Pop superstar Sir Elton John is begging politicians around the world: Don’t let the sun go down on vital research for eradicating HIV/AIDS.
In a new cover story for Variety published Tuesday (Nov. 24), John called out a lack of political support for combatting the lethal epidemic, saying that politicians have the ability to help bring an end to the disease in our lifetimes. “I just am enraged by it,” John said. “It’s very frustrating when you’ve got the tools in your hand to end it, and then you find that countries in Africa, Russia, the Middle East and Eastern Europe won’t help.”
Turning his attention to the U.S. specifically, John praised the efforts of the current administration to bring an end to the war in Gaza, while simultaneously calling them out for fumbling an issue as vital as ending HIV and AIDS. “There’s another war with people who are suffering from HIV and AIDS that should be able to get their medicine but can’t, because governments won’t let them. It’s inhumane,” he said. “So my big beef at the moment is, yes, thank God, maybe there’s peace, after more things are sorted out. But there are crimes against millions of other people that are happening because of governments and stigma and hate.”
John has plenty of experience in the arena of combatting HIV/AIDS — his non-profit, the Elton John AIDS Foundation, is currently the fifth-largest funder for research into the disease globally. To date, the organization has helped raise more than $650 million for the cause.
When speaking about Donald Trump specifically, John made the argument that if the president dedicated his efforts to helping end the global epidemic, he could go down as “one of the greatest presidents in history” for doing so. “If he ended AIDS, that would really be a feather in his cap,” he added.
Despite John’s wishes, the Trump administration has turned the opposite direction, halting funds originally intended for global programs aimed at HIV prevention and openly threatening federal funding for domestic programs aimed at helping those afflicted with the disease.
“It’s so frustrating when you have the medicine, you have PrEP, you have the antiretrovirals,” John concluded. “We can stop the spread of AIDS, if people just got off their backsides and treated human beings in a Christian kind of way.”
