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   Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I rise today to express my deep disappointment in the failure of the conferees to the African Growth and Opportunity Act to accept the Feinstein-Feingold amendment regarding HIV/AIDS drugs in Africa. When the Senate was debating that legislation last year, Senator FEINSTEIN and I offered our amendment, which was accepted by the bill's managers, Senators ROTH and MOYNIHAN, to address a critically important issue--an issue relating to Africa's devastating AIDS crisis; an issue that has cast a dark shadow on U.S.-African relations in the past.

   Our amendment was simple. It prohibited the United States Government

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   The Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, or TRIPS, allows for compulsory licensing in cases of national emergency. Approximately 13 million African lives have been lost since the onset of the crisis. According to the Rockefeller Foundation's recent report, ``on statistics alone, young people from the most affected countries in Africa are more likely than not to perish of AIDS.'' Consider that: more likely than not to perish. If these do not constitute emergency conditions, then I don't know what does.

   This was a very modest amendment to begin with, but the final version of the amendment discussed by the conferees was a true compromise. It was not as strong as I would have liked it to be. But it did push our policy closer to the right thing. I want to take this opportunity to thank Senator FEINSTEIN, Senator MOYNIHAN, Senator ROTH, and their staffs for working so hard on this amendment. Senator FEINSTEIN was a tireless advocate on this issue, and I have no doubt that she will continue to fight, as will I, for the right thing when it comes to access to HIV/AIDS pharmaceuticals. And Senator ROTH, in particular, made it a priority to hammer out this issue, and I thank him for that.

   But despite these efforts, despite the concessions that Senator FEINSTEIN and I made, despite the fact that this is the right thing to do, the Feinstein-Feingold amendment was stripped in conference. The opposition to our amendment is baffling. How do the conferees who killed this provision justify pressuring these countries, where in some cases life expectancies have dropped by more than 15 years, not to use all legal means at their disposal to care for their citizens? Without broader access to these drugs in Africa, more people will suffer, more people will die--that is a simple fact.

   As I said on this floor not long ago, I cannot imagine that ordinary Americans are urging their representatives to oppose the Feinstein-Feingold amendment. I cannot imagine that anyone would try to prevail upon my colleagues to oppose this measure--except perhaps for pharmaceutical companies. The pharmaceutical industry does not fear losing customers in Africa, because they know that Africans simply cannot afford their prices. But they do fear that taking this modest step in this time of crisis could somehow, in some ill-defined scenario in the future, cut into their bottom line. This is the same pharmaceutical and medical supplies industry that gave more than $4 million in PAC money contributions and more than $6.5 million in soft money contributions in 1997 and 1998.

   How could this irresponsible and callous decision to strip the Feinstein-Feingold amendment from the conference have been made? I have some idea. Some may have bowed to the pressure of the pharmaceutical industry. And some members just don't get it.

   In particular, some of the public comments about this issue made over the weekend by a leading Member of this body demonstrated such a misunderstanding of the problem that they cannot go unanswered.

   Over the weekend, some troubling remarks were made about the administration's recognition that HIV/AIDS, an infectious disease that currently affects 34 million people worldwide, is a security issue.

   First, a leader of this body disputed the fact that AIDS is a security issue. He is wrong. Anyone who believes that a dramatic drop in population, a massive reversal in economic growth, a societal disruption of unprecedented proportions, an entire generation of orphans growing up on the streets--anyone who believes that those things are not destabilizing is terribly misguided. Anyone who does not understand that the U.S. will be profoundly affected by the terrible consequences of AIDS in the developing world had better think again.

   But it didn't stop there. It went further. It was suggested that the administration is using the issue cynically to appeal to ``certain groups'' who were not identified.

   Is it pandering to ``certain groups'' to stand up and say that a disease that infects more than 15,000 young people each day is an issue of grave concern? Is it political posturing to get serious about the massive destabilization that can occur when the most productive segment of a society is wiped out by disease? Is it only some mysterious narrow constituency that is concerned about the prospect of millions of orphans growing up on the streets, without any guidance or education? After witnessing the shocking violence that resulted, in large part, from the masterful manipulation of disenfranchised youth in West Africa over the last decade, I think we all have to take this threat seriously, and acknowledge that the threat is fueled each day by the withering scourge of AIDS that today is galloping through so much of the developing world.

   Let me just paint a portrait of the region most affected by AIDS--sub-Saharan Africa. As the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Africa, I have always felt very strongly about the issue of AIDS in Africa. I have raised it in meetings with African heads of state. I applauded the U.N. Security Council's decision to address the crisis earlier this year. I support the administration's call to increase the resources directed at the crisis, and I am glad that the U.S. is finally getting serious about this threat.

   Thirteen million Africans have been killed by AIDS since the onset of the crisis, and according to World Bank President James Wolfensohn, the disease has left 10 million orphaned African children in its wake.

   In Botswana, Namibia, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, 25 percent of the people between the ages of 15 and 19 are HIV positive.

   By 2010, sub-Saharan Africa will have 71 million fewer people than it would have had if there had been no AIDS epidemic. That is why we must acknowledge that the AIDS epidemic is becoming a crucial part of the context for all that happens in Africa and for all of our policy decisions about Africa.

   Until this week this Senate has been moving in the right direction on these issues. I have been pleased to work with many of my colleagues in a bipartisan effort to raise the profile of the epidemic and to work toward a comprehensive package aimed at addressing this crisis. It disturbs me a great deal to think that Members of this body have somehow failed to hear us, or perhaps refused to listen.

   This is not a partisan issue. It is deadly serious. I plead with all of my colleagues to look again at the AIDS epidemic in Africa and to consider its global implications.

   Those implications are fast becoming strategic and economic realities that will kill millions and drag down all of our efforts on international development and the promotion of freedom and stability around the world. We need to get our heads out of the sand right now, resist the impulse to gain partisan advantage, and join together to seek solutions to the AIDS crisis before we reap global disaster.

   U.S. policy on access to HIV/AIDS drugs will come up again in this body. All of the complex issues relating to this crisis--prevention strategies, care for orphans, mother to child transmission--none of these issues is going away. And while this Congress fails to do the right thing, while some fail to grasp the magnitude of the epidemic and its consequences, AIDS will continue to take its terrible toll on families and communities, on economies, and on stability around the world.

   I yield the floor.

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