Media Coverage of AIDS

I sincerely commend your two-part series on AIDS and the press, an assessment that thoughtfully points up the role of the media in controlling the spread of this terrible pestilence.

But I fail to see how more aggressive investigation of the dispute between Drs. Robert Gallo and Luc Montagnier could have resulted in “ . . . many lives . . . saved.”

Isn’t it time that the public and the press realize that the only reason the mortality rate for patients with AIDS is only 62% is that the epidemic has yet to run its course? Isn’t it time to face up the fact that AIDS is, inevitably, a fatal disease?

HERBERT G. MILLER

Los Angeles