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AIDS-a-rama in Washington
C0venfru
The Third International Conference on
AIDS was held in Washington D.C. early
last month. 6300 scientists assembled to
confer, 850 journalists gathered to report,
and innumerable politicians issued state
ments. Some of the highlights:
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Medical
• Dr. Robert Gall of the National
Cancer Institute announced the discovery
of a third virus that causes AIDS. The
virus was isolated in Nigeria where ten
patients are “ known” to be infected with
it. Gallo said the new vims poses no un
known danger, and that there is “ no reason
to panic.” The vims has not yet been
named.
French researchers confirmed in May
that HIV-2, discovered in Africa in 1984,
also causes AIDS. At the Washington
meeting, the Pasteur Institute announced
that the second AIDS vims has now been
found in Western Europe and Brazil.
The new AIDS viruses are no immediate
danger to North Americans. However, if
current blood tests for HIV-1 antibodies do
not also screen for the new vimses, there is
a danger that they might go undetected in
the medical blood supply.
• Statistics from San Francisco indicate
that people infected with AIDS virus
face increasing risk of developing AIDS
or AIDS related conditions. Researchers
estimate that within seven years of infec
tion, over one third of those carrying the
vims will develop AIDS, and up to
seventy-five percent of those infected will
eventually develop outward signs of the
infection.
• Surveys o f physicians show a fear of
AIDS and AIDS patients. Sixty-nine per
cent o f doctors responding believe they
can get AIDS from patients, and twenty-
five percent said they personally would not
continue to care for an AIDS patient if
given a choice. Twenty-seven percent did
not think refusing care to AIDS patient
would be unethical. Eighty-four percent of
male respondents feared getting AIDS in
fections through professional contact,
while only forty-eight percent of female
doctors shared the same fear.
Politics
• W ashington police were not the only
people wearing rubber gloves that week.
During the conference. President Reagan,
in his first public address on the subject of
AIDS (remember, he never publicly uttered
the word until 1985) outlined an extensive
program that mandates AIDS blood
tests for people under federal jurisdiction
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— immigrants, aliens, and federal prison
ers — and urged ' “routine” testing of
couples seeking marriage licenses.
• Reagan has asked for the formation of
a national AIDS policy commission to
make recommendations on public policy.
The W hite House is resisting pressure to
appoint an openly gay member to the com
m ission. despite leverage from AIDS ac
tivists and public health officials. A White
House spokesman said " it would be ab
surd to turn around and start appointing
people based on sexual preference ." The
official added that outspoken opponents of
gay rights would also be barred from the
panel.
• While the Centers for Disease Control
will soon recognize two more conditions
as confirmation of frank AIDS, people
suffering from these afflictions will not
automatically recieve Social Security disa-
bilty benefits. Under the new definition,
dementia and emaciation, along with
pneumocistis carinii and Kaposi sarcoma,
will officially confirm an AIDS diagnosis.
Inclusion of the two conditions as AIDS
will increase the number of AIDS cases by
about twenty percent, mostly by re-evalu
ating cases of ARC as AIDS. However,
Social Security will not automatically ac
cept diagnoses of AIDS dementia or AIDS
emaciation as disabling. People who meet
the new AIDS criteria will have to prove
their cases are disabling through regular
eligibility channels.
Media
• Not only is AIDS big politics, it is big
media. Consequently, the greybeards of
journalism, from Ted Koppel to Paul
Harvey to William Safire drew long breaths
and declaimed on AIDS. While most
editorialists were fair-handed to good,
there was a notable exception. The most
repellent editorial came from Chicago
pundit Mike Royko. Royko, never
known for an indefatigable intellect, usu
ally scores his points through an appeal to
"common sense” or conventional intoler
ance to change. This time the shared pre
judice appealed to was anti-gay: Why, he
repeatedly asks, did gays boo Reagan
when he advocated mandatory AIDS test
ing? He creates a series of gay “ straw
m en” to offer insipid answers, which he
conveniently ridicules. His argument, for
what it's worth, is a paean to testing over
education. He reasons, in my paraphrase:
"S in c e gays and drug users are too stupid
to gain anything from education, we're
going to have to test all o f them and shad-
dup your mouth about the President.“
R oyko's arrogant paternalism assumes
that it was gays who booed Reagan. But
there are plenty o f non-gays who would
pay for the chance to boo the president.
High Court to hear gay case
The US Supreme Court has agreed to
review a case in which the CIA fired an
openly gay worker solely because of his
sexual orientation. The CIA maintains that
the employee's sexual orientation made
him a security risk. An appeals court has
found that the CIA must defend itself at
trial against charges that the firing violates
federal law and the employee's constitu
tional rights The lower court held that the
firing would be legal only if the CIA could
prove that the employee was actually a
security risk.
•