Slamming Against a Brick Wall : A frustrated Magic Johnson protests lack of federal action against AIDS

Anyone who has ever watched Earvin (Magic) Johnson on a basketball court knows he is not a quitter. But even with his determination, Johnson has become so fed up with the lack of federal action in attacking AIDS that he is threatening to resign from the National Commission on AIDS. Trying to get Washington to fight harder against the deadly epidemic is like “going up against a brick wall,” Johnson said this week. “Every time we ask for more funding or adequate funding, we get shot down or turned down by the President.”

President Bush and some members of Congress argue that AIDS research has to compete for dollars with other--albeit far less deadly--diseases. But what is the government’s excuse for not spending the already budgeted money in the most effective ways?

For example, the federal Centers for Disease Control has a fiscal 1992 AIDS budget of $480 million, largely for education and prevention programs. However, AIDS experts say, the agency’s methods of educating about how the human immunodeficiency virus is transmitted are grossly inadequate. It’s hardly useful for the federal government to issue “educational” materials and posters with muddy, euphemistic language or, worse, no real information.

One poster, for example, pictures a beach ball and a caption saying, “You can’t get AIDS from this.” Well, that’s a start. Now how about more information on how someone can get AIDS--information that isn’t squelched by political considerations over whether frank terms might offend, that is unambiguous, that reaches all Americans?

Among teen-agers, one of the key groups in danger of knowing too little about AIDS, many agree that more AIDS education is needed; 64% in a recent nationwide survey by Camp Fire Boys and Girls said the current level of education is insufficient.

As the number of U.S. AIDS cases grows, the nation is, as AIDS activist Elizabeth Glaser put it Tuesday, “in a race against the clock.”

“This is not about being a Republican or an independent or a Democrat,” this woman with the virus told the Democratic National Convention. “It’s about the future--for each and every one of us.”