Article On Reagan From THE ADVOCATE.com

[Matt_G]

Posted: 6/7/04 at 5:12pm

I found this an interesting read -

The legacy of President Ronald Reagan--who died Saturday of complications from Alzheimer's disease at age 93--continues to provokes a powerful rage among many gay men and lesbians across the country, while others choose to remember the Republican's positive accomplishments.

As the 40th U.S. president is lionized at memorial services from Simi Valley, Calif., to the U.S. Capitol this week, countless GLBT Americans--especially those who cling to horrific memories of friends and family members lost to AIDS--still wonder: Did the Reagan administration do enough to stop the disease at the beginning? Do the former president's policies and allies continue to hold back gay equality?

"I shed no tears at the passing of Ronald Reagan," wrote Philip Hitchcock, an openly gay sculptor from Venice, Calif., in a letter published Monday in the Los Angeles Times. "My tears are and were for the hundreds of thousands of Americans with HIV on whom Mr. Reagan turned his back. I weep for the scores and scores of men whose names, one by one, I blacked out of my address book. At a time when he could have shown real leadership in the face of a crisis, Mr. Reagan could not even say the word 'AIDS' publicly his first four years in office."

Yet those delivering the eulogies, the media covering them, and even a public statement by the Human Rights Campaign--the largest gay civil rights group--seem loathe to dissect the negative aspects of Reagan's record. (HRC's initial statement on Reagan's death does not mention AIDS, for example.)

Other outlets are instead choosing to remember a folksy crusader who made it big in Hollywood and devoted his presidency to winning the Cold War, scaling back government, and making voters believe it was "morning again in America." After all, criticizing Reagan can bring a severe backlash. Last November his conservative supporters were successful in stopping CBS from airing a controversial miniseries about his presidency. The screenplay reportedly quoted Reagan in a private conversation about AIDS as saying, "They that live in sin shall die in sin"--a quotation deemed a lie by a former White House aide. (The line did not appear in the final film, which was broadcast on the pay-cable channel Showtime, a corporate sister to CBS. That version is being released on DVD this month.)

"The coverage of his death reflects the way the Reagan administration dealt with the AIDS epidemic. They didn't," Phill Wilson, executive director of the Black AIDS Institute in Los Angeles, tells Advocate.com. "He was silent on the epidemic, and that is reflected in the coverage of his life and his presidency. He was president at the time when the worse health crisis of our time took hold in this country."

But the gay men and lesbians who revere Reagan said Monday that a single world leader cannot be faulted for the advent of AIDS during the 1980s. At the time, gay men and lesbians had a difficult time convincing not just the Administration but also the media, other lawmakers, and the general public that the epidemic would spread so quickly. "It was a period of much less visibility in the gay and lesbian movement," said Chris Barron, political director for gay political group Log Cabin Republicans. "I think that Reagan was beloved by so many Americans. The coverage I've seen so far has been overwhelmingly positive. Reagan returned an optimism to this country that we had lost. He made people feel good about themselves and good about being Americans."

Barron added that Reagan was instrumental in the formation of the Log Cabin Republicans. In 1977, Reagan offered support to a group of gay men and lesbians who were protesting California's so-called Briggs Initiative, a ballot measure that would have barred gay men and lesbians from teaching at public schools. Reagan, the former governor of California, came out against the measure, and it failed. "It was in the tradition of Ronald Reagan for the Republican Party to be the party of 'leave me alone,'" said Barron. "That's the legacy that Ronald Reagan leaves behind."

In office from 1981 to 1989, Reagan came under intense fire from gay activists for not allocating major federal funding to combat AIDS. The disease was first reported in 1981, but the president did not even publicly address the plague until March 31, 1987. At that time there were 60,000 reported cases of full-blown AIDS and 30,000 deaths. At the same time, he and his handlers swelled the Republican Party ranks with shrill, antigay Christian conservatives who fueled mass hysteria about the epidemic. The White House director of communications, Patrick Buchanan, once argued in print that AIDS was nature's revenge on gay men. Reagan's secretary of Education, William Bennett, and his domestic policy adviser, Gary Bauer, made sure that science (and basic tenets of Christianity, for that matter) never got in the way of politics or what they saw as "God's work."

Reagan's conservatism can be seen at the U.S. Supreme Court. He picked Sandra Day O'Connor, William H. Rehnquist, the current chief justice, and justices Antonin Scalia and Anthony M. Kennedy. O'Connor and Kennedy have disappointed some conservatives with their often moderate positions. Scalia, however, often sharply chides Kennedy and O'Connor when he feels they've veered off track. For example, when Kennedy wrote a decision last year striking down bans on gay sex, Scalia accused his colleagues of inviting same-sex marriage and said Kennedy's ruling "coos" over a feel-good, gay rights agenda.

"Undoubtedly, Ronald Reagan was a man of character and principle, but we will never know how many people would have been saved had his policies toward lesbians and gay men, and especially people with AIDS, had been more supportive and more sensitive," said Jon Beaupre, a journalism professor at Cal State, Los Angeles, and a contributor to NPR and the BBC. "Make no mistake about it, his was a government of rich white people, and his character notwithstanding, he may have held social progress back by decades."

It still may be affecting social progress. The Republican Party's most important and solid base continues to derive from Christian conservative voters who are now voicing support for the Federal Marriage Amendment to ban same-sex marriage and civil unions permanently and nationwide. The Bush administration has scrapped condom-based AIDS prevention programs targeted at HIV-negative Americans in favor of abstinence programs. "Without speaking ill of the dead, it is a fact that we are still haunted and punished by the legacy of President Reagan's stance on gay and HIV-related issues," said Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.

That legacy was still up for debate in November 1991, when the $57 million Ronald Reagan Presidential Library was dedicated in Simi Valley, Calif. The day's pomp and circumstance was broken by about 500 demonstrators holding signs that read, for example, "Reagan Can't Remember, History Won't Forget." Some carried tombstones and foam skulls, representing people who had died of complications from AIDS. One protester told the Los Angeles Times that the former president had taken "5-1/2 years just to say the word 'AIDS.' He was more concerned about the Evil Empire than with his own people."

That sentiment was further echoed by Foreman on Monday. He wrote an open letter to his friend Steven Powsner, a former president of the New York City Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center, who died in 1995 at the age of 40 of complications from AIDS.

"Steven, I do feel for the family and friends of the former president. The death of a loved one is always a profoundly sad occasion, and Mr. Reagan was loved by many. I have tremendous empathy and respect for Mrs. Reagan, who lovingly cared for him through excruciating years of Alzheimer's.

"Sorry, Steven, but even on this day I'm not able to set aside the shaking anger I feel over Reagan's nonresponse to the AIDS epidemic or for the continuing antigay legacy of his administration.... I know for a fact that you would be alive today if the Reagan administration had mounted even a tepid response to the epidemic. If protease inhibitors had been available in July of 1995 instead of December, you'd still be here.

"I do not presume to judge Ronald Reagan's soul or heart. He may very well have been a nice guy. In fact, I don't think that Reagan hated gay people--I'm sure some of his and Nancy's best friends were gay. But I do know that the Reagan administration's policies on AIDS and anything gay-related resulted--and continue to result--in despair and death."

[broadwayguy2]

Posted: 6/7/04 at 6:02pm

Call me heartless, but honestly, I could care less about Reagan... I dispised him while he was alive, and to suddenly pretend otherwise simply because he is dead is COMPLETLY patronizing in every way. I have better things tod ow ith my time than fill the air with empty comments about how sad it is.

[Borstalboy]

Posted: 6/7/04 at 6:22pm

I'm witcha on every word Broadwayguy. Anyone remember how Nixon was canonized by the press when he died? Same thing here.

[broadwayguy2]

Posted: 6/7/04 at 6:26pm

It's so true. Being HONEST about what you thought of them is respectful. Being false and saying empty truths about them in their memory is an insult in my book. peopel aren't stupid. They see how you treated them alive.. and the see how you talk about them dead. The disconnect is palpable sometimes.

[Kristie-K2]

Posted: 6/8/04 at 3:49pm

In the 80's my family lived in Hollywood...homosexual boys would babysit me, read me stories at night, cook for me and teach me how to be a good person, while my mom worked nights....Then all at once my friends start dying of this Gay Cancer called Aids.....I cried then and at 34 I am still crying for my friends who died....I hope Mr. Reagan wanted to do something about the Aids mess, but he couldn't because of the Republican Party...I guess this might be wishful thinking.... Updated On: 6/8/04 at 03:49 PM

[orion59]

Posted: 6/8/04 at 4:02pm

i think taht is wishful thinking. The truth is he didn't care. At the time it was seemingly only effecting gay men and was believed to be a result of promiscuity. In the eyes of people like Reagan, this disiease wasn't important becasue it was only harming deviant people who lived their lives only for sexual encounters.

If someone is diagnosed today as HIV positive and has yet to develop AIDS, their life expectency is about the same as if they were negative. The drugs available now can prolong life, keep the virus at bay and have less severe side effects than those of a decade ago. There are new drugs constantly being developed that are even better.

These advances are a result of research that could have started years earlier had Reagan aknowledged the epidemic and approved the funding for the research and the services. Whoknows how many lives would have been saved if we didn't have to wait until Clinton to get the proper funding.

Reagan died with blood on his hands.

[son_of_a_gunn_25]

Posted: 6/8/04 at 4:08pm

I can't take credit for this post. Someone else posted it on another messageboard, but I thought it was interesting. You have to scroll down a little bit to find it on the website. I am not taking sides because I wasn't aware of the whole thing with Reagan and AIDS. (I was very young at the time.) I am just trying to find as much information on it as I can right now.

Another viewpoint.

From http://andrewsullivan.com/http://andrewsullivan.com/>http://andrewsullivan.com/ Andrew Sullivan:

REAGAN AND AIDS: I have been upbraided for not mentioning Ronald Reagan's AIDS legacy in describing him as my hero. The basic argument from the gay left is that Reagan was single-handedly responsible for killing hundreds of thousands of people by negligence. This, however, borders on loopy. Reagan should indeed be faulted for not doing more to warn people of the dangers of infection early enough (Thatcher was far better). But the truth is that it was pretty obvious very early on that something dangerous was afoot as AIDS first surfaced. Just read Larry Kramer at the time. Many people most at risk were aware - mostly too late, alas - that unprotected sex had become fatal in the late 1970s and still was. You can read Randy Shilts' bracing "And The Band Played On," to see how some of the resistance to those warnings came from within the gay movement itself. In the polarized atmosphere of the beleaguered gay ghettoes of the 1980s, one also wonders what an instruction from Ronald Reagan to wear condoms would have accomplished. As for research, we didn't even know what HIV was until 1983. Nevertheless, the Reagan presidency spent some $5.7 billion on HIV in its two terms - not peanuts. The resources increased by 450 percent in 1983, 134 percent in 1984, 99 percent the next year and 148 percent the year after. Yes, the Congress was critical in this. But by 1986, Reagan had endorsed a large prevention and research effort and declared in his budget message that AIDS "remains the highest public health priority of the Department of Health and Human Services." In September 1985, Reagan said:

"[I]ncluding what we have in the budget for '86, it will amount to over a half a billion dollars that we have provided for research on AIDS in addition to what I'm sure other medical groups are doing. And we have $100 million in the budget this year; it'll be 126 million next year. So, this is a top priority with us. Yes, there's no question about the seriousness of this and the need to find an answer."

But the sad truth is also that there was never going to be an easy answer to HIV in the Reagan years. Throwing even more money at research in those days would not have helped much. Anthony Fauci's NIH, goaded by heroes like Larry Kramer, was already pushing for focus and resources; FDA red tape was loosened considerably; and the painfully slow scientific process continued. The fact that we got revolutionary drugs in trials by the early 1990s was itself an heroic scientific achievement - arguably the most miraculous progress in a medical emergency since the polio vaccine. Should Reagan have done more? Yes. Were people like Bill Bennett and Gary Bauer responsible for delaying a real prevention response because only gays were dying? You bet. But was Reagan ultimately responsible for so many tragic, early deaths? No. HIV was. Viruses happen. It's a blemish on his record, but not as profound as some, with understandable grief, want to make it out to be.

And from a gay lawyer friend in California:

"One of the Gay Left's most unfair canards against Reagan is that he did not mention the word "AIDS" during his first six years as President.

The first AIDS cases were only diagnosed in 1981 (RWR's first year in office). These cases were not recognized as belonging to a mutually related group, or "syndrom" for several years; the CDC only recognized AIDS by name and established reporting criteria in 1984 (revised '85). In other words, there was no such recognized thing as AIDS for Reagan to mention for the first 3 of those 6 years! Might as well fault Lincoln for not mentioning space exploration.

While AIDS loomed large in the consciousness of the Gay community (some of whom were defensively insisting it was not a "Gay disease" while most of the rest were in total denial), by the end of '85 there had been only 7500 cases nationwide - even as counted under the revised, broader criteria adopted in that year - out of a U.S. population of 230 million. AIDS simply was under the radar as far as the general population was concerned, except for Jerry Falwell and that ilk. (Legionnaire's Disease, by contrast, affected dozens of people in a single week in a single place, and made headlines. Reagan never mentioned that, either, although Congress rushed to the reporters. Nobody seems to be upset with him over that. Some even praised his restraint!)

Presidents rarely talk about any disease. Name one that Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon, or Carter ever discussed (except for the ritual annual support of the polio drive under the first two, or when hailing some major advance made by an American). Why should Reagan have mentioned one, especially one which in its worst year to date had affected only 16 Americans per 100,000, and cumulatively only 3 out of 10,000? Might he not be excused for thinking he had more pressing things to deal with, like Tip O'Neill (who hadn't mentioned AIDS, either) and the Soviet Union? Or even diseases which affected many more people than did AIDS (he didn't discuss them either)?

Nevertheless, in 1985, one of his and Nancy's best friends died of AIDS. He was shaken, and he turned his attention to research by redirecting funding in the 1986 CDC budget. Like previous Presidents, he didn't discuss the disease until he had something good to say (also, probably, because redirecting research funds from things that affected more people would have raised a ruckus if noticed). In 1987, he first talked about AIDS when AZT was developed.

Thus the unfairness of the charge that he didn't mention AIDS for his first six years:
First three years - AIDS not recognized
Next two - AIDS still minor, affecting very few Americans
Last one - funding research and waiting for something positive.

In hindsight people ask, "How could he not have voiced concern over this epidemic?" The answer is that it wasn't an epidemic in those six years. Maybe it was epidemic in the Gay community by 1986, but to discuss it in those terms would have been to label it a Gay disease, which was precisely what we didn't want. When he hailed AZT in 1987, AIDS was still not an epidemic, but he had the perfect opportunity to talk about it without calling it a Gay plague. From that point until now AIDS research funding has been a formal part of the federal budget."

Updated On: 6/8/04 at 04:08 PM

[papalovesmambo]

Posted: 6/8/04 at 8:04pm

"[t]he disease was first reported in 1981, but the president did not even publicly address the plague until [m]arch 31, 1987."

do recall that aids was not called aids until the mid to late part of 1982. actually, as official white house papers cited by steven hayward, author of the multi-volume age of reagan show, the 40th president spoke of aids no later than september 17, 1985. responding to a question on aids research, the president said:

"including what we have in the budget for '86, it will amount to over a half a billion dollars that we have provided for research on aids in addition to what i'm sure other medical groups are doing. and we have $100 million in the budget this year; it'll be 126 million next year. so, this is a top priority with us. yes, there's no question about the seriousness of this and the need to find an answer."

president reagan's february 6, 1986 state of the union address included this specific passage where he says the word "aids" five times:

"we will continue, as a high priority, the fight against acquired immune deficiency syndrome (aids). an unprecedented research effort is underway to deal with this major epidemic public health threat. the number of aids cases is expected to increase. while there are hopes for drugs and vaccines against aids, none is immediately at hand. consequently, efforts should focus on prevention, to inform and to lower risks of further transmission of the aids virus. to this end, i am asking the surgeon general to prepare a report to the american people on aids."

"[a]t that time there were 60,000 reported cases of full-blown aids and 30,000 deaths."

according to the who as of 1987 there were 41,766 cases of full blown aids and 24,452 deaths in the us.

could he have done more? sure. is he the devil because he didn't? no. when attacking like this and insinuating that a person either didn't care or worse, thought an epidemic was justified, at least check the facts. the blame, if that's what it is to be called, for that must be shouldered by more than just one man.

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 6/8/04 at 9:29pm

Honestly, at that time in the 80s, I don't think a Democrat or any other possible Presidential candidate would have done any more. It's easy to blame Reagan. He was the President at a time when the country was trying to figure out what was going on and what to do about it.

"Undoubtedly, Ronald Reagan was a man of character and principle, but we will never know how many people would have been saved had his policies toward lesbians and gay men, and especially people with AIDS, had been more supportive and more sensitive"

When has ANY American President been more supportive and sensitive towards gays? This behavior is not unique to Reagan.

"Make no mistake about it, his was a government of rich white people, and his character notwithstanding, he may have held social progress back by decades"

Again, not unique to Reagan.

Hindsight is 20/20. It is too easy to point fingers and assign blame for actions in the past based on information we didn't have until the future. Let the man rest in peace and focus on moving forward with an affirmative attitude that we can conquer and destroy this disease as we have with so many before.

[jrb_actor]

Posted: 6/8/04 at 9:39pm

From AND THE BAND PLAYED ON by Randy Shilts:

The discovery of cyanide in Tylenol capsules occurred in those same weeks of October 1982. The existence of the poisoned capsules, all found in the Chicago area, was first reported on October 1. The New York Times wrote a story on the Tylenol scare every day for the entire month of October and produced twenty-three more pieces in the two months after that. Four of the stories appeared on the front page. The poisoning received comparable coverage in the media across the country, inspiring an immense government effort. WIthin days of the discovery of what proved to be the only cyanide-laced capsules, the Food and Drug Administration issued orders removing the drug from store shelves across the country. Federal, state, and local authorities were immediately on hand to coordinate efforts in states thousands of miles from where the tampered boxes appeared. No action was too extreme and no expense too great, they insisted, to save lives.

Investigators poured into Chicago to crack the mystery. More than 100 state, federal, and local agents worked the Illinois end of the case alone, filling twenty-six volumes with 11,500 pages of probe reports. The Food and Drug Administration had more than 1,100 employees testing 1.5 million similar capsules for evidence of poisoning, and chasing down every faint possibility of a victim of the new terror, according to the breathless reports of the time. Tylenol's parent company, Johnson & Johnson, estimated spending $100 million in the effort. Within five weeks, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issued new regulations on tamper-resistant packaging to avert repetition of such a tragedy.

In the end, the millions of dollars for CDC Tylenol investigations yielded little beyond the probability that some lone crackpot had tampered with a few boxes of the pain reliever. No more cases of poisoning occurred beyond the first handful reported in early October. Yet the crisis showed how the government could spring into action, issue warnings, change regulations, and spend money, lots of money, when they thought the lives of Americans were at stake.

Altogether, seven people died from the cyanide-laced capsules; one other man in Yuba City, California, got sick, but it turned out he was faking it so he could collect damages from Johnson & Johnson.

By comparison, 634 Americans had been stricken with AIDS by October 5, 1982. Of these, 260 were dead. There was no rush to spend money, mobilize public health officials, or issue regulations that might save lives.

The institution that is supposed to be the public's watchdog, the news media, had gasped a collective yawn over the story of the dead and dying homosexuals. In New York City, where half of the nation's AIDS cases resided, The New York Times had written only three stories about the epidemic in 1981 and three more stories in all of 1982. None made the front page. Indeed, one could have lived in New York, or in most of the United States for that matter, and not even have been aware from the daily newspapers that an epidemic was happening, even while government doctors themselves were predicting that the scourge would wipe out the lives of tens of thousands.

______________________________________

From this, I blame the Reagan administration, but I also blame the supposedly liberal media---it was just a time of abundant homophobia and apathy.

Updated On: 6/8/04 at 09:39 PM

[papalovesmambo]

Posted: 6/8/04 at 10:46pm

federal aids funding 1982-1989

1982 - $8 million
1983 - $44 million
1984 - $103 million
1985 - $205 million
1986 - $508 million
1987 - $922 million
1988 - $1.615 billion
1989 - $2.322 billion

aids was not even known by the name aids semi officially until mid 1982.

in 1984 secretary of health and human services margaret heckler declared, "we hope to have a vaccine [against aids] ready for testing in about two years...yet another terrible disease is about to yield to patience, persistence and outright genius."

[SonofMammaMiaSam]

Posted: 6/9/04 at 11:37am

Don't be outraged at Ronald Reagan, be outraged that not much has changed since 1982. The world epidemic has gotten worse, not better even with all of the scientific advancements. People need to be educated, plain and simple. We know much and have learned little.

**********************************************
January 2004

HIV/AIDS Statistics
HIV/AIDS WORLDWIDE
As of the end of 2003, an estimated 40 million people worldwide -37 million adults and 2.5 million children younger than 15 years - were living with HIV/AIDS. Approximately two-thirds of these people (26.6 million) live in Sub-Saharan Africa; another 18 percent (7.4 million) live in Asia and the Pacific.(1)

Worldwide, approximately 11 of every 1000 adults aged 15 to 49 are HIV-infected. In Sub-Saharan Africa, about 8 percent of all adults in this age group are HIV-infected. (1)

An estimated 5 million new HIV infections occurred worldwide during 2003; that is, about 14,000 infections each day. More than 95 percent of these new infections occurred in developing countries, and nearly 50 percent were among females.(1)

In 2003, approximately 2,000 children under the age of 15 years, and 6,000 young people aged 15 to 24 years became infected with HIV every day.(1)

In 2003 alone, HIV/AIDS-associated illnesses caused the deaths of approximately 3 million people worldwide, including an estimated 500,000 children younger than 15 years.(1)
HIV/AIDS IN THE UNITED STATES

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimate that 850,000 to 950,000 U.S. residents are living with HIV infection, one-quarter of whom are unaware of their infection.(2)

Approximately 40,000 new HIV infections occur each year in the United States, about 70 percent among men and 30 percent among women. Of these newly infected people, half are younger than 25 years of age.(3,4)

Of new infections among men in the United States, CDC estimates that approximately 60 percent of men were infected through homosexual sex, 25 percent through injection drug use, and 15 percent through heterosexual sex. Of newly infected men, approximately 50 percent are black, 30 percent are white, 20 percent are Hispanic, and a small percentage are members of other racial/ethnic groups.(4)

Of new infections among women in the United States, CDC estimates that approximately 75 percent of women were infected through heterosexual sex and 25 percent through injection drug use. Of newly infected women, approximately 64 percent are black, 18 percent are white, 18 percent are Hispanic, and a small percentage are members of other racial/ethnic groups.(4)

The estimated number of AIDS diagnoses through 2002 in the United States is 886,575. Adult and adolescent AIDS cases total 877,275, with 718,002 cases in males and 159,271 cases in females. Through the same time period, 9,300 AIDS cases were estimated in children under age 13.(5)

The estimated number of new adult/adolescent AIDS diagnoses in the United States was 43,225 in 1998, 41,134 in 1999, 42,239 in 2000, 41,227 in 2001, and 42,136 in 2002.(5)

The estimated number of new pediatric AIDS cases (cases among individuals younger than age 13) in the United States fell from 952 in 1992 to 92 in 2002.(5)

The estimated rate of adult/adolescent AIDS diagnoses in the United States in 2002 (per 100,000 population) was 76.4 among blacks, 26.0 among Hispanics, 11.2 among American Indians/Alaska Natives, 7.0 among whites, and 4.9 among Asians/Pacific Islanders.(5)

From 1985 to 2002, the proportion of adult/adolescent AIDS cases in the United States reported in women increased from 7 percent to 26 percent.(5)

As of the end of 2002, an estimated 384,906 people in the United States were living with AIDS.(5)

As of December 31, 2002, an estimated 501,669 people with AIDS in the United States had died.(5)

The estimated annual number of AIDS-related deaths in the United States fell approximately 14 percent from 1998 to 2002, from 19,005 deaths in 1998 to 16,371 deaths in 2002.(5)

Of the estimated 16,371 AIDS-related deaths in the United States in 2002, approximately 52 percent were among blacks, 28 percent among whites, 19 percent among Hispanics, and less than 1 percent among Asians/Pacific Islanders and American Indians/Alaska Natives.(5)

REFERENCES

1. UNAIDS. AIDS Epidemic Update, December, 2003.
2. Fleming, P.L. et al. HIV Prevalence in the United States, 2000. 9th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections, Seattle, Wash., Feb. 24-28, 2002. Abstract 11.
3. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). HIV and AIDS - United States, 1981-2001. MMWR 2001;50:430-434.
4. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). HIV Prevention Strategic Plan Through 2005. January 2001.
5. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). HIV/AIDS Surveillance Report 2002;14:1-40.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

NIAID is a component of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which is an agency of the Department of Health and Human Services. NIAID supports basic and applied research to prevent, diagnose, and treat infectious and immune-mediated illnesses, including HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases, illness from potential agents of bioterrorism, tuberculosis, malaria, autoimmune disorders, asthma and allergies.

News releases, fact sheets and other NIAID-related materials are available on the NIAID Web site at http://www.niaid.nih.gov.

Prepared>http://www.niaid.nih.gov>http://www.niaid.nih.gov.

Prepared by:
Office of Communications and Public Liaison
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
National Institutes of Health
Bethesda, MD 20892

Department of Health
and Human Services National Institutes of Health (NIH)
Bethesda, Maryland 20892 NIAID Home

[orion59]

Posted: 6/9/04 at 12:08pm

My boyfreind works in HIV/AIDS research under the CDC. In fact, many of the statistics you site may have come from his department. These are accurate statistics. However, lack of education isn't the reason that so many continue to get this virus, at least not in most of the larger US cities. The educational programs are in place (granted, they could be more aggressive)and the services are available. Denial is the main thing right now that seems to be a major factor. There are people who have AIDs and still believe it doesn't exist. There are groups of people organized in this country to spread the word that condoms do not help and in fact may contribute to getting HIV. Then there are the conspiricy theory groups that believe the cure is out there. The drug comapnies and the government are holding back on it to make money off the maintenence drugs. Any day now the truth will come out and the cure will be there and we don't need to worry about HIV anymore.

No matter how many times you say it orhow much information you put out, there are going to be people who refuse to believe it can happen to them and they will continue taking risks.

[SonofMammaMiaSam]

Posted: 6/9/04 at 12:34pm

I actually agree with you -- sufficient education is out there and people still choose to ignore the facts. I believe that educational efforts need to focus on additional areas -- character, morals, responsiblity/consequence. If parents don't/won't teach it, our school systems and other public institutions need to. I saw a dozen of my closest friends die during the eighties and it scared me silly. In fact, essentially scared me into abstinance for a while. While I don't condone abstinance as the sole solution, I do believe that it played a big role in my survival. That coupled with a strong belief and value system (not religious) made me think and then act responsibly. Sadly, those systems are lacking and the epidemic continues.

[orion59]

Posted: 6/9/04 at 1:03pm

If you go to a site called thebody.com and read some of what is on the message boards there, it's frightening. Thebody.com is a great site dedicated to support and education. It's a wonderful resource for anyone who has HIV/AIDS or knows someone who does. On their message boards there are these denialist groups posting dozens of messages a day trying to convince people that AIDS doesn't raelly exist and that condoms are dangerous. The site deletes these as quickly a sthey can but, teh denialists keep coming back just as fast.

What's sad is that people who are newly diagnosed come in a read this anti medication, anti doctor bs and could believe it. When you are diagnosed you desperately want to believe it isn't true and this is what those groups prey on.

I agree that the educational programs should focus on other areas and many are now starting to. That's sort of what I was thinking when I said they could be more agressive. Of course, there could always be more of them too.

The problem is that it's easier for people to deny something that they are afraid of. That's what the educational programs are up against.