AIDS Panel to Aim for Compassion : Myths of Spreading Disease Must End, Chairwoman Says

In the fall of 1985, when there were about 14,000 diagnosed cases of AIDS in the nation and most Americans were just beginning to grasp the implications of the growing and deadly scourge, a woman little known outside the public health community delivered a speech that moved many in her audience to the brink of tears.

“We’re in serious trouble,” she said. “We have a world-class epidemic on our hands.”

She went on to talk about the individuals afflicted with AIDS. “Most of them are talented young men who have chosen atypical life styles for their own personal--perhaps biological--reasons,” she said. “We should remind ourselves that among the dying may be the Tchaikovskys and Prousts of our time--but dead before the flower of their creativity had even enjoyed brief bloom.”

Chairing New Panel

Dr. June Osborn is still little known outside the public health community. But that may be about to change as she assumes a new and highly visible post as chairwoman of the new National AIDS Commission.

A respected virologist and pediatrician who is dean of the University of Michigan’s School of Public Health, Osborn has spent much of the last eight years ripping away at the myths that have grown up around the epidemic--now exceeding 100,000 cases--and fighting for a humane national policy on acquired immune deficiency syndrome, or AIDS.

In her role on the commission, she says, she intends to keep the pressure on with one major goal in mind: “The development of a national consensus that liberates the compassion of the American people.”

“I think they are strikingly compassionate in response to human tragedy when they are not crippled by fear or irrationality,” she said. “The American people do not walk away from a child who falls in a well and they are not going to walk away from sick people, either--if we can help them understand what’s happening.”

Fear of Contagion Persists

Even with the wealth of scientific information acquired over the years about AIDS, Osborn said, there are still “an enormous number of people who don’t trust or don’t quite trust what they’ve learned about the difficulty of transmission. There is still a widespread tendency to want to have people with AIDS fired, or relocated so they don’t work next to you. All of that is coming from ignorance.”

She likes to remind her listeners that “everybody who dies is somebody’s son or daughter.”

“Many people who have lost someone are grieving in secret,” she said. “That, to me, is incompatible with what this country should be about. We’ve got an enormous amount of educating to do.”

The commission, which begins its work today, was established last fall by Congress; its members were appointed by Congress and the executive branch.

Commission’s Assignment

Within a life span of two years, the panel is charged with developing a national consensus on problem areas such as the testing of drugs and other AIDS research, educating the public about AIDS prevention and protecting AIDS patients’ civil rights. It is expected to place a major emphasis on how to pay the costs of treating those with AIDS.

It is also expected to help activate the sweeping policy recommendations of the Ronald Reagan Administration’s AIDS commission.

The earlier panel, headed by Adm. James D. Watkins (now President Bush’s energy secretary), issued recommendations that were widely praised in the public health field, but the Reagan Administration did little to follow them.

The Bush Administration has taken a more supportive approach, and many in the AIDS network are optimistic that the recommendations of the Watkins panel now will be taken seriously.

Bush Backs Proposal

President Bush has endorsed the earlier commission’s centerpiece recommendation that laws prohibiting discrimination against the handicapped, including those with the AIDS virus, be extended to the private sector. Such legislation recently passed the Senate and appears destined for approval in the House, but numerous other proposals remain to be addressed.

“We laid out hundreds of recommendations and no one has really gone back and looked to see what the heck happened to them,” said Kristine Gebbie, who was Oregon’s health officer on the Reagan panel. “It seems to me that’s essential.”

Dr. Burton Lee III, another member of the Reagan commission (now the White House physician under Bush), said he has met with members of the new commission to help smooth the transition.

Unlike the Reagan panel, which was beset with internal conflicts, the new AIDS panel has great unanimity among its members and opens its deliberations with high expectations.

“Our goal is not to reinvent a national strategy for AIDS, which was produced by the former presidential commission in 1988, but to focus our authority on select areas of greatest need,” said Dr. David Rogers, co-chairman of the commission. Rogers is chairman of the New York State Commission on AIDS and former president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, one of the most active foundations involved with the AIDS crisis.

‘Most Qualified People’

Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on health, described the new commission as “composed of some of the most qualified people in the world--which is fortunate, since they have to make recommendations on some of the most difficult problems in the world.”

The other 10 voting members of the commission are:

--Rep. J. Roy Rowland (D-Ga.), a physician and author of the legislation that established the commission.

--Eunice Diaz, a member of the Los Angeles County Aids Commission.

--Diane Ahrens, chairwoman of the Ramsey County, Minn., board of commissioners and head of the National Assn. of Counties’ task force on AIDS.

--The Rev. Scott Allen, a Baptist minister who served on the Texas state task force on AIDS.

--Dr. Don Des Jarlais, coordinator of AIDS research at the New York State substance abuse services division.

--Donald S. Goldman, former president of the National Hemophilia Foundation.

--Larry Kessler, founder of the Boston AIDS Action Committee.

--Harlan Dalton, a professor at Yale University Law School.

--Dr. Charles Konigsberg, head of the health division of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment.

--Belinda Mason, who has AIDS and is president of the National Assn. of People with AIDS.

“These are people who have both expertise and experience in this epidemic,” Osborn said. “We all have a realistic assessment of what a tough job we have.”