AIDS Education Effort Criticized as Inadequate

Federal efforts to educate the public about AIDS have been “woefully inadequate” and the government must spearhead a billion-dollar research and information program to prevent a national health catastrophe, a major study released today said.

The National Academy of Sciences, in what it termed the most comprehensive study of the AIDS crisis to date, said the urgency of the epidemic requires “perhaps the most wide-ranging and intensive efforts ever made against an infectious disease.”

In a report entitled “Confronting AIDS,” an expert panel assembled by the academy said a coordinated program against acquired immune deficiency syndrome would cost $2 billion annually by the end of the decade.

Half of this money, most of which should come from federal coffers, should be devoted to research into understanding, preventing and treating the disease and the rest to public health and education programs aimed at containing the spread of the fatal condition, it said.

Education Best Hope

Dr. Sheldon M. Wolff of Tufts University, co-chairman of the panel, told a news briefing that the best hope of curbing the disease, most commonly spread by sexual activity or sharing contaminated needles during drug abuse, is education.

“People should be told that they can protect themselves against the disease by using condoms during sexual intercourse--either anal or vaginal--with an infected or possibly infected persons, and by not sharing needles and syringes,” Wolff said. “They should be told that AIDS is not spread by casual contact.”

The costs of preventing AIDS cases through education and public health programs will be only a fraction of what it will cost to care for patients with the disease, estimated to rise to between $8 billion and $16 billion by 1991, he said.

AIDS has been diagnosed in more than 26,000 Americans to date, 15,000 of whom have died. About 70% of the victims have been promiscuous male homosexuals.

The panel said it agreed with U.S. Public Health Service estimates that more than 1 million people in this country are infected with the causal virus and that by 1991, more than 179,000 deaths from AIDS could be expected.