MedPol: African American Women and AIDS

Flashback to the VP debates:

I want to talk to you about AIDS, and not about AIDS in China or Africa, but AIDS right here in this country, where black women between the ages of 25 and 44 are 13 times more likely to die of the disease than their counterparts. What should the government's role be in helping to end the growth of this epidemic?

Cheney looked bad enough saying he simply didn't know much about the figures, i.e. had no idea what to answer. Edwards looked even worse because he started blathering about things that had even less to do with what the woman asked. And this point sticks out, because damn, shouldn't the VP candidates know something about this topic? It's no more complex than anything else they're supposed to know about, but that's the problem--nobody in their campaigns thought they were supposed to know about it. That sucks.

This Slate article expands on the topic more.