Administration ‘Cutting Corners,’ Waxman Charges : Official Defends Effort to Combat AIDS

Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles) charged Sunday that the Reagan Administration has “short-changed research, cut corners and refused to put money” into research on AIDS.

But in an exchange with Waxman on CBS-TV’s program “Face the Nation,” the physician who heads the government’s effort to combat the fatal disease maintained that funding has been adequate. “We’ve been working ever since the disease was first identified in 1981, as it is our first priority,” said Dr. James O. Mason, an acting assistant secretary of health and human services.

Last week, Waxman disclosed that the Health and Human Services Department had proposed that the $86-million budget for AIDS research in 1986 be raised 44%. However, on Sunday he called the proposed increase “a drop in the bucket” and said Health and Human Services Secretary Margaret M. Heckler denied additional funding last year after “we had all the public health officials in the Administration” plead for more money.

“The Administration has refused to treat this disease with the urgency with which it should be treated,” said Waxman, who is chairman of the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on health and the environment.

Disease Has Killed 6,000

About 12,000 persons have contracted AIDS thus far, and an estimated 6,000 have died. Last week, it was disclosed that actor Rock Hudson had sought treatment in Paris for acquired immune deficiency syndrome, which leaves its victims defenseless against infections.

Mason, who is also director of the federal Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, said Heckler had made AIDS “her No. 1 priority” as soon as she took over the department in 1983. “Money has not in any way incapacitated or slowed us down in moving ahead,” he said, adding that government efforts had produced “very remarkable” results.

Virus Isolated

The virus responsible for the disease has been isolated, Mason said, and high-risk groups, primarily male homosexuals, have been defined and notified. He added that steps have been taken to make the nation’s blood supply safe for transfusions by warning those individuals who should not donate blood and by developing a test for contaminated blood.

To fight AIDS, Mason said, researchers must find a chemical to destroy the virus, produce a substance to restore immunity systems suppressed by the disease and develop drugs to fight “the opportunistic infections that really are what kill the AIDS patients.”

Mason said all drugs now being studied for treatment of AIDS are toxic, and none has been able to destroy the virus to prevent its recurrence once treatment with drugs has stopped.

Mason said risks of infection through blood transfusions “never have been great.” Only “about 150 of the nearly 12,000 cases (of AIDS) are associated with the blood supply,” he said, and government scientists are trying to “bring that 150 down to zero.”

At present, Mason said, a new test that detects antibodies is being used to screen blood supplies. On Wednesday, he said, the Health and Human Services Department will announce the results of studies designed to determine “how positive the test has to be before it really says with a high degree of positivity that a person has the virus.”