Flat-Earth AIDS policy.

• Position: Clinton administration proposal to ban federal funding to needle-exchange programs - Column

In late April, the Clinton Administration made an announcement that verged on the criminal. While conceding that needle-exchange programs reduce HIV infection and do not encourage illegal drug use, the Administration decided to extend the ban on federal funding for these programs.

According to The Washington Post, the Clinton Administration announcement was a last-minute waffle. Until the morning of the press conference, Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala was going to announce the Administration's plan to fund needle exchanges.

"But the decision was not as airtight as Shalala and her staff believed," said the Post. "Shortly before 9:00 A.M., she was called out of the meeting for a phone call from White House Chief of Staff Erskine B. Bowles. The needle-exchange decision, he told Shalala, was proving too politically risky. President Clinton had changed his mind. So the Secretary quickly changed hers."

Days later, the Republican leadership rushed through a bill that would one-up the Clinton Administration and bring about a permanent ban. The vote was necessary to stop "a Deadhead President that supports a program that gives free needles to drug addicts," said House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, the Texas Republican. The House vote was anything but a close one: 287-to-140.

"You'd think we were having a meeting of the Flat Earth Society," said Representative Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California. "How can we turn our back on science?"

And the science is...