"President Barack Obama has a standing invitation to speak at the [XIX International AIDS Conference in Washington, D.C., next week], and he likely would be welcomed with loud cheers given his progressive HIV/AIDS policies," journalist Jon Cohen writes in a Slate opinion piece. "But Obama apparently can't carve out the time, which both runs the risk of angering a volatile community and squandering a historic opportunity," he continues. Though some "U.S. government officials who have made presentations at the meeting ... have weathered humiliating greetings, ... Obama would face none of this hostility," Cohen writes, noting that the U.S. "today spends more money on HIV/AIDS research than all countries combined and also is the single most generous donor to the global effort to combat the disease."