Sir Elton John said Betty Price’s comments captured on videotape during a legislative meeting last week are “horrific, discriminatory, and astonishingly ill-informed. | Ari Perilstein/Getty Images Elton John calls Betty Price’s HIV quarantine comments 'horrific'

Elton John Monday condemned Georgia state Rep. Betty Price, wife of former HHS Secretary Tom Price, for making comments suggesting that HIV patients be quarantined.

The singer, an advocate for HIV patients, said that Price’s comments captured on videotape during a legislative meeting last week are “horrific, discriminatory, and astonishingly ill-informed."


"As a doctor and elected official from a state where people are still contracting HIV at an alarming rate, Mrs. Price should know better than to demonize people and perpetuate myths that stigmatize people living with HIV," John said in a statement released through the Elton John AIDS Foundation.

Price, a former anesthesiologist, sparked a firestorm after widely circulated video footage showed her asking whether there are “any methods legally that we could do that would curtail the spread” of HIV.

"I don’t want to say the quarantine word, but I guess I just said it,” Price said.

She has since walked back her comments, telling The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Oct. 21 that she doesn't support a quarantine and only meant to spark a conversation about a pressing health care issue.

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"I do not support a quarantine in this public health challenge and dilemma of undertreated HIV patients," she told the paper. "I do, however, wish to light a fire under all of us with responsibility in the public health arena."

There are 1.1 million people in the United States currently living with HIV and about one in seven are unaware they are infected, according to the CDC.

Price's husband resigned as HHS secretary last month amid intense public scrutiny and federal inquiries following POLITICO reports of his use of private and government planes for travel.

