Living History Unknown (best books to read fiction .txt) 📖

womb. Elizabeth was outraged that medications available to her were denied to her daughter and son because they hadn’t been tested for safety and efficacy for children. She and her husband, Paul Glaser, watched helplessly as their daughter succumbed to AIDS at age seven.

Elizabeth turned her personal loss into a mission on behalf of children with HIV/AIDS, founding the Pediatric AIDS Foundation to support and encourage research into the prevention and treatment of childhood AIDS. Until her death in 1994,I worked with Elizabeth to require that medications were being properly tested and administered to children, and then I continued the cause in her memory. Jake has benefited from the advances in treatment and is doing well.

While some drugs are not available for desperately ill children, others are routinely prescribed with little understanding of the proper dosages or potentially harmful side effects.

Jen Klein, my staffer who headed the successful White House effort to improve pediatric labeling and testing, was keenly aware of the issue because her own son, Jacob, was taking medications for asthma. In 1998, the Food and Drug Administration introduced requirements that pharmaceutical companies test drugs for use in children, but some companies sued, and a federal court ruled that the FDA did not have the authority to require testing. As a Senator I’ve been working to pass a law that gives the FDA the power it needs to do what Elizabeth advocated.

Because of my Beijing speech the year before, my visibility around the world had dramatically increased, and my office was bombarded with requests for me to make speeches and attend meetings on my own to discuss issues affecting women in the countries we visited. Prior to Beijing, when we traveled on official visits abroad, I accompanied Bill where appropriate and attended the spouses programs. In mid-November, when we made state visits to Australia, the Philippines and Thailand, I followed my own agenda as well as Bill’s. We also scheduled some necessary R&R. We visited the Great Barrier Reef while we were in Australia after stops in Sydney and Canberra. At Port Douglas, Bill announced American support for the International Coral Reef Initiative, to stem the erosion of reefs around the world, and then we took a boat out to the reef in the Coral Sea. I was anxious to get in the water. “C’mon you guys!” I said to my staff. “Life is too short to worry about getting your hair wet!”

It’s always a big production when a President goes swimming. Navy divers and Secret Service agents in flippers and masks circled us as Bill and 1 marveled at a giant clam and curtains of iridescent fish darting through turquoise waters.

There were other wonderful moments on that trip. Bill played golf with Australia’s most famous “Great White Shark,” the legendary Greg Norman, having prepared by putting up and down the aisles of Air Force One during the flight over. I visited the world famous Sydney Opera House where I spoke to an audience of distinguished women about the presidential election and the emphasis Bill and I had placed on matters concerning women and families, what some pundits called the “feminization of politics” but which I considered the “humanization.”

At a wildlife preserve, Bill cuddled a koala named Chelsea. It’s a small miracle―or an example of fortunate oversight―that he got anywhere near the animal. An overeager White House advance person had taken it upon himself to protect Bill against any possible allergy attack overseas. During a courtesy visit to the Governor-General’s house in Canberra, Bill and I stood with Sir William and Lady Deane, admiring their vast green lawn. Lady Deane turned to Bill, “We’re sorry about the kangaroos,” she said, “We think they’ve caught them all.”

Bill looked puzzled.

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

“Oh dear,” she said. “We were told to get all the kangaroos off the lawn because if one of them came near the President, it would cause an allergic reaction.”

As far as Bill knows, he isn’t allergic to kangaroos, but someone said he was, so the urge to protect him prevailed. Our loyal and dedicated advance teams were eager to help, and I’m grateful for their diligent efforts to anticipate our every need, but I felt terrible when their solicitude became an imposition on others around us. At a state dinner hosted for us by President François Mitterrand and his wife, Danielle, at the Elysée Palace in Paris in 1994, Madame Mitterrand apologized to me because the tables would look so bare without flower arrangements. “What do you mean?” I asked.

“I was told that the President was allergic to flowers.”

He isn’t allergic to cut flowers either, as he told his staff for years, usually to no avail.

We couldn’t have accomplished anything without so many wonderful staff people, but on rare occasions we got more help than we needed!

By now it was understood that when I traveled with the President, I would emphasize issues relating to women, health care, education, human rights, the environment and grassroots efforts such as microcredit to jumpstart economies. I usually branched off from Bill’s official delegation to meet with women in their homes and workplaces, tour hospitals that used innovative approaches to expanding health care to children and families and visit schools, especially those educating girls. In these settings, I learned about the local culture and reinforced the message that a nation’s prosperity is linked to the education and wellbeing of girls and women.

On our first visit to the Philippines in 1994, Bill and I had toured Corregidor, the American base that had fallen to the Japanese during World War II. There General Douglas MacArthur was forced to abandon the islands, though promising, “I shall return.” Filipino soldiers had fought valiantly alongside Americans, paving the way for MacArthur’s eventual return in 1944. The Philippines had undergone wrenching political changes in the decades since World War II and people were still recovering from the effects of twenty-one years of autocratic rule under Ferdinand Marcos. Corazon Aquino, whose husband was assassinated as a