectious disease." He frames this as an "honorable quest" for Canada to become the political vehicle focused on global health [00:07]
- The Infectious Disease Crisis: He emphasizes that the challenge is not just limited to HIV but is a broader "infectious disease explosion" related to human disability and infirmity 00:41], [00:59].
- Critique of Aid Dismantling: Lewis strongly criticizes the dismantling of USAID as one of the "criminal procedures in this world in this century," noting that even the PEPFAR monitoring mechanism has indicated that thousands of deaths will occur as a consequence [01:09].
- Canada's Leadership on HIV: He declares that Canada will not return to the "hallucinatory nightmare of the 1990s and 2000s" and vows that the country will take the lead on HIV by prioritizing both prevention and treatment as prevention [01:36].
- Call to Action: Lewis concludes by asserting that the response is no l
onger a matter of "conjecture" but one of "insistent implementation," offering an opportunity to establish a narrative that makes Canada a leading country around the human predicament [02:03].
It would be interesting to hear Stephen Lewis's views on the children in Gaza.
ReplyDelete@ Anonymous: Here a publicly available Facebook entry from 30 May, by the son of Stephen Lewis:
DeleteMy father Stephen Lewis is spectacularly uninterested in social media, so I’m posting this myself (though he has read it and is prepared to suffer the indignity of all I'm about to reveal).
When he was Canada’s ambassador to the UN from 1984-88, Dad was truly shocked by the regularity of open, vitriolic antisemitism in the cocktail parties and ambassadorial receptions that surround that crucial but flawed institution.
For this reason (among others) he’s always been the one in our family with the deepest atavistic fear of antisemitism. He was sympathetic to the idea of Israel as a refuge longer than the rest of us.
This is no longer the case. Like so many Jews who for decades adopted the dominant narratives of Zionism, he can no longer defend the current actions of the state of Israel.
He now regards Israel as a rogue state, committing genocide and other crimes against humankind, which ought to be opposed by every tool and tactic in Canada's diplomatic arsenal. [...].
Which brings us to this morning, when at 87 years old, he spent an hour standing at the side of the road in his old riding of Scarborough West. Standing up as a Jew against genocide. Standing up for justice for Palestine. Standing up on the right side of history, where the vast majority of humanity currently stands.
I’ve never been prouder, never more humble before the stubborn principle and insistent moral clarity of the guy I’m so lucky to call Dad.
People of Canada: don’t stop talking about Palestine.
Starvation as collective punishment can never be forgiven.
Burning and burying children alive can never be defended.
Stand up against genocide until we make it stop!
There is no indignity to be suffered from this position
DeleteHis religion has nothing to do with his personality ,Lewis has been an honest and thoughtful humanist and one of the ablest orators I have known. In fact when Jim Grant engaged Lewis it was for the purpose of representing unicef in international fora where he spoke about children with much eloquence. I was pleased to have signed his first unicef contract.
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