Student Victims, Terrified Parents : Reagan Sympathizes With Both Sides in AIDS Furor

President Reagan, at his news conference Tuesday evening, found himself confronted by the same agonizing dilemma that has troubled thousands of American parents during the past month: Would he send a child of his own to school if a classmate were found to have AIDS?

The President, speaking publicly on AIDS for the first time, paused for a moment and said somberly: “I’m glad I’m not faced with that problem.”

Then he expressed sympathy for both sides in the furor over acquired immune deficiency syndrome, the fatal disease that has afflicted thousands of male homosexuals and intravenous drug users as well as much smaller--but increasing--numbers of heterosexuals and children.

In cities around the nation, terrified and angry parents have demanded that school boards bar young AIDS victims from the classroom. Some have even kept their children out of school--most notably in New York, where more than 12,000 students stayed home in a boycott last week.

School boards have been forced to weigh parents’ fears--and, sometimes, their misconceptions--against the rights of AIDS victims to attend school and the growing but not yet conclusive medical evidence that it is unlikely the disease can be spread in the classroom.

“I can well understand the plight of the parents and how they feel about it,” Reagan said. “I also have compassion, as I think we all do, for the child that has this and doesn’t know, and can’t have it explained to him, why somehow he is now an outcast and can no longer associate with his playmates and schoolmates.

“On the other hand, I can understand the problem of the parents. It is true that some medical sources have said that this cannot be communicated in any way other than the ones we already know and which would not involve a child being in school. And yet medicine has not come forth unequivocally and said: ‘This we know for a fact, that it is safe.’ And until they do, I think we just have to do the best we can with this problem.”

Reagan has four children by his two marriages. The youngest, Ron Reagan, is 27 years old.

Criticism on Research

Reagan disagreed with critics who have charged that his Administration has not paid for enough research against the AIDS epidemic. When asked if his Administration would support a massive research program, he replied: “I have been supporting it for more than four years now.”

Calling it one of his “top priorities,” Reagan said that his Administration has provided “half a billion dollars for research on AIDS in addition to what I’m sure other medical groups are doing.”

When told that government scientists conducting AIDS research have described the government’s response as inadequate, the President appeared surprised. “I think with our budgetary constraints, it seems to me that $126 million in a single year for research has got to be something of a vital contribution,” he said.

No Known Cure

AIDS is an almost always-fatal disease caused by a virus that destroys the body’s immune system, leaving it vulnerable to otherwise rare infections. There is no known cure and no one has ever regained lost immunity. Since 1981, more than 13,000 cases and more than 6,000 deaths have been reported. More than 150 cases have been among children and more than 100 children have died.

In adults, the disease has been transmitted primarily by sexual contact--through the exchange of bodily fluids such as semen and blood--blood transfusions and the use of unsterilized intravenous needles. The majority of infected children acquired the virus from infected mothers during pregnancy or through the transfusion of blood or blood products.

On Aug. 29, the federal Centers for Disease Control, saying that “casual person-to-person contact, as would occur among schoolchildren, appears to pose no risk,” recommended that children suffering from AIDS in most cases should be allowed to attend school.

“None of the identified cases of (AIDS) infection in the United States are known to have been transmitted in the school, day-care or foster care setting,” the agency said in its statement.

The federal agency cautioned that schools might be advised to ban some preschool or neurologically handicapped children “who lack control of their body secretions or who display behavior such as biting,” as well as children who have “uncoverable, oozing lesions.”

CDC spokesmen said that the recommendations were a response to the widespread attempts of school systems nationwide to forbid children with the disease to attend regular classes. “We felt this was an injustice to the children,” said Dr. Martha Rogers, a medical epidemiologist with the Atlanta-based agency’s AIDS branch.