Berkeley Is 1st U.S. City to Mail AIDS Pamphlet

Berkeley on Thursday became the first American city to mail AIDS education pamphlets to each of its 55,000 households.

The glossy blue, white and gray pamphlet is a slightly modified version of one developed by the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and San Francisco’s KPIX television station.

It explains what acquired immune deficiency syndrome is, how it is transmitted and how people can protect themselves from the disease, including the use of condoms.

Prominently displayed on the front flap is a statement from Mayor Loni Hancock: “The information in this brochure can save lives. Please share it with everyone you know.”

At a press conference, city officials said they chose a pamphlet whose factual tone and lack of graphic visual material would be educational without being offensive.

“Anyone would be hard pressed to find anything morally wrong with our pamphlet,” said John Iverson, a member of the committee that developed the $10,000 mass-mailing program.

But the president of a conservative women’s group that recently helped draft a state Republican Party resolution asking for a ban on certain AIDS education materials disagreed.

“Suggesting that condoms prevent the spread of the virus is morally wrong,” said Leslie Dutton, president of the Santa Monica-based American Assn. of Women.

Dutton said her group also objects to a report by U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop that says condoms can help prevent the transmission of the AIDS virus.

“We should not be sending a message to people that they can continue a promiscuous life style and avoid getting AIDS,” Dutton said.

Berkeley Councilwoman Maudelle Shirek, who initiated the AIDS education effort, said the United States was lagging behind European nations that had sent AIDS information to all their citizens.

“Inaction concerning AIDS will historically ruin the Reagan Administration,” Shirek said. “Nationally, we need a comprehensive, compassionate AIDS policy which, like Berkeley’s, is concerned with both health and civil rights.”

In Washington Thursday, Rep. Barbara Boxer (D-Greenbrae) called a meeting of the House Budget Committee’s ad hoc task force on AIDS to question the Reagan Administration’s foot dragging on AIDS education.

Boxer and others have criticized the federal government for failing to distribute 45 million copies of an AIDS information brochure despite funding and a congressional directive to mail the information to every American household.

“We are six years into this crisis and have yet to see a massive, well-coordinated, nationwide educational program,” Boxer said.

At the same time, aides for Boxer and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) report that they have been unable to get enough copies of the much more explicit surgeon general’s report.