Another Anniversary

Thirty years ago today the CDC released its first report on the mysterious disease later called AIDS.

As the disease spread, so did public hysteria—and vicious reaction against victims.

Ironic that the date corresponds to the 2004 death of the ex-president during whose administration these events began.

That death was followed by the public spectacle of a week-long funeral.

As to the loss of tens of thousands of other Americans during Reagan's administration, Michael Bronski writes—

Although AIDS was first reported in the medical and popular press in 1981, it was only in October 1987 that Reagan publicly spoke about the epidemic. By the end of that year 59,572 AIDS cases had been reported and 27,909 of those women and men had died.

Bronski's article is a reminder of Reagan's more important allegiances—to the ultra-Right politicians and evangelicals who found it so profitable to demonize gays:

...In the media, men such as Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell articulated these sentiments that portrayed gay people as diseased sinners and promoted the idea that AIDS was a punishment from God and that the gay rights movement had to be stopped. In the Republican Party, zealous right-wingers such as Rep. William Dannemeyer of California and Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina hammered home this message. In the Reagan White House, people such as Secretary of Education William Bennett and Gary Bauer, Reagan's domestic policy adviser, worked to enact it in the administration's policies.

Bronski goes over the practical results: chronic underfunding of research; denial of federal funds for AIDS education (thanks to Jesse Helms); calls for mandatory HIV testing (by VP George Bush, among others).

As members of his administration political allies worked against reasonable response to a public health crisis—

Throughout all of this Reagan said nothing and did nothing. When Rock Hudson, a friend and colleague of the Reagans, was diagnosed with AIDS and died in 1985 (one of the 20,740 cases reported that year), Reagan still did not speak out as president. When family friend William F. Buckley, in a March 18, 1986, New York Times opinion article, called for mandatory testing for HIV and said that HIV-positive gay men should have this information forcibly tattooed on their buttocks (and IV-drug users on their arms) Reagan said nothing. In 1986 (after five years of complete silence), when Surgeon General C. Everett Koop released a report calling for AIDS education in schools, Bennett and Bauer did everything possible to undercut and prevent funding for Koop’s too-little-too-late initiative. Reagan, again, said and did nothing. By the end of 1986, 37,061 AIDS cases had been reported; 16,301 people had died.

Of those years, says Bronski

... the most memorable Reagan AIDS moment for me was at the 1986 centenary rededication of the Statue of Liberty. The Reagans were there sitting next to French President Francois Mitterand and his wife, Danielle. Bob Hope was on stage entertaining the all-star audience. In the middle of a series of one-liners Hope quipped, "I just heard that the Statue of Liberty has AIDS but she doesn't know if she got it from the mouth of the Hudson or the Staten Island Fairy." As the television camera panned the audience, the Mitterands looked appalled. The Reagans were laughing. By the end of 1989 and the Reagan years, 115,786 women and men had been diagnosed with AIDS in the United States, and more than 70,000 of them had died. .