From: Erik Sayle (lists@thecri.org)
Date: Tue May 13 2003 - 22:05:17 MDT
You might have a point there about Gay activists, but i will also address a
point that President Reagan did not utter the word AIDS for a something like
6 years because it was affecting gay people. From the time scientists first
noticing AIDS in i think 1981, Reagan never even touched the topic. I guess
China with SARS just pulled a Reagan!
Here is a blurb I just googled:
"
But perhaps the burgeoning AIDS epidemic posed the most defining public
health failure of Reagan's administration. Until 1987, six years into the
pandemic, Reagan never publicly mentioned AIDS and treated it as a state or
local issue. According to his White House physician at the time, Reagan
thought of AIDS as a kind of "measles that would go away."
Reagan refused to order or fund preventive education programs and never
spoke out against the rampant fear and discrimination many HIV/AIDs patients
faced on the job, with insurance companies or at school. Marilyn Moon, a
long-time policy analyst at the Urban Institute, told me last month that
there was a "great deal of fear that people with AIDS would try and qualify
for Medicare or other health programs and a lot of discussion by the
administration on how to keep them from bankrupting the medical system."
AIDS activists say Reagan's one concrete proposal was for widespread testing
and mandatory identification of people with HIV, with the idea of enforcing
a public health quarantine.
In fact, rather than providing for the public welfare, Reagan and his
closest advisors effectively muzzled then-Surgeon Gen. C. Everett Koop to
stop him from discussing AIDS publicly until midway through Reagan's second
term. It took the death of movie star Rock Hudson in 1985 and the Oct. 22,
1986, release of the surgeon general's report on acquired immune deficiency
syndrome, which advocated massive public education and a condom distribution
program, for Reagan to change his personal views. Even then, his response
was at best "halting and ineffective," according to presidential biographer
and veteran Washington Post reporter Lou Cannon.
"
Reagan could have done much more to prevent AIDS than anyone and did
nothing. It was virtually criminal. The more I think about it, Reagans
silence does remind me of China and SARS...... Ironic!
Erik Sayle
> "Mike Lorrey" <mlorrey@yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- "Robert J. Bradbury" <bradbury@aeiveos.com> wrote:
> > We will be lucky if the SARS genome turns out to be stable
> > and we can relatively quickly develop a vaccine against it.
> > As the HIV epedemic demonstrates -- we don't want to get
> > it wrong -- and that includes not taking narrow-minded views
> > of transmission routes that may be significantly different
> > in various cultures.
>
> At risk of attracting more flames from the GLBT crowd here, it is
> specifically because we DIDN'T take the 'crank down hard and fast'
> route with HIV that it is the problem it is today. The Gay activist
> organizations vehemently opposed quarrantine, mandatory testing, or any
> other means of identifying HIV carriers and taking appropriate
> remedies, because they were flexing their political rights to hang out
> in dirty bath houses, and now the result is all THEIR fault, IMHNSFHO,
> contrary to the claims of Samantha, and this was long before Fumento's
> 'myth' comments in 1990. By 1990, the cat was out of the bag thanks to
> gay activists, and there was no way to put that genie back in the
> bottle.
>
> Furthermore, the precedent set by the gay community in opposing HIV
> containment remedies in favor of individual rights has caused a massive
> resurgence in other communicable diseases like TB, Syphillis,
> Gonorrhea, etc and hampered the ability of health care workers to nip
> epidemics in the bud. The ability of the US health care system to deal
> with bioterror attacks is similarly compromised as a result.
>
> =====
> Mike Lorrey
> "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils."
> - Gen. John Stark
> Blog: Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.blogspot.com/
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> Pro-tech freedom discussion:
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/exi-freedom
>
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