Koop Tells Concern About AIDS Among Teen-Agers

Surgeon General C. Everett Koop told a White House panel today that he is concerned about the spread of the AIDS virus among teen-agers and expressed outrage at suggestions the disease cannot be spread through heterosexual intercourse.

Reiterating his call for sex education programs beginning at the elementary grade levels, Koop said, “I think it is quite possible to raise a generation of adolescents down the road that would be far less sexually active than the present one.”

But in the best of future worlds, he said, “that leaves the teen-agers of today.”

‘Third Line of Defense’

While it is important to recommend abstinence, Koop said, “I think it is also realistic to understand that sexually active teen-agers are unlikely to reverse their pattern and go backward, and therefore prevention for them has to be our third line of defense. . . .

“We have to teach them about the protection of themselves and others through the use of condoms and spermicides.

“I know that goes against the grain of many people in this country,” he continued, “but we cannot abandon more than half of our teen-agers because they are sexually active.”

Although only a relative handful of the more than 50,000 AIDS cases reported so far involve teen-agers, Koop said, little information is available on the extent to which the virus may be lying dormant among that group.

‘More Rapid Spread’ Possible

Largely because of that concern, Koop criticized some press accounts that have suggested there is virtually no danger of AIDS being spread through vaginal intercourse.

“We know from the infected spouses of persons with hemophilia that (this virus) can be spread through normal vaginal intercourse. What concerns me is the potential for a more rapid spread . . . into the general population,” he said.

“I am outraged at recent newspaper and magazine articles stating that there is no danger of heterosexual transmission from normal vaginal intercourse,” said Koop. “Although homosexual sex and IV drug abuse are the principal modes by which most cases are transmitted, it is just not true that there is no danger from normal vaginal intercourse.”