Heckler Aide Calls for 55% Increase in U.S. AIDS Funds : Tells Senate Panel Ailment Is Top Priority

A top aide to Health and Human Services Secretary Margaret M. Heckler told a Senate committee today that he is recommending a 55% increase in federal spending next year to combat AIDS.

Dr. James O. Mason, assistant secretary for health in the Department of Health and Human Services, said he has asked the White House to approve a $70-million increase in 1986 spending to battle acquired immune deficiency syndrome.

That would be a 55% increase over the $129 million the Administration is asking, which itself is $40 million higher than President Reagan requested in his initial 1986 budget.

Mason said the escalating requests are due to constant reassessment of the threat posed by AIDS and the proper government response.

‘No. 1 Priority’

“This disease is the department’s No. 1 public health priority,” Mason told the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on health. “We will continue to reassess our efforts in order to make maximum progress in our fight against this disease.”

Sen. Lowell P. Weicker Jr. (R-Conn.), the subcommittee chairman, told Mason he would be willing to amend the department’s money bill on the Senate floor if necessary to provide whatever additional funds are needed for AIDS.

“As soon as you get this to us, we’ll move,” Weicker said. “Whatever you ask for, you got.”

The exchange came as Weicker’s subcommittee explored the state of scientific knowledge about AIDS and the scope of the government’s response to it.

German Prostitutes Cited

In other testimony today, a Harvard researcher said that German prostitutes have infected some U.S. soldiers with AIDS, and those soldiers appear to be spreading the disease to wives and girlfriends, indicating that heterosexual transmission of the AIDS virus has moved from theory to reality.

Dr. William A. Haseltine of the Harvard Medical School said an Army study found that 5% of the U.S. soldiers in Berlin seeking treatment for venereal disease are infected with the AIDS virus.

He said they apparently were infected by local prostitutes. Among prostitutes surveyed, he said, 20% to 50% were infected with AIDS. Haseltine did not say how many soldiers or prostitutes were surveyed.

Transmission Pattern

Blood samples by the Army have shown that an infected male soldier can transmit the AIDS virus to a female sexual partner and that she in turn can transmit the virus to other males, Haseltine said.

And, he added, there are some reports indicating lesbian women can spread the disease to other women.

“A lethal venereal disease is now spreading through our population, all the more dangerous because infections may remain inapparent for a long time,” Haseltine said.

Homosexual men have been the principal victims of AIDS, and many think of it as a disease of homosexuality. But, said Haseltine, “in retrospect it appears that the original focus on the sexual practices of homosexuals . . . was misplaced.”