AIDS has been in the news quite a bit recently, probably more so this year than in recent years.

A little research online turns up the fact that AIDS really started becoming a problem in the early 1980's, although no one really knows even today where it originated or how it started.

Now when this disease was in its infancy in the early 1980's I can't say that I was exactly cognizant of political events. In fact I was mostly concerned with whether or not I'd be able to go outside and play after school seeing as I'm only 26.

However, once I got to high school and college and started taking an interest in both history and politics I became appalled at some of the things I learned, especially some of the things I learned about the early years of this disease.

I was able to find this article: Why Reagan ignored AIDS online last night. I'm not submitting this necessarily as proof of anything, but it does a much better job articulating some of my thoughts on the subject that I could.




Today if we had 59,000 cases of anything the media, the CDC, everyone would be crawling all over it. In fact, that is more Americans dead than in the Vietnam war! SARS only had a few thousand cases and that was news for months and sparked fear globally.






50% mortality rate, again this would seem to me to draw major attention.


Today this would be the equivalent of telling a joke about the death of 3000 people in the World Trade Center, 59K deaths is no laughing matter.

Clearly I don't believe that AIDS could have been eradicated if Reagan had simply paid attention to it, but we would certainly be far better off today if we had education programs in place back then, even more so if they were given the funding they are today.

So bearing that in mind, I wanted to discuss the start of this epidemic and where we went wrong. It seems logical to me to start with Reagan.

Questions for debate:
1. Could Reagan have helped to prevent this disease from being so widespread today simply by acknowledging it as a problem and investing in education and research earlier?

2. Why was the AIDS epidemic completely ignored by our country's leadership for 7 years? Was it Homophobia and the Religious Right as the article suggests? Or was it lack of knowledge or some combination of all of these factors?

3. Should Reagan shoulder the blame for his irresponsible policy regarding AIDS during the majority of his presidency or should the blame fall on the Relgious Right? Why or why not?

I will respond to this later on, but to actually add a little bit of factual context to this debate I would submit the information contained at this website for consideration.

Those are the raw numbers approved, but Reagan had little if anything to do with them.

Activists recall Reagan's record on AIDS



So before dissmissing the debate questions entirely with a few quick and dirty statistics, lets dig a little deeper into those statistics. It appears that Congress was responsible for that budget, not Reagan. Admittedly the numbers in this article don't exactly match up to the ones in your article either, but who knows if we are comparing apples to apples here, we need an original source with the budget, not some article with an bias (including mine, I was just illustrating a point). The fact that your article calls this whole thing a "liberal lie" gives that one away pretty easily.

The numbers are put into context if you look at the original source here (ppt document). Check out chart #2 in that powerpoint document.

I also noted when I posted this question that I was not submitting the article as proof of anything. I stated that it summed up my position on things and I believe that I posed the debate questions in a way that allows us to explore whether that position is right or wrong. My position is by no means inflexible.

I'm prefaceing this with the fact i believe the AIDS lobby in this country is the most manipulative and mendacious out of that nest of vipers


1. Could Reagan have helped to prevent this disease from being so widespread today simply by acknowledging it as a problem and investing in education and research earlier?

No, people will shoot drugs or have unprotected sex with multiple partners even if they know the risk. Wear a Jimmy and Chase the Dragon are hardly difficult rules to follow. People to this day still ignore it!

2. Why was the AIDS epidemic completely ignored by our country's leadership for 7 years? Was it Homophobia and the Religious Right as the article suggests? Or was it lack of knowledge or some combination of all of these factors?

No it was the fact it is only spread through certain activities do not participate in said activities and the chances of you getting them are near non-existent.

On point the amount of money spent on AIDS a completely preventable disease is ridiculous when compared to diseases such as heart disease cancer or diabetes.


3. Should Reagan shoulder the blame for his irresponsible policy regarding AIDS during the majority of his presidency or should the blame fall on the Relgious Right? Why or why not?

No the AIDS lobbyist should be blamed for their own irresponsible behavior. I knew how AIDS was spread when I was in third grade that was 1984 and I was eight. So their is no excuse for a bunch of grown men having group sex in a bath house to not know. They chose to ignore the warnings and end up paying the ultimate price for it. I can have sympathy for them as it is a wretched death, however blaming an administration for not creating a condom police or a needle gestapo does not incur any sympathy for me. Besides I thought the left did not want the government out of the bedroom .

Wow, quite the vitriol pouring from that post. It seems the whole "live in sin, die in sin" quote attributed to Readan is something you might agree with...

Think of all the money we could save. Why just the $2 billion dollars per year in lung cancer research alone would be a lot of money saved. After all, 80% of lung cancer deaths are smoking related, and if people do that to themselves they do not deserve research money spent to cure the disease, they can die for their sins. Those 160,000 people who die every year from lung cancer undoubtably deserve it.

Cirrhosis also kills about 26,000 people per year, but once we remove all the money for treatment and tranbsplants, we will save a bundle. After all, alcohol consumption is related to 70% of cases of cirrhosis, so these people obviously DESERVE to die.

While we are at it, we should withdraw treatment from diseases like Ghonorrea, Chlamydia, Syphillis, HPV and other diseases that COULD be prevcented with precautions and foreknowledge, after all, all of these people clearly DESERVE to die.

That is your point, right? That these people deserve to die because some of them caught the desease in a manner which was preventable with the proper precautions? (Assuming they knew about it, which is not a clear assumption in the early 1980s) Of course, many caught the disease through blood transfusions and surgury (like a childhood friend of mine at the time) , but lets just ignore them.

And somehow, because they DESERVED to catch the disease, it was right to punish them by refusing to fund research to cure it?




How on earth could you justify such an outragious series of statements?

I'll give my takes from experience and not the takes of others. In 1984, I was 32 years old and sexually energetic (less so now), hetero (still am), and scared silly as the canaries in the mine fell left and right. It was a period of high anxiety about sex of any kind where people would ask for personal histories from prospective partners.

Romance died right then and there. Safe sex became such an obsession that abstinence seemed the only reasonable way to go. The whole country seemed to turn neurotic overnight. Strange obsessive/compulsive behaviors seemed normal.

Then in the 90s it all seemed to whip-snap the other way.



Ignoring or dismissing a problem only makes it worse. Yes, Reagan could have been a leader on this issue, but that would have been political suicide for him. He opted for silence while his supporters were active in denial and condemnation of the sick.



Only the right side of things was doing the ignoring. The left was active in trying to get the right to acknowledge that this was more than a homosexual problem, and indeed the disease spread into hetero lives through various vectors like blood transfusions.



Mr. Reagan has no more responsibilities. He is dead. Whatever karma is due is between him and his maker.

The religious right should be ashamed for its complete abandonment of Christian principles regarding AIDS. Meanwhile, armies of true Christians/other faiths have administered to AIDS victims and shown the true compassion that being a Christian means. The rest of them were just using religion as a club, and still do.

Warning: Crass Plug Ahead!

Doctors Without Borders is an organization that works to fight AIDS and other world health problems. It's a worthy cause for people of all faiths, or none at all. I've earmarked 20% of earnings through music (tips, paid gigs, royalties) to this organization, plus stray bucks that are around when the wallet's fat.

All in all, I see the history of how this country handled AIDS as a coming of age. We were once a lot more innocent, and that is to say, ignorant. Now at least we know the risks involved with various activities (including surgery), or we should know. There's no excuse not to know.

But people cannot live in a condom. And so people will continue to die from AIDS and many other preventable diseases because, well, what's better -- a long boring life or an exciting short one? I suppose a balance of the two.

The irony that Ronald Reagan died from what could become a preventable disease is not lost on me. The religious right has learned nothing. It stands in the way of a cure for Reagan's long goodbye.

Perhaps whatever karma was due has already been paid.

Reagan's attitude towards AIDS is habitually distorted.

I'm pretty sure I have posted this link before: Anti-Gay Gipper: A lie about Reagan.



Thanks for adding to the distortion. That particular quote is the fabrication of the CBS mini-series: CBS, ‘The Reagans,’ and the Political Classes



It is now part of the popular culture, I guess. Absolutely disgraceful.

The second myth is that Reagan never even mentioned AIDS publicly until 1987. Bunk, of course.

The President's News Conference: September 17, 1985


The numbers on AIDS/HIV research that Aquilla cites comes from this Congressional report. It breaks out HHS spending separately, and then cites total government spending. The discrepancy might be there. Page 6 has the total government spending figures.

You can make the argument that it wasn't enough money, but please don't make the argument that Reagan did nothing. AIDS has not been cured in the 15 since Reagan left office (unless you count Magic Johnson...) The Reagan Administration spent over $5.7 billion on AIDS research.

If that constitutes "doing nothing" from a President who advocated a reduction of all government services...

The Murdock article that Amlord linked is pretty compelling. Its actually an excellent example of quality journalism in my opinion. He provides positions and uses quality sources to back it up. Is it 100% true? Probably not. I suspect somewhere between the CJ original article (from a film critic, btw) and the Murdock article lies the truth.

AIDS did get begin to get solid funding starting in 1986, but I think its a fair complaint to say it was still too little back then. I think Reagan's underfunding had less to do with his opinion/beliefs about homosexuality and more to do with his conservative views of government spending (outside of defense), his budget priorities, and his (and others) unwillingness to recognize AIDS for the potential epidemic it was until the mid 80's.

The baywindows article does offer some interesting questions as to how much Reagan perhaps fought with congress over AIDS funding but given the source and the lack of supporting sources its hard to substantiate.

Should Reagan get 100% of the credit for 5.7 billion in funding for AIDS research during his administration? Nope. But I think Murdock's conclusion sums up my take on it pretty nicely:



And for the record, this was educational for me, because I bought into much of the legends regarding Reagan, AIDS, and homosexuality. And I think this is a classic example where the process of formulating beliefs/positions should require that you examine both sides of the argument and then make a decision. And this is not to say that contributors to this discussion have not done so. It just codifies my own personal approach to it.

Doc

I think most of us can agree that The Reagans is loosely based in truth but mostly sensationalist television.



The quote I provided from the initial article does say a little bit about his motivations in my opinion. While he may have never said anything as sensational as on The Reagans his support of his Religious Right base (which definitely was saying things like that, some already quoted in this thread) indicates that he went along with that line of thought.


I went back to take a look at this and basically found the same 1985 article you quoted. However, I think the point the author in my article was trying to make is that it wasn't treated as a serious public problem and the public wasn't adequately informed by the president. Let's take a real world example here.

Let's say we had a terrorist threat today, and Bush knew it was going to happen the last week of August. Would you feel he was adequately addressing the problem if the only place he mentioned it was in some obscure C-SPAN interview which would be seen by very few Americans?

Here is the quote again from the article:

This is the same situation, Reagan may well have mentioned AIDS a few times in 1985 and 1986, but it wasn't really talked about seriously until 1987. The key words there are major policy address not comments to some reporter that will likely not reach any significant portion of the country.

Also consider that by 1987 27K Americans had been died from the disease. That is more than the number of Americans that died during most wars! What president could ignore something like that and let it continue? He thought Russia was the enemy? Russia wasn't killing 27K US citizens.


I wasn't proposing that he did nothing as far as research goes, I was proposing he did nothing as far as informing the public of a very deadly health threat. In that area he did nothing. Throwing money at research is very different than telling people there is a danger out there and they need to be aware of it.

The number of cases increased exponentially as nothing was done about educating people in the early years. If a major public address ahd occurred much earlier, we might have fewer cases today. Would it be cured? Probably not, but we would have started the education process much earlier and saved thousands of lives.

Fair enough. To be honest I did not even look up the quote, I had just heard it referenced, my bad. Nor by the way, does the accuracy of the quote affect the point of my statement, which was not to comment on the motives of Reagan, but rather to comment on the post by ChiefDork. In that context, my point still stands.

However, for the slight I gave to Reagan in this specific case, I apologise, that quote was clearly misattributed.

Fair enough. But do we give Reagan credit for what his administration did?

For example, C Everett Koop (the Surgeon General appointed by Reagan) wrote the comprehensive, non-judgemental report on AIDS which was published in 1986. This was under Reagan.

Koop also published "Understanding AIDS" and it was mailed to every one of the US's 107 million households in 1988. This was under Reagan.

Do we blame Clinton (for instance) for failing to personally bring to our attention the dangers of smoking? I don't think so. Smoking kills 400,000 people per year. I don't think we should point fingers and place "blame" for public health issues on politicians.

That is correct Amlord, Dr. Koop did take a stand against AIDS, but in doing so he comitted political suicide with his base. They supported him because he was anti-abortion but he shocked them when he supported AIDS education.

Koop's Stand on AIDS Turns Allies Into Critics, Foes Into Followers (12/28/87)


From the Encyclopedia of AIDS


So, here you have a shining star of hope, a voice of reason, in the Reagan administration -- not to mention the one person who has the most interest in communicating public health threats -- and no one listens to him. Reagan's staff, specifically Bennett and Bauer, did everything they could to undercut Koop's proposals making them largely ineffective. His report called for education in schools, clearly that wasn't going to happen with Bennett's opposition.

So, where was Reagan during all of this? Members of his staff were fighting amongst themselves over policy, playing a game of one-upmanship. A leader would have intervened here, looked at the arguments of both sides and taken a side -- Reagan did nothing.


Apples and Oranges Amlord, smoking is not nearly the same thing. Even if you wanted to make a comparison plenty has been done about smoking, the Surgeon General's warning is on every box of cigarettes, advertising has been limited, people are educated about the dangers. Ask any six year old and they'll tell you that smoking is bad.

What you could compare this to is another outbreak, such as SARS, which happened under Bush. But even Bush responded well to this outbreak that was comparatively more mild and less life threatening. People were informed and took precautions.

What Reagan did is the equivalent of ignoring a hypothetical outbreak of Ebola virus in Los Angeles while everyone died and blaming it on South Central.

You made a good case against William Bennett. I am not sure how the Education Secretary equates to the President, however. Did Reagan remove Koop in 1986? Did he censure further reports? Did he forbid the mass mailing in 1988?

No. No. and No.

Your rhetoric proves nothing about Reagan.

How can you say that no one listened to Koop when the HHS budget for AIDS researched ballooned every year? It flies in the face of the facts.

The fact is that research was the key. Do you really think that any kind of public service campaign would have made a difference to the American public? Look at those who scoff at the current ad series "The Anti-Drug". Strategies are offered by the government, and most people on this board laugh at them, calling them ineffective or naive. Yet here you are saying that Reagan should have done more to spread awareness.

Awareness to who? Drug users? Sex partners? Blood transfusion recipients?

The first group wouldn't care, the second (as AuthorMusician has pointed out) changed their behavior, and the third have no conscious role in the matter (it is the health providers who were responsible there).

What exactly should Reagan have done? Give a speech telling everyone to know who their sex partners have been with? He would have been laughed off the podium. Perhaps he should have counseled people to "wrap up"? Do you really think a President of the US would give such advice? (Did Bush, did Clinton?)

Hindsight is easy. Accusing dead guys is even easier.



Really? Apples and oranges? In each case, personal choice is the determining factor concerning risk (except in the rare case of blood transfusions). Are you telling me that 20,000 deaths in 1988 from AIDS is worse than the 400,000 deaths each year caused by cigarette smoking? What about the 90,000 deaths per year caused by infections in hospitals? I didn't see nearly $6 billion go into better sterilization in hospitals under Reagan, he must hate, uh, sick people.

I was a kid at the time, but according to AuthorMusician:


I wonder why safe sex became an obsession? Someone was getting the word out.

The Education Secretary is a member of the president's staff, and therefore the president is ultimately responsible for his actions.

The articles I have cited state two important things:
1) Koop was prevented from adressing AIDS publicly before 1986 - so who prevented him? Dollars to donuts it was Reagan or indirectly his administration.

2) Reagan made efforts to reduce funding that was approved for AIDS research, but congress generally overruled him and he caved and passed the larger budget.

No, he didn't remove Koop, no he didn't forbid anything after '86. Again let's bring this back to modern day politics. If Rumsfeld and Powell were working against each other on the Iraq situation and Bush sat idly by watching them duke it out, would you condone that? I'll bet you wouldn't.

Reagan displayed no leadership by allowing Koop to get his message out (which as I pointed out conservatives were disappointed in) but at the same time allowing elements of his administration to work against those efforts. A leader would have stepped in, what would you have done in that situation?


Right now, research is the key; back then awareness and prevention were the key. And yes, I think that a public awareness campaign would have made a huge difference in the period between 81 and 87 if it were launched with some of Koop's recommendations on condom education.

If you look at how we handle AIDS today, not much has changed there. We inform people with public service announcements, educate people about the disease and encourage condom use. I would say that the vast majority of adults today are aware of the dangers of the disease and how to reasonably protect yourself. Back in the early 1980's that was not the case, otherwise the disease would not have spread so efficiently the spread would have been slower.

I'd like to see anyone present a credible argument that AIDS education is ineffective, I highly doubt too many people here on AD would arugue that Amlord.


Instead of waiting to make an address in a major public policy speech until 1987, he could have done it much sooner for starters. He clearly knew about the disease well in advance of that.

He could have included it in a national speech (like any politician today would do if we were facing some life threatening illness that was moving through the population unchecked) and then turned the forum over to Koop (who could have also done his research earlier than 1986). Finally he could have ensured that people got educated about the disease and put many of the initiatives we take for granted today in motion far earlier than they were.

Would it have eliminated the disease? No. But it sure would have put things in a positive motion a lot earlier.


Yes, apples and oranges. Cigarettes are a tangible entity and they are manufactured by an industry. People can be warned simply by putting a warning label on the cigarette box, how do you propose to warn people about to have sex about AIDS?

That aside, comparing this to cigarettes is the beginning of a strawman fallacy anyway.


Possibly, but as I have proven it sure wasn't Reagan. Several of the articles I read stated that AIDS was at least in the news back then, so I guess it was the "liberal media" that got the word out.

I'd like to see some evidence that Koop was "preventing from addressing AIDS publicly". One accusation from a source that says Reagan slashed AIDS research money is not sufficient for me.


Again, hindsight is 20-20. I will wager that the homosexual community knew about AIDS. I can't be sure, I was only a kid.

Condom "education" remains controversial. Does that mean Bush, Clinton, and Bush are to blame for later AIDS victims?

Health experts glad Reagan cited AIDS

This article ends by pointing out how AIDS is spread.


The information is misleading. It seems to indicate that AIDS is spread only through sexual contact. It doesn't say that in absolute terms, but the impression is there. Is the LA Times guilty of harming the public's education? It goes on to say that homosexuals and bisexuals are most at risk. It seems to minimize the heterosexual risk. Are they harming the public's education?

Again, hindsight is 20-20. Of course more could have been done. Of course other measures could have been taken.

Your second question here was:

Completely ignored for 7 years is your assertion. The question is flawed (and biased). The Surgeon General is the government's health care and disease prevention spokesman and expert. He WAS out there. He WAS doing something. He was appointed by Reagan. He was given ever increasing budgets.

If the question is really "Should a President speak out about every health care issue of the day?" or even more specifically "Should a President speak out about AIDS?" then the answer might be yes. There was a lot of unknown factors with AIDS.

Wouldn't it have created even more damage if Reagan had said something that was wrong? Let the health care experts take care of health care problems.

I'm not sure I follow your logic here. The article clearly states:

I counted three causes there (sexual contact through bodily fuild exchange, needles and blood transfusions), and unless the readers of the LA Times in 1985 had a 3rd grade reading level that would seem clear to them too.


This was also factually correct at the time, those groups were at the highest risk. Clearly heterosexuals contracted the disease via bisexuals. But in 1985, the disease was widely regarded as a homosexual disease so I don't see anything wrong with the information the LA Times presents, nor do I see how they are harming public education by presenting false information.



Ok, how about the fact that Reagan himself handicapped Koop's recommendations at the Third International AIDS Conference in Washington, D.C. May 31st 1987 (the link is a compilation I couldn't find the speech)

So here we see that:
- Reagan asked Koop for a Report
- Reagan didn't like the recommendations, but approved it anyway
- Reagan rejected the recommendations in a policy speech and showed a bit of his homosexual bias.

Additionally Koop in his own words described how his efforts were hampered in a 2001 speech at the Kaiser Family Foundation's National Symposium on U.S. AIDS Policy
Koop, a primary source here, said that he was prevented from saying anything for the first 5 years because many people in the administration (he doesn't say the president himself) considered the disease a homosexual problem.


1 man against an army of people in that administration who believed homosexuals were getting what they deserved. See above for why he wasn't "out there".

I had been thinking of avoiding this thread altogether as it is difficult for me to address this history without anger and grief. But as I'm one of the few people here who both lived through the Reagan years as an adult and happens to be gay, I figured I should probably weigh in. I'm going to depart a bit from my customary posting style and submit a largely personal reaction here. I have some source material at hand, which is unavailable online, but a lot of this is simply burned in my memory. If pressed, I can try to locate additional sources. Mainly, I want to describe the events which had a major impact on my own life as I remember them - even if many of them were at something of a distance.

At the start of the AIDS epidemic, I was living in New York City and working as a journalist for a couple of gay publications - first Gotham magazine, then New York City News, the city's first gay newspaper. I was also actively involved in the gay rights movement, was on the steering committee of the Gay Coalition, a member of several other organizations, and was among the first to be involved with AIDS awareness and education.

Whatever hindsight may be telling some of us, I can attest to the fact that the Reagan administration did not care that AIDS-related illnesses were claiming the lives of tens of thousands and reacted, at best, with derision and, more usually, fear and hatred. (As with the current Bush administration, I refer to the Reagan White House collectively. Similar to Bush, Reagan was largely a figurehead - though, granted, he had a bit more substance than our current incumbent - and many of his policies were those of his advisors. Ronald Reagan, as an individual, may have been quite nice - his administration was not.)

It is not just that the Reagan faction didn't care, but they were actively demonizing gay men and lesbians (despite the fact that the lesbian population was less affected than the straight population) and there was even talk of internment camps for queers - not joking, extremist talk either. Had America's Debate been around at the time, it would have been seriously discussed here. It was certainly being discussed on the street - and, indeed, Lyndon LaRouche eventually sponsored a California ballot initiative calling for quarantines of those with HIV, just as William Dannemyer and George H.W. Bush advocated mandatory AIDS testing.

It's worth reminding people, though, that demonizing the gay population at the time was not all that difficult. The Stonewall riots, the very beginning of the gay rights movement, had happened a little over ten years prior to the outbreak of the AIDS epidemic. It was not until 1974 that the membership of the American Psychological Association voted to remove homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. By 1981, when the first cases of Kaposi Sarcoma were being reported, the general public still tended to treat gays as third-class citizens - objects of ridicule and disdain. What we currently think of as religious fundamentalist attitudes toward gay men and lesbians were mainstream. Gays were generally scorned and marginalized - though some liberals were beginning to treat us with condescending tolerance.

In 1981, the New York Times first reported a number of deaths among gay men due to rare cancers and pneumonia. The syndrome would first become known as GRID: Gay-Related Immune Deficiency. As similar diseases were noted among IV drug users and a disproportionate number of Haitian men, the term Acquired Immunity Deficiency Syndrome was coined in 1982. By then, the CDC had linked the disease (not yet identified as a retrovirus) to blood - though yet not exclusively. The Gay Mens Health Crisis was founded in New York that year, though New York City News was one of the few publications to cover it. The mainstream press was busy cautioning people to avoid "the four H's": homosexuals, heroin addicts, hemophiliacs, and Haitians. And the general public reaction was, indeed, one of fear. I quite openly identified as being gay at the time (visibility was a big issue in the early movement) and can still remember - vividly - people literally crossing the street to avoid me and my friends. I remember straight friends cutting off ties, relatives keeping their children away from me, health care workers refusing to treat a lover who had symptoms of an AIDS-related illness.

Late that year, AIDS was first raised in a White House press briefing. Let us bear in mind that Press Secretary Larry Speakes was Ronald Reagan's spokesman - and should be a bit more difficult to dismiss than, say, his Secretary of Education. I have a clipping here from NYC News quoting the briefing with Speakes on October 15, 1982:
The questioner, however, was wrong. There were not "600 cases" - over 800 had died of AIDS-related illnesses that year.

Reagan said nothing.

In 1983, the Institut Pasteur identified the virus and the CDC warned of possible problems with the blood supply, though there were no statements from the White House to that effect. In fact, the only mention of AIDS from the administration that year was from another press briefing:
The CDC had already identified AIDS as being transmitted via blood and, rather than jokes, the White House could maybe have tried a bit of consciousness-raising. But, no. By this time, AIDS was entering general public awareness - and, apart from talk show one-liners about the "gay plague", ignorance was rampant, even among the gay community. AIDS could be contracted by kissing, it was rumored; AIDS was airborne like ebola; the risk of contracting AIDS was greater due to monogamy - by being constantly bombarded by the virus from a single source - and promiscuity was "safer". And, with that ignorance, came increased fear - and increased judgement. Those born with congenital AIDS or those who contracted it through tainted blood were "innocent" victims - though still to be shunned like lepers. Haitians? They were black, so who really cared? Gays, though, were getting what they deserved. As Pat Buchanan later put it, "Homosexuals have declared war on nature and now nature is extracting an awful retribution."

That year, over 2000 died of AIDS-related illnesses - and Ronald Reagan remained silent.

In 1984, Larry Speakes was still doing his stand-up routine - even as gay men were being beaten to death and having their homes fire-bombed. December 11, 1984:
Over 4000 died that year - and t-shirts appeared with a parody of Raid ads: "AIDS - Kills Fags Dead".

Reagan remained silent.

In 1985, while close to 6000 more died, Reagan did address the question of AIDS - but only because he was asked. And he said a bit more than his apologists have been quoting:
That may sound fair, but we must remember who the poster boy was for those children who were - understandably, it would seem - "outcasts": Ryan White. His story was typical. White contracted the virus through a clotting factor he needed to control his hemophilia. He was determined to continue his schooling and live life normally. But in 1985, ignorance still abounded (and Reagan did nothing but confirm such prejudices). White's school tried to keep him from attending and he was, indeed, an outcast in his town. After several legal battles, Ryan White and his mother settled with the school to have separate restrooms and to use disposable flatware in the cafeteria. When he returned to school, students vandalized his locker with the word "fag" and a bullet was even fired into his home. After his death, his gravesite was vandalized repeatedly.

And the leader of the free world, presented with the opportunity to argue a bit of compassion, says "I can understand both sides of it." Both sides? Like the side that would fire a gun into a kid's home because he had a disease?? Thanks, Ronnie. And if that was Reagan's position on an "innocent victim" like Ryan White, one can imagine how he felt about "guilty victims" - like Merrill Plaskow, a lover I lost to sarcoma.

Except, at the time, no imagination was necessary. Revisionists may wish to paint Reagan as some kind of early champion of "compassionate conservatism" who loved his interior decorator and wished good will toward all men. But he did not. His disdain was palpable and his silence was deafening. It was over a year before he could even bring himself to mention the word again. Meanwhile, William F. Buckley, in a New York Times op-ed piece, called for mandatory testing for AIDS and said that HIV-positive men should have this information forcibly tattooed on their buttocks. A year later, Vice President Bush said the same thing - though he left out the part about the tattoos.

Reagan did, indeed, commission Everett Koop to draw up a report on AIDS in 1986 - the same year he first tried to cut AIDS funding. I had left the country by this time, but was in regular contact with Harold Pickett, publisher of New York City News, who continued sending me copies of the paper for several years - until he died of an AIDS-related illness. He interviewed Koop after the report was published in 1987 - the second year Reagan tried to cut AIDS funding and the same year that the US shut its doors to HIV-infected immigrants and travelers. He was told that Reagan hoped that the report would generally condemn homosexuality rather than address the disease. He reported that there had been no interest whatsoever shown in the epidemic prior to that time and that he became a pariah in the White House after his report was published.

Koop said "It is time to put self-defeating attitudes aside and recognize that we are fighting a disease, not people." He recommended comprehensive sex education and the distribution of free condoms - not what Reagan was expecting. He was virtually ignored. Truckloads of Trojans rolling into the Bible Belt may have given a few televangelists apoplexy (though it would only have made as much sense as mandatory polio vaccines) and the Reagan administration could not possibly have risked alienating one of their power bases by trying to save lives.

That same year, ACT-UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) was formed. There was a very good reason for their slogan being "SILENCE=DEATH". By the time Reagan left office, nearly 40,000 Americans were dead - of AIDS-related illnesses and neglect.

Reagan may never have said "Those who live in sin shall die in sin" - but, then, he didn't have to. Like our current president, Reagan knew that one of his most supportive constituencies was born-again Christian conservatives who embraced a reactionary social platform of which homophobia was a central plank. Pat Robertson, Anita Bryant, and Jerry Falwell spoke for the Reagan administration when they portrayed gay people as diseased sinners and promoted the idea that AIDS was retribution from God and that the gay rights movement had to be stopped. In the Republican Party, people like William Dannemeyer and Jesse Helms also articulated this message. In the White House itself, people like William Bennett and Gary Bauer incorporated this prejudice into the Administration's policies. Reagan had to do nothing but hold his peace. And that he did all too well.

It is easy now to deny all that happened - or didn't happen - during Reagan's presidency. Easy, at least, for those who did not live through those years as a gay man.

Reagan was uniquely poised to address something like the AIDS epidemic candidly and compassionately. He was extremely popular, well-liked as an individual, respected as a politician - and a President of the United States. It can easily be argued that if Reagan had charged the CDC early in the epidemic with focusing on prevention efforts - and supported them - that thousands of lives could have been saved. It can easily be argued that advocating increased funding for research in the early days of the epidemic might have led to an earlier discovery of the protease inhibitors that have since helped thousands - including a cousin of mine (who also happens to work in AIDS research) - to stay healthy despite being infected. It can easily be argued that, had he heeded the advice of his own Surgeon General in the report he commissioned, that many of my friends would be alive today.

It could also be argued that the AIDS epidemic was our "holocaust" - the catalyst for eventually motivating increased awareness, understanding, compassion, and acceptance, the central issue around which our entire community could rally - and that Reagan, by allowing the epidemic to run rampant, did as much for the assimilation of gays as Hitler did for the eventual assimilation of Jews. That may be true. But, frankly, I'd much prefer that the dozens of friends, relatives, lovers, and colleagues that I've lost to this disease be ridiculed and scorned than dead.

For the first several years I was living in Ireland, I received letters or phone calls every couple of months with news of people I knew who had died. I attended a few of those funerals on return visits to the States. As I watched Ronald Reagan's funeral playing out repeatedly on television a few weeks ago, all I could think of was the numerous funerals I missed because I would not live in the same country as the man who could have done so much more to prevent their deaths - and refused.


1. Could Reagan have helped to prevent this disease from being so widespread today simply by acknowledging it as a problem and investing in education and research earlier?

Hell, yes. Absolutely. No question whatsoever - none.

2. Why was the AIDS epidemic completely ignored by our country's leadership for 7 years? Was it Homophobia and the Religious Right as the article suggests? Or was it lack of knowledge or some combination of all of these factors?

The former. The knowledge was there from fairly early on to at least greatly reduce the spread of the virus. Appropriately funding AIDS research, getting the message out about preventive measures, and actively pursuing public education, however, would have done about as much for the Reagan administration as advocating gay marriage would for our current White House. The difference is that the lack of gay matrimony isn't lethal.

3. Should Reagan shoulder the blame for his irresponsible policy regarding AIDS during the majority of his presidency or should the blame fall on the Religious Right? Why or why not?

The blame must be shouldered by Reagan and his administration - and the Republican Party of the time in general - for pandering to what was then a relatively new, reactionary constituency. The religious right itself isn't to blame - they are welcome to their prejudices. But the administration which would capitulate to those prejudices with such callous indifference merely to satisfy their greed for political power has no heart, has no soul, has no humanity. If only they had no future.

Obviously, this is a fairly personal issue - and my opinion is doubtless colored by having lived through those years. To someone who has not shared my experience, though, this is probably as difficult as explaining what it was like to be black prior to the civil rights movement.

I finally decided to address this issue because a) the Reagan administration's reaction to the AIDS epidemic had a profound impact on me politically and b) because I am of the opinion that the success of the religious right in pressing the Reagan administration to do so little gave them the impetus and the power to influence countless policies since. We are still living with the legacy of Reagan-era AIDS policy not only in terms of the numerous dead, but in terms of the sway which a small minority has held ever since over one of our major political parties. To me, therefore, the tragedy is two-fold - and we suffer from it, grievously, still.

Wertz, I understand how deeply personal this is to you. However, I must submit that the fact that it is so close and personal leaves you looking through a tainted lens.

Could Reagan have done more? Of course he could have. Could he have spent more money on AIDS research? Of course he could have. Did he do nothing, I think the answer is clearly no.

What I want to know is what you thought Reagan could have done. Would a speech about AIDS have prevented additional infections? Would free condoms have prevented the spread of the disease? I have heard that condoms are disdained in the homosexual community. I'm probably wrong, but would Reagan's telling you, personally, Wertz, to change what you did in the bedroom have made one iota of difference to you, personally? I'm going to make an assumption here and say that it would not.

I don't want to be confrontational, but I read a timeline of AIDS that mimicked yours exactly here.

The virus that causes AIDS was not identified until 1983 (in France) or 1984 (in the US). The disease could not even be tested for until 1985. By the time you developed symptoms, it was too late. Mass testing to identify those who were infected was resisted virulently. In other epidemics, quarantines are used. Quarantines were also labelled as segregation techniques, meant to marginalize gays.

Both extremes of this issue were unreasonable. The homosexual community feared that this would be an excuse to further ostracize them. The anti-gay community used the "God is punishing gays" rhetoric. Neither side approached the issue with an open mind.

In the middle were the doctors and researchers (including C Everett Koop) who were trying to discover how AIDS was transmitted. This included the CDC (who first issued "guidelines" in 1982), the NIH, and other groups. This group in the middle was not accepted by either extreme (either being cronies of the Reagan administration or tools of the gay rights community). Again, the extremes were wrong.

My whole point is that so much was unknown about AIDS until about 1985 that I am not sure what could have been done. Had Reagan spoken out, he would have done so (in all likelihood) in ignorance. Is remaining silent on an issue on which little is known the prudent course? Was allowing Koop to speak out on this issue the right decision?

There is still a lot which is not known about AIDS. The exact manner it spreads is still debated (For example, although 1,000 health workers are accidentally infected with hepatitis from accidental needle sticks, very, very few health care workers are accidentally infected with AIDS, despite being in the same contact with AIDS patients). Why it is predominantly 25-49 year olds is also a mystery (since venereal diseases usually affect teenagers to a much higher degree).

Millions are still infected each year (worldwide). Thousands still die in the US. There is no cure. Is Reagan to be blamed for all of this suffering? He could have done more, certainly. Could he have done less? Absolutely. He did more than "nothing".

Well, if we're working with blanket statements, I have heard that condoms are disdained among men in general, including those of a heterosexual orientation. I don't know about the other ladies here, but I can't even count the number of times during my girlhood that people tried to educate me on what to do in the likely situation that my male lover refuses to use a condom.

Homosexuals, through education, were able to reduce the spread of the AIDS virus within their own community. Relentless education is the key, but having been an adolescent under the Reagan and the Bush years, I can say that education for homosexuals was non-existent within the usual channels of sex-ed. Homosexuality was shunned, and bisexuals and drug-addicts were demonized for spreading the disease from the homosexual community to the heterosexual community.

While local schools were arguing about whether or not they could even show us what a condom looks like, the GLBT community center was giving them away free of charge to anyone who needed them. Even my heterosexual friends obtained them in this manner, and the GLBTCC welcomed them with open arms.

I can only speculate, but if the Reagan administration and all those who have followed were more willing to leave their prejudices behind and actually educate, I do believe that the number of people who suffered from the AIDS virus would have been reduced.

Yes, the religious right pushes an anti-homosexual agenda, and I do blame them for fostering an environment of hate, but the admistrations deserve blame as well. They are the ones who make the decisions and who have the ears, eyes, and voice of America.

[quote=Amlord,Jul 9 2004, 10:16 AM]Wertz,  I understand how deeply personal this is to you.  However, I must submit that the fact that it is so close and personal leaves you looking through a tainted lens.[/quote]
Obviously. I'd hoped that was clear. I should also mention that their reaction to the AIDS crisis was not the only reason I had for taking a dim view of the Reagan administration. As with our current president, there were numerous issues which created a synergy of disagreement and opposition.

I take most political issues personally - as should we all. Clearly, how political decisions affect our lives is going to taint every lens on this forum to some extent, despite our aspiration to cold, hard logic - but it doesn't invalidate them. Your respect for Ronald Reagan and many of his policies clearly taints your opinion of his inaction regarding the AIDS crisis. The Reagan administration's opposition to increased funding for AIDS research, their refusal to raise awareness, their feeding of fear and discrimination, and their silence for so long surely had a greater personal impact on me than some of their other actions. But were this debate about Reagan's labor policies, would the fact that I was an unemployed air traffic controller render my opinion any less valid? Would it erase the facts involved?

[quote]Could Reagan have done more? Of course he could have. Could he have spent more money on AIDS research? Of course he could have.[/quote]
And that is really all that I'm saying. He could have and he didn't. He could have and he didn't.

[quote]Did he do nothing, I think the answer is clearly no.[/quote]
Okay, let's just call it as little as possible as late as possible.

Don't get me wrong. Even at the time, I didn't expect the Reagan administration to do an awful lot. That would've been like expecting George W Bush to admit that he had been wrong about something. But we certainly hoped that more would've been done. And we certainly didn't expect him to lobby for decreased funding - as he did - or to ignore the recommendations of the CDC - as he did - or his own Surgeon General - as he did.

[quote]What I want to know is what you thought Reagan could have done. Would a speech about AIDS have prevented additional infections?[/quote]
Certainly. At the time there were massive letter-writing campaigns from within the gay movement begging him to do just that - as far back as 1982. It was known fairly early on that HIV was blood-borne - and that penetrative sex was one of the principal means of communication. It was not known for a while whether the virus was also borne in saliva. Within the gay community, there was a massive effort to try to get the word out. Initially, condoms were recommended for any type of sexual contact - and dental dams were recommended for lesbians. In most urban areas, gay bars, clubs, community centers, and health clinics were issuing free condoms years before Koop's study was released.

What we must also remember, though, is that there was not a cohesive or widespread gay community as such. In the early eighties, most gay men and lesbians were still closeted. "Coming out" was a difficult and dangerous practice. People lost jobs, found themselves ostracized by family and friends, were ridiculed and subjected to anti-gay violence. They still are to a large extent, but in the the early eighties, this was the rule. There was no sympathetic coverage of gay issues in the press - indeed, little coverage at all. New York City News had a distribution of about 15,000 - in a city with over a million gays. Gay activists could simply not reach people at risk. The President could have.

[quote]Would free condoms have prevented the spread of the disease?[/quote]
This is like asking if a tuberculosis vaccine would help prevent TB. Of course they would. And, to the extent that free condoms were distributed within the "out" gay community, they doubtless did.

[quote]I have heard that condoms are disdained in the homosexual community.[/quote]
No more so than in the heterosexual community - a community also at risk, I might add. Few - apart from rubber fetishists and the neurotically fastidious - like using condoms. Does that mean that, with awareness of the risks, they don't use them? Absolutely not.

[quote]I'm probably wrong, but would Reagan's telling you, personally, Wertz, to change what you did in the bedroom have made one iota of difference to you, personally? I'm going to make an assumption here and say that it would not.[/quote]
Yes, you are wrong. Had I opened an envelop in late 2001 and a white powder spilled out, would I have refused a Cipro prescription because that's what Bush would have recommended? Hardly. The point is that we had enough information by 1982 to at least have minimized the spread of the virus.

Of course, there would have been some who would have resisted using condoms regardless of the source. It saddens me that there still are. But if Ronald Reagan made the facts known - and cited sources like the CDC's guidelines - only the self-destructive or wilfully stupid would have ignored him. Reagan was popular even among the gay community (yes, we're that diverse) and, especially, I would imagine, among rural, closeted gays - those least likely to have access to the efforts of the gay movement to prevent the spread of the virus. Had Reagan spoken, people would have listened.

[quote]I don't want to be confrontational, but I read a timeline of AIDS that mimicked yours exactly here.[/quote]
No, it was my posting which mimicked, in part, the timeline you cite. It was one of the sources I used as a reference point. What's confrontational about that?

[quote]The virus that causes AIDS was not identified until 1983 (in France) or 1984 (in the US). The disease could not even be tested for until 1985. By the time you developed symptoms, it was too late. Mass testing to identify those who were infected was resisted virulently.[/quote]
No it wasn't. Mandatory testing - and public identification - was resisted. Within the gay movement, testing was strenuously advocated - as was investigating the HIV status of one's partners. It still is.

The CDC, as you pointed out yourself, had issued guidelines for prevention by 1982. What if Ronald Reagan had called a press conference then, alerting the public to what was known? How different the course of this disease might have been!

[quote]In other epidemics, quarantines are used. Quarantines were also labelled as segregation techniques, meant to marginalize gays.[/quote]
Yes, because that's what they were. By the time people began advocating quarantines, we knew how the disease was transmitted - or, at the very least, we knew it was not airborne; it was not communicated through discreet contact. The rhetoric of those advocating quarantines and mandatory testing and identification was decidedly homophobic (I don't recall William F. Buckley advocating that hemophiliacs be tattooed). It was used, not in the interest of public health, but - solely and exclusively - to feed anti-gay sentiments and pander to a religious fundamentalist constituency.

[quote]Both extremes of this issue were unreasonable. The homosexual community feared that this would be an excuse to further ostracize them.[/quote]
This was no groundless fear. The AIDS crisis was used as an excuse to ostracize the gay community. You had to be there, Amlord. The hysteria and hatred were palpable - and they were being relentless fed by those in the best position to moderate them. Fear and loathing were rampant - and the Reagan administration fuelled rather than quelled these sentiments.

[quote]The anti-gay community used the "God is punishing gays" rhetoric. Neither side approached the issue with an open mind.[/quote]
Perhaps not. But it is difficult to maintain an open mind when one's friends are dying. And not just from an insidious disease, but through the anti-gay violence which largely arose due to the virtuecrats who were preaching hate - and using the disease as a weapon.

[quote]In the middle were the doctors and researchers (including C Everett Koop) who were trying to discover how AIDS was transmitted. This included the CDC (who first issued "guidelines" in 1982), the NIH, and other groups. This group in the middle was not accepted by either extreme (either being cronies of the Reagan administration or tools of the gay rights community). Again, the extremes were wrong.[/quote]
That is simply not correct. The gay community was paying closer attention to research by the CDC and private institutions than the Reagan administration by an order of magnitude. The gay press published the CDC guidelines in 1982. We produced pamphlets, wrote articles, conducted consciousness-raising seminars. Unfortunately, our efforts (and those of the medical community) were not supported by our leadership - despite our pleas.

[quote]My whole point is that so much was unknown about AIDS until about 1985 that I am not sure what could have been done. Had Reagan spoken out, he would have done so (in all likelihood) in ignorance.[/quote]
You are probably right. When he did speak out, it was in ignorance - willful ignorance. When the epidemic was first raised in press briefings, it was treated with derision. Hundreds of deaths were, to the Reagan administration, a joke. The attitude was "We don't know and we don't care." Even when Reagan first addressed the issue publicly, he could have taken a very different approach. Rather than assuming that the Ryan Whites of the world were rightfully outcast, he could have spoken the truth: that no school child had ever been infected except through blood products, that the disease was not communicated through contact, that such children were safe. He could also have pointed out that every person with AIDS is "innocent". Instead, he said that he could "understand" those who would shoot at a sick child. And he said nothing - nothing - to contradict what was being said by other members of his party or his Cabinet or his vice president or his supporters in the media or the religious right.

His legacy is still with us. I read a letter from a Disney resort guest three days ago, complaining about the Gay Days celebration at Walt Disney World in early June - and the "fact" that, by walking through a theme park, the writer's children had been exposed to AIDS. The ignorance and fear fostered by the Reagan administration apparently dies hard.

[quote]Is remaining silent on an issue on which little is known the prudent course?[/quote]
No. What little is known should be communicated as quickly and effectively as possible. When SARS first appeared, did it take five years before there was any mention of it from the the Bush administration? If so, we wouldn't even have heard about it yet.

[quote]Was allowing Koop to speak out on this issue the right decision?[/quote]
In fact, Koop "spoke out" in spite of the White House. Sure, they eventually distributed his report - they commissioned it, they could hardly bury it - but they did not follow his recommendations, even then.

[quote]Millions are still infected each year (worldwide). Thousands still die in the US. There is no cure. Is Reagan to be blamed for all of this suffering?[/quote]
To a large extent, you're damned right he is. I'm not expecting agreement here. We will both continue to view this history through our tainted lenses. I have shared my experience of the early years of this ongoing epidmic and have little to add.

[quote]He could have done more, certainly. Could he have done less? Absolutely. He did more than "nothing".[/quote]
Not much.

Inaction and Indecision are quite possibly the worst flaws a leader can have, even worse than incompetence. If you act the same way Reagan did in the heat of battle soldiers die, acting that way Domestically can have equally heinous consequences.

So I'll turn the question back around to you. Forget Reagan for a second. If right now, today, there was some serious illness spreading through the population (the new AIDS), medical professionals had identifed some general characteristics and everyone was generally in fear... what reaction would you expect from our government?

Would you expect George W. Bush to ignore the problem, continue focusing on the war on terror like nothing was happening at home? Or would you expect the president to at the very least make a few public addresses about it, let the country know what little information was out there to educate people? Would you expect him to get behind people trying to solve the problem or make jokes about it and deny it existed?

Put yourself in that situation today where something is out there and it could effect you, your friends, your family, anyone and tell me what you would expect.

OK, this conversation has drifted from being about AIDS to being about gays. The two are inextricably intertwined, however.

I'm going to take a couple of quotes from the last few posts and put down my thoughts about them:

What is so different about educating gays about sex and educating straight people? Very little. The fact of the matter is that there was very little sex education of any kind in the 1980s. The fact that there was little education for gays ignores the fact that there was little education for anyone.


So condoms were available. I guess the issue was not about the availability of condoms after all. If people in bars, clubs and clinics had free condoms available, the government apparently had no need to provide them.

Even today, the number one cause of AIDS is "risky behavior": Risky behavior continues to fuel likely AIDS upsurge

It is known how AIDS is spread today, yet the same risk patterns still exist.

Somehow, through some magical wand-waving, Reagan would have had an impact on the sexual behaviors of Americans in the 1980s? I don't doubt he would have been hesitant to touch the subject (as he obvious was). He did not feel it was a government issue to intrude on people's bedrooms. Had he spoken out, what would he have said? "I'm 73 years old and even I know to use a condom when having sex!" Let's be realistic here. Most conservatives are not going to speak out about sex. Reagan was certainly not going to discuss sexual techniques with anyone.


Bush has not talked about SARS (that I could find...) Does that make him somehow responsible for its victims?

The questions for debate were:
1. Could Reagan have helped to prevent this disease from being so widespread today simply by acknowledging it as a problem and investing in education and research earlier?
I would say no. Despite the publicity, AIDS cases continued to increase every year for a decade after Reagan left office. Would anything Reagan could have said changed behaviors? Would it have limited risk factors? I suppose, but there is no evidence that it would have. It's pure conjecture.

2. Why was the AIDS epidemic completely ignored by our country's leadership for 7 years? Was it Homophobia and the Religious Right as the article suggests? Or was it lack of knowledge or some combination of all of these factors?
Another loaded question. There was definitely a lack of knowledge and a lack of comfort with sexual issues. It was just Reagan or his administration, though. It was the whole country. It wasn't until 1986 that you could even identify someone as having AIDS unless they also got one of the 30-odd characteristic diseases which actually cause death. Of course, I was just a teenager then. You would have thought that some of the rampant hysteria would have reached me in urban Midwest America. As a teenager, I myself did not look to the President for sex advice.

So we can rule out behavior and condoms as the issue. What's left? Finding a cure. Finding a cure does not involve speeches, it involves research.

We could all hope that our leaders were more progressive (at least if you are progressive). Is Reagan's sin really that he was a Conservative (unlikely to speak out about social issues, uncomfortable with sex, limited views of the responsibilities of government)?

Maybe Reagan suffered from a pitfall that Winston Churchill warned about:
But I am not sure if that statement is always true.

The difference is, the prevailing opinion of the times was that this was a "homosexual problem" and they were "getting what they deserved". Do you think the response would have been the same if the disease was primarily prevalent in heterosexuals at the beginning? It kind of relates to my previous question as well (which hasn't been answered yet).


As Wertz stated, the homosexual community was not quite so open then as it is today. There were far more individuals in the closet (who would not have gotten the information mailed from gay publications or had the benefits of condoms at gay clubs) than there were in the open.

He also stated that people were making efforts to distribute condoms. Now based on current demographics I would wager that there were only a few cities back then that got people informed in any sizeable numbers. I would be willing to bet that San Francisco, New York, possibly Los Angeles and a few other cities were getting the word out, leaving most of the US in the dark.


No one is suggesting Reagan could have solved the problem, he certainly could have impacted the trajectory and severity of it. Had the topics of safe-sex been broached in the 80's it is only logical to conclude that the problem would be more under control today. (less infections + more knowledge = progress)

And of course the risk patterns are still the same today, the disease hasn't changed. However most Americans are informed about the disease and practice safe sex, some don't. If that had been the case in the 80's we would be a lot better off.


I don't know how you can come to that conclusion because that isn't even true today. Sure we need to find a cure, but there is still a lot of work to be done as far as making condoms available and educating people. That effort is still hampered today in large part because of the attitudes that started gaining power and popularity in the 80's with the religious right conservatives.

I'm pretty young, Amlord, so my memories cross the lines of Reagan/Bush. In my own personal experience, there was some basic sexual education occuring for heterosexuals, but it didn't cross the boundaries into the territory of anal sex or oral sex. These are concepts that are important for both homosexuals and heterosexuals to know, particularly protection during anal sex which carries a high risk of transmission. The method of protection is not complicated or vastly different, but it is a little bit different, and teaching it could have saved lives.



Magical wand-waving? I'm sorry Amlord, but education and communication is not magical wand-waving, and I don't see it as an intrusion into peoples' bedrooms either. Intrusion would be to tell someone what they can and cannot do. All that Reagan had to do was recognize the problem, but he didn't make a meaningful public statement about it until 1987 when he appointed the Watkins Commission to work on AIDS after more than 50,000 cases had been reported. I'm not commenting on any other part of Reagan's presidency, but his administration dropped the ball on the AIDS epidemic. Research was chronically underfunded and AIDS education was lacking.

I understand I am not going to change anyone's mind here.

Still, I try...

As I mentioned, Reagan could have three things: stress sex education (condom use rather than abstinence of course), stress the importance of knowing who your sexual partners are, and help the medical community find a cure.

This is a very serious issue because I feel blame is misplaced here.

For example, Wertz has cited several instances of where the White House spokesman was asked questions and his answers were greeted with laughs. But who were the ones doing the laughing at a press conference? The press.

I am sure I do not need to stress how much different the attitude was back then (as Wertz pointed out). There is little evidence that Reagan hated gays. Reagan never outwardly expressed his religious views. He did not feel they were appropriate in a political context. He was certainly religious, but I think it is a blind leap of faith to assume that that fact alone makes him a homophobe. You would think if he were pandering to some religious right voting bloc that he would be more overt in his religious beliefs. His daughter Patti Davis said this in Time magazine: Patti Davis on why the Ronald Reagan depicted in the biopic is nothing like the father she knows


As Wertz also points out, there were 4 main victim groups, the 4H's: homosexuals, heroin addicts, Haitians and hemophiliacs. Even throughout the "tainted blood supply" nightmare of the early '80s, when the transmission of the disease was in question, health care workers never joined the "H" club. In three of the four victim groups, personal choice was the largest risk factor. This is a fact that cannot be argued.

Was Reagan going to dictate which personal choices (and the accompanying risk factors) that people made? If people were more paranoid about AIDS transmittal than was necessary (as Wertz alluded to), wouldn't you figure that in and of itself would decrease risk factors? The fact is that it did not. People are going to make their choices, regardless of what a President in his 70s tells them. An "old fart" like Reagan was unlikely to make a difference in the lifestyle choices of the 25-44 year olds.

Again, I will address the 3 "opportunities" that Reagan had.

Condoms: Condoms are not 100% effective. Check out any thread on abortion and you will get bombarded with the viewpoint that women need the option of abortion because condoms are not 100% effective. If they are not 100% effective in preventing pregnancy, they certainly will not be 100% effective at preventing AIDS/HIV contraction. Raise your hand if you would trust your life to a condom when you know your partner to be HIV positive. I don't see many hands.

The debate is the same as it is with birth control: conservatives feel that abstinence is morally and medically superior until you enter amonogamouss and long term relationship (marriage, in most cases). abstinencee is automatically rejected by some as unworkable. And yet it remains the only 100% effective preventative of the sexual transmission of AIDS. This debate will rage on forever, I believe.

Lifestyle: As I mentioned above, I do not feel that a man in his 70s would have been the ideal spokesman to get people to know their partner's sexual history and to not share needles. Reagan had no connections to this lifestyle. He would have been a laughable spokesman for clean needles and inquiries into the sexual past of your partner. What he would have been effective at communicating: abstinence, monogamy, and not shooting intravenous drugs, was rejected out of hand as an unworkable solution to the problem.

Research: What about research money? Wertz refers to Reagan cutting the research budget for AIDS (despite the lowest increase in government spending on AIDS being 44%). Money spent by the government rose from nothing (obviously) in 1981, to over $2.3 billion in FY1989 (Reagan's last budget). AIDS was so different from know ailments that it took years for research to produce anything, anything at all to treat the disease. In 1984, Health and Human Services Secretary Margaret Heckler predicted that there would be an AIDS vaccine by 1986 probably because she assumed that with the identification of the disease, the cure was the easy part. There is no AIDS vaccine now, after we have spent billions upon billions in research.

Some chilling statistics about AIDS remained long after Reagan left office. Approximately 105,000 cases were reported during Reagan's entire Presidency (1981-1988). During the period of the 1990s (1991-1998) after Reagan was gone, after awareness had been raised, after drugs were available, over 500,000 new cases were reported. In fact, there were more cases reported in the first three years of the 2000s (more than a decade after he left office) than were reported during Reagan's entire Presidency. Even today, over 40,000 new cases will be reported this year. Obviously all the education that we received after Reagan left did not curb the spread of the disease in the US. Therefore, Reagan cannot be held responsible for a lack of education on the matter.

That was new cases. What about deaths? Wertz seems to personally blame Reagan for the deaths of his friends. Over 61,000 people died during Reagan's Presidency from AIDS related diseases. Comparably, during the 1991-1998 period, over 300,000 died of AIDS related complications. The death rate peaked in 1985 and started dropping because of drugs that were developed (AZT and others). There were no drugs, zero, for treating AIDS until AZT was approved for treating AIDS in 1987. (AZT's benefits can be the subject of another debate.) What could Reagan have done to prevent deaths from AIDS? I've already questioned whether he would have had an impact on the transmission of AIDS, could he have done something to prevent deaths...? $5.7 billion in research money... I really have no idea.

I'm not going to beat this to death anymore. I know I won't change my minds and somehow Reagan is blamed in what (to me) is baseless what ifs and could haves that are based more on emotion than anything else.