China’s New Leap : Life-and-Death Matter

Jeff Mullican wonders whether he should give up. He questions life because he faces death. Jeff Mullican has AIDS.

Acquired immune deficiency syndrome kills. And Mullican, 33, who lives in New England, has already survived longer than most people with AIDS. But he is starting to feel weaker. He tires when he measures the water for instant oatmeal. He has lost 35 pounds, and he lacks the stamina to shift gears on his car. A trip to see friends exhausts him. The worst, he told Times staff writer Marlene Cimons, is that he feels that he is losing control of his life. “Why go through the struggle when you know the end is going to be the same?” What’s the point?

The unfortunate point--and this will be of precious little comfort to Mullican, his friends and others who suffer from or because of AIDS--is that by taking the experimental drug AZT he may in some small way have donated himself toward a cure for this cruelly mysterious disease. AZT may not be the answer, but it may give scientists time to study the immune systems of victims and learn how to rebuild them.

By telling his story, Jeff Mullican has put into personal terms what it is like to be an average human being afflicted with a spreading malady. If time and again the stories of people like Mullican and Hank Koehn of Los Angeles and young Ricky, Robert and Randy Ray of Arcadia, Fla., are told, the indifference of some in society must end. Government and individuals must reach deeper into their pockets for money to help fight this killer and look deeper into their own reactions when confronted at home or at work with the psychological, not to mention physical, needs of AIDS victims, their families and their friends.

Mullican is not alone in his fight. It is a matter of life and death to us all, and that is the point that must never be forgotten.