Surgeon General’s Report

C. Everett Koop, the surgeon general of the United States, has issued a report on AIDS that draws the appropriate, compassionate and inescapably correct medical conclusions about the disease. AIDS is not passed by casual, non-sexual contact, the report says, so there is no public health reason to institute compulsory blood testing for the AIDS virus or to quarantine persons infected with it. When he was asked Wednesday about Proposition 64, the California initiative that would pressure state officials to institute such measures, Koop said it was “something that should be defeated.”

Koop’s statements carry particular weight because of anti-homosexual remarks he has made in the past. Nearly three-fourths of the 26,556 people who have contracted AIDS are male homosexuals, but Koop speaks now not as a moralist but as the nation’s chief physician. “We are fighting a disease, not people,” his report says. “Those who are already afflicted are sick people and need our care, as do all sick patients.” Koop concludes that there is no threat to the public health from casual contact with persons infected with the AIDS virus. Moreover, trying to segregate people who have been exposed drives them underground, harming their health and the public’s.

At the same time, the Koop report recognizes and underscores the danger to all people from unprotected sexual contact--without a condom. It urges a comprehensive program of sex education starting in grade school to make everyone--heterosexuals and homosexuals--aware that the AIDS virus is out there and to teach people how to protect themselves from it. Communities need to overcome their skittishness about sex in order to make clear to people where the real danger lies and what they can do about it.

In the absence of a vaccine or a cure for AIDS, education remains the only tool against it, and Koop’s report is exceptionally forthright in recognizing that fact and describing proper sexual habits. The more people know, the better they can protect themselves. Koop’s report is wise and its recommendations should be quickly adopted.