President Donald Trump twice asked Bill Gates the difference between HPV and HIV, the Microsoft founder told an audience at a recent Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation meeting.
The footage of Gates, aired on MSNBC late Thursday, shows the billionaire philanthropist responding to questions from staff members and describing his first exchanges with the president.
Gates recounted meeting Trump twice after he was elected president, once in December of 2016 and once the following March. He expressed mild incredulity at Trump’s questions about two well-known viruses.
“Both times he wanted to know if there was a difference between HIV and HPV, so I was able to explain that those are rarely confused with each other.”
The questions apparently followed a conversation about the effects of vaccines, a topic that remains controversial in the U.S. as a number of people and lawmakers believe common immunization vaccinations are harmful.
“In both of those two meetings, he asked me if vaccines weren’t a bad thing because he was considering a commission to look into ill-effects of vaccines and somebody — I think it was Robert Kennedy Jr. — was advising him that vaccines were causing bad things. And I said no, that’s a dead end, that would be a bad thing, don’t do that,” Gates recalled.
HPV stands for human papillomavirus, which the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) defines as “a group of related viruses” transmitted sexually that can cause warts and, for some types of the virus, cancer. HIV stands for human immunodeficiency virus, and is a sexually-transmitted disease that breaks down the immune system and can lead to AIDS. “Not everyone with HIV develops AIDS,” the NIH says.
“There was a thing during the election where he and I were at the same place and I avoided him,” Gates also said, garnering laughter from the audience.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is said to be the wealthiest charity foundation in the U.S. with more than $42 billion in assets.
A spokesperson for The White House was not immediately available for comment when contacted by CNBC.
The Trump administration proposed significant cuts to programs helping treat and prevent HIV/AIDs in both its 2018 and 2019 budgets. The reductions in the 2019 budget included slashing $40 million from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s HIV/AIDS prevention programs as well as $26 million from a federal housing scheme for people living with the immune deficiency virus.
Outside of the U.S., the budget proposed a 20 percent cut of more than $1 billion in global HIV funding for 2019. Neither of the budget proposals were passed by Congress in their original form.
Source: Tech CNBC
Bill Gates: Trump asked me the difference between HIV and HPV