Cause for Optimism

With two excellent if belated appointments by President Bush, the new national AIDS Commission is complete and ready to get to work. There is optimism that it will be an effective new force in facing the growing problem just at the moment when the total of AIDS cases in the United States has reached 100,000.

The optimism has two sources. First of all, Bush has shown a concern and a commitment that former President Ronald Reagan failed to provide. And, secondly, the quality of the commission appointments is excellent, drawing praise from some of the best-informed people engaged in the effort to contain the pandemic, free of the extremism that characterized some of the members of Reagan’s Presidential Commission on the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) Epidemic.

This new commission will have a running start on the problem because of the excellent work done by the Reagan commission under the leadership of Adm. James D. Watkins, now secretary of energy in the Bush Cabinet. Its report, published just 13 months ago but largely ignored by the Reagan Administration, provides an appropriate and urgent agenda for the new commission.

A score of major recommendations and hundreds of detailed proposals emerged from the work of that commission. The report recognized the importance of prevention in the absence of a cure, the importance of early treatment of those with the HIV infection long before they have symptoms of AIDS and AIDS-related illnesses, and the importance of anti-discrimination legislation to protect the victims of the disease. It identified areas of reform needed in testing and speeding the availability of new drugs, and also the need for more research. Developments in the succeeding months have confirmed the wisdom of its findings.

President Bush has named two members to the new commission: Belinda Ann Mason, a young mother of two who herself was infected with HIV through a blood transfusion, and Dr. David E. Rogers, professor of medicine at Cornell University Medical College in New York City and former president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which has been the most generous private source of funding for AIDS research and health care programs. Three cabinet members also will serve: Dr. Louis W. Sullivan, secretary of health and human services; Dick Cheney, secretary of defense, and Edward J. Derwinski, secretary of veteran affairs. The other members are Eunice Diaz, a health consultant and member of the Los Angeles County AIDS Commission; Rep. Roy Rowland (D-Ga.), a physician; Larry Kessler, executive director of the Boston AIDS Action Committee; Diane Ahrens, head of the Ramsey County, Minn., board of commissioners; Rev. Scott Allen, coordinator of the AIDS Interfaith Network in Dallas; Dr. Don C. Des Jarlais, an AIDS research coordinator in New York; Donald S. Goldman of Livingston, N.J., an attorney; Dr. June Osborn, dean of the University of Michigan school of public health; Harry Dalton, a Yale law professor, and Dr. Charles Konigsberg, director of health for the Kansas Health and Environment Department.