Victoria Wells Wulsin
Victoria Elizabeth Wells Wulsin (born October 27, 1953) is a physician working on stopping the spread of AIDS in Kenya and the Democratic candidate for Congress in the Second District of Ohio (map) in the 2006 election. She is a resident of Indian Hill, a wealthy Cincinnati suburb.
Wulsin was born in Elyria, Ohio, the daughter of a teacher and a social worker. She attended high school in Ohio and earned a scholarship to Harvard University, where she did her undergraduate coursework. After college, she returned to Ohio and received a medical degree from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland on May 28, 1980. She later received her masters and doctorate degrees in Public Health at Harvard University. Wulsin received her medical license in Ohio on March 7, 1989. Her husband, Lawson Reed Wulsin, is a psychiatrist.
In April 2003, Wulsin founded a non-profit organization to fight the AIDS disease in Africa, SOTENI International [1]—the name is a Swahili word for "all of us together" and an acronym for Sustainability, Opportunity, Training, Epidemiology, Networking, and Interdependence—which has its headquarters in Cincinnati and an office in Kenya. SOTENI has been "mainly aimed towards women and orphans who were most effected [sic] by the AIDS pandemic." [2]
In 2004, Wulsin was hired by Cincinnati's Heimlich Institute to analyze data on African AIDS patients and to provide a privately circulated "product marketing report" [3] for "malariotherapy," a discredited theory that AIDS can be cured by infecting patients with malaria. At various times since 1980, Heimlich has made the claims that AIDS, cancer, and Lyme disease may be cured by giving malaria to patients suffering from those diseases. Long before Wulsin's affiliation, Heimlich's bizarre offshore human experiments had been the subject of numerous media exposes [4] which included strong criticism by immunologists and bioethicists, some of whom have compared Heimlich's unsupervised human experiments to Nazi concentration camp atrocities. In December 2004, when reporters began asking questions, she and Heimlich terminated the relationship. [5]
Politics
Wulsin has not held elected office.
2005 special election for Congress
Wulsin was a candidate for the Democratic nomination for Congress to replace Rob Portman in the Second District of Ohio in the special primary held June 14, 2005. Wells finished second behind Paul Hackett.
In the 2005 special election primary, Wulsin campaigned to reform health care to provide every citizen with coverage, promised to protect Social Security and the environment, said the Iraq War "has not been worth the cost of American service personnel or the dollars we have spent", and said America needed "fair trade" in the proposed CAFTA agreement. She also wrote strongly on defending legalized abortion:
- I support a woman’s constitutional right to choose and I oppose any effort to curtail that right. Effective sex education, available birth control and contraceptive distribution must be used to prevent unwanted pregnancies. The government should not interfere with women and their families’ ability to make private, personal decisions.
Wulsin wrote of her goals if elected:
- Throughout my career, I have successfully used a results-oriented philosophy which emphasizes building consensus to solve problems. I will use this same formula in Congress to address the compelling problems facing us. The bitterly partisan environment which now dominates Congress may make good sound bites, but is disastrous for our citizens who deserve a thoughtful examination of the issues, real dialogue (not pre-rehearsed, orchestrated events), and real solutions.[6]
She was endorsed by Alexander Sanger, chairman of the International Planned Parenthood Council and Laketa Cole, a member of the Cincinnati City Council. She told The Enquirer, "The most important issue facing our country today is health care. Having spent 25 years as a public health physcian, I have unique experience."
In the final 2005 Democratic primary returns, Wulsin finished second. She received 3,800 votes (27.35%).
2006 election for Congress
In 2006, Wulsin sought the Democratic nomination again. With Paul Hackett having announced he would not run again, she faced health care administrator James John Parker and civil engineer Jeff Sinnard, who both ran in 2005, and newcomers Gabrielle Downey, a high school teacher, and Thor Jacobs, a building contractor. Wulsin won the May 2 primary by nearly 15 percentage points and received the Democratic nomination for the 2nd District. She will face Rep. Jean Schmidt (R) in the November 2006 general election.
See also
External links
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