Reagan Names 13 to AIDS Panel, Laments Loss of Friends to Disease

President Reagan today appointed a gay geneticist, a Roman Catholic cardinal and a former chief of naval operations to a 13-member commission on AIDS and told the group to report back within 90 days on ways to deal with the deadly disease.

At a briefing for the panel at the National Institutes of Health, Reagan remembered “the death by AIDS of friends and former associates,” and said that “one way or another . . . we will beat this disease.”

After a tour of the institutes laboratories where the virus was first isolated--and a visit to a ward with child victims of AIDS--Reagan solemnly declared, “Let me just make a promise to those children and all others who have contracted this disease: We will, I will, do all that God gives us the power to do to find a cure for AIDS.

“After the visit to the (children’s) ward today and after the death by AIDS of friends and former associates, this is my prayer: One way or another, whether by breakthrough or steady progress, we will beat this disease.”

‘Great Problem’

Reagan apparently was referring to the AIDS-related deaths of conservative activists Terry Dolan and Roy Cohn and entertainers Rock Hudson and Liberace.

On June 25, Dr. William Eugene Mayberry, chairman of the board of governors of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., was named chairman of the AIDS panel. Mayberry acknowledged at the time that “I’m no AIDS expert,” while observing that “it’s a great problem of national concern.”

Named to the commission today were:

--Cardinal John O’Connor of New York, an outspoken Catholic traditionalist and a stern moralist who has linked the homosexual life style with the biblical sin of sodomy. At the same time, however, his archdiocese has been active in assisting AIDS patients.

--Adm. James D. Watkins, retired, who served as chief of naval operations from 1982-86. Watkins was closely involved in the Pentagon’s 1985 decision to begin testing all military recruits and active-duty personnel for the disease.

--Dr. Frank Lilly, chairman of the Genetics Department of the Albert Einstein Medical Center in New York. From 1984 until late last year he served as a member of the board of the Gay Men’s Health Crisis group in New York.

--Colleen Conway-Welch, a professor and dean of nursing at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn.

--John J. Creedon, president of Metropolitan Life Insurance Co., New York.

--Theresa L. Crenshaw, director of the Crenshaw Clinic in San Diego, which evaluates and treats sexual dysfunction. Crenshaw has said that most safe-sex guidelines wrongly imply that use of condoms will protect people from AIDS. She has contended that much more needs to be done to bring about major changes in sexual behavior.

--Richard M. De Vos, president of Amway Corp., Grand Rapids, Mich., and past finance chairman of the Republican National Committee.

--Burton James Lee III, a physician at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York who specializes in lymphomas.

--Woodrow A. Myers Jr., health commissioner of Indiana who favors isolating people who are known to have AIDS virus infection and who continue to engage in prostitution and drug abuse.

--Penny Pullen, a member of the Illinois House and the sponsor of AIDS-related legislation that included mandatory AIDS testing for marriage license applicants and convicted sex offenders.

--Cory Servaas, editor and publisher of the Saturday Evening Post, who last year announced a “cure” for AIDS. She said she had worked with the National Institutes of Health on the treatment, but institutes officials said they had never heard of it.

--William B. Walsh, president and medical director of Project HOPE.