Ignominious Response to a Killer

Contrast, if you will:

The political response to the discovery of superconductivity was swift, sure-footed, and backed with money. It showed that government can move rapidly and sensibly--especially when Japanese scientists are racing hard, huge problems in research remain to be solved and the eventual market potential is in the billions.

In contrast, the Reagan Administration’s response to AIDS has been tardy, penny-pinching and a debacle in leadership, culminating in turmoil and resignations on the long-overdue President’s Commission on AIDS. Created six years after the crisis appeared, the commission is now in its fourth month, with its second chairman, and still hasn’t done a thing.

Ten months after IBM researchers reported they had devised a material that allowed superconductivity at considerably higher temperatures, some 1,200 industrialists and researchers were summoned to Washington to hear President Reagan announce an 11-point “Superconductivity Initiative” aimed at making America the leader in commercialization of the discovery.

Contrast that response with the years of indecision and indifference that sapped efforts to confront AIDS before it began a deadly spread that now totals over 40,000 cases and 22,000 deaths.

First reported in June, 1981, AIDS elicited no political interest, despite the ominous warnings that came from experts at the federal Centers for Disease Control. Pleas for money to track the mysterious disease were countered with budget cuts and directives to reallocate funds that had been appropriated for syphilis-control programs. For the first five years of the spreading AIDS crisis, Reagan shunned any mention of the disease--let alone starring at a national conference on a federal response.

How will history remember this President? Given his ignominious response to what could evolve into the great health crisis of modern times, Ronald Reagan could go into the books as the Epidemic President.