Two big names—Bono and George W. Bush—weigh in on World AIDS Day, both with the general theme that tremendous progress has been made in the last decade but that it won't matter if the world, specifically the US, gets complacent now. Some highlights:
- Bono: How did all this progress happen? "America led," he writes in the New York Times. "I mean really led." He calls the unlikely alliance of left and right the nation's "greatest act of heroism since it jumped into World War II." US action saved millions of lives. Among those singled out for praise is the "conservative" Bush and his President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. (He recalls Bush "banging his desk when I complained the drugs weren't getting there fast enough.") For the US to back off now "would be one of the greatest accidental evils of this recession," he concludes.