Emergence of AIDS First mention by the White House On October 15, 1982, the White House answered its first question about the AIDS crisis, marking the first official statement from the White House on AIDS. At a regular White House press briefing, reporter
Lester Kinsolving asked a question about AIDS, leading to the following exchange with
White House Press Secretary Larry Speakes:
Subsequent questions from Kinsolving Kinsolving, despite being personally against homosexuality, continued to press Speakes on the AIDS issue over the following years. On June 12, 1983, a second exchange on the topic of AIDS occurred between Kinsolving and Speakes, in which Speakes said that the President was "briefed on the AIDS situation a number of months ago", the first public indication that Reagan was aware of the AIDS epidemic. As part of that same exchange, Speakes also jokingly insinuated that Kinsolving was gay himself, saying at a mention of
fairy tales that "Lester's ears perked up when you said
fairy." On December 11, 1984, Kinsolving asked another question about AIDS, his last such exchange for which known records exist. Speakes noticed Kinsolving making his way to the front and called on him, leading to the following exchange: Though they did not attract contemporary attention, Speakes' responses to Kinsolving's questions were later criticized for not treating the AIDS epidemic seriously after they were featured in the 2015 documentary short film
When AIDS Was Funny.
1983 meetings On June 21, 1983, Reagan held a meeting with the
National Gay Task Force representatives
Virginia Apuzzo and Jeff Levi, alongside members of his own administration, including staff from the
Department of Health and Human Services. This marked the first time the Reagan administration had met with representatives of the LGBTQ community. The meeting was described as a "get-acquainted" meeting, and discussed concerns about the AIDS epidemic and basic solutions to it, such as encouraging
condom usage to mitigate spread. However, Reagan was dissatisfied with his meeting with the task force, and in August of that year scheduled another meeting on the AIDS epidemic, this time without any representatives of the LGBTQ community, instead choosing to meet with conservative activists. Attendees of this meeting included
Director of the Office of Public Liaison Faith Whittlesey, National Director of the
Conservative Caucus Howard Phillips and
Moral Majority representative
Ron Goodwin. Goodwin advocated for closing
gay bathhouses and requiring blood donors to provide sexual histories, while Phillips encouraged Reagan to put out a statement condemning homosexuality as a moral wrong and "link[ing] this statement to the AIDS outbreak", and pushed for a position of only discussing the AIDS pandemic in the context of homosexuality as a moral failing of AIDS victims. Many conservatives of the era echoed similar sentiments.
Pat Buchanan, who would become the
White House Communications Director for Reagan in 1985, wrote acerbically in a column on June 23, 1983: "The poor homosexuals. They have declared war on nature, and now nature is exacting an awful retribution." According to historian Jennifer Brier, these meetings and the attitudes prevailing in them deeply complicated epidemiologists' efforts. While public health leaders and
epidemiologists from the
Center for Disease Control (CDC) and
National Institute of Health (NIH) attempted to gain control of the epidemic, they also had to contend with Reagan's conservative advisors and aides, who wanted AIDS education to "fit the model of social and religious conservatism that posited gay men as sick and dangerous". Brier further writes that, "Staff members were flooded with material with vitriolic attacks on homosexuality." Following these 1983 meetings, there are no records of internal White House conversations on AIDS for two years. In a 2006 interview,
Margaret Heckler, who was Reagan's
Secretary of Health and Human Services from 1983 to 1985, stated that she had never gotten the chance to speak with Reagan about the AIDS crisis, as the Reagan administration's cabinet meetings were highly structured and AIDS had never been put on the agenda.
1984 election In the 1984 presidential election, Reagan was re-elected as president, defeating
Democratic challenger
Walter Mondale in a landslide election. His support among evangelicals increased compared to 1980, as he won 78% of the evangelical vote, a group among whom many held antipathy for homosexuals and those with AIDS. Neither Mondale nor Reagan made any public statement on the AIDS during the campaign, and no reporter raised the issue with the candidates.
Funding for AIDS treatment and research , a political opponent of Reagan in Congress who was among the most outspoken in pushing for AIDS funding One of the major priorities of the Reagan administration was to slash the federal budget in all areas except the military, part of an economic policy which came to be known as
Reaganomics, and public health agencies such as the
CDC and
NIH were no exception to these cuts. In the early 1980s, Reagan's director of the
Office of Management and Budget,
David Stockman, targeted public health agencies for massive cuts. One such cut proposed slashing the budget for
immunization by half, but was stopped by opposition from members of Congress
Henry Waxman and
Pete Domenici. In 1981, as part of the push to stop immunization cuts, Waxman sent one of his staffers to the CDC headquarters in
Atlanta, Georgia. While the staffer was there, they were put in contact with
James W. Curran, the leader of the CDC's AIDS task force. Though Curran was initially hesitant to enlist congressional help for fear of alienating the gay community, many of whom were distrustful of the government, he later contacted Waxman in 1982 to work with him on AIDS research funding. Waxman would become one of the main congressional voices advocating for increased AIDS funding. Prior to 1983, AIDS did not have specific funding, and research on AIDS instead had to be pulled from the CDC and NIH's general funding pools. This left AIDS researchers severely constrained on funds, and slowed down their ability to understand, respond to and research treatment for the disease. Some in
Congress, including Waxman, believed the amount of AIDS funding to be insubstantial, comparing it unfavorably to other diseases which had experienced outbreaks such as
Legionnaires' disease and
toxic shock syndrome. According to one government study, in the 1982 fiscal year, toxic shock syndrome, which by that point was already well understood, received funding amounting to $36,100 per death, and Legionnaires' disease received $34,841 per death, while in comparison AIDS research received just $8,991 per death. On April 12, 1983,
Don Francis, then a CDC epidemiologist and AIDS researcher, wrote a memo to CDC Assistant Director
Walter R. Dowdle asking for more resources to deal with the AIDS crisis, imploring that the current funding was not adequate to deal with the epidemic, "The inadequate funding to date has seriously restricted our work and has presumably deepened the invasion of [AIDS] into the American population... it has sandwiched those responsible for research and control between massive pressure to do what is right and an ummovable wall of inadequate resources." On September 28, 1982, , the first legislation to propose to fund AIDS research, was proposed in the
House of Representatives by representatives
Phillip Burton and
Ted Weiss; the bill quickly died in committee. On April 12, 1983,
Secretary of Health and Human Services Margaret Heckler testified to Congress that no additional funding was needed for AIDS research; despite this, Congress passed the first specific funding for AIDS research one month later on May 18, 1983, allocating $2.6 million, which Reagan signed. This scenario continued to play in funding battles out over the following years until 1986, as described by
Randy Shilts: According to Waxman and other congressional members who advocated for this funding, the successful passage and signing of the first AIDS funding was only achieved by "burying" it among money for
Legionnaires' disease and
toxic shock syndrome in a Public Health Emergency Trust Fund.
Death of Rock Hudson at a White House State Dinner on May 15, 1984. Hudson is HIV-positive in this photo, though he is not yet aware of this.
Diagnosis On May 15, 1984,
Rock Hudson, a prominent movie star of the
Golden Age of Hollywood and an acquaintance of the Reagans, attended a White House
State Dinner for
Mexican president Miguel de la Madrid with the Reagans. Hudson was gay but deeply
closeted to the public, as his career was made on playing heartthrobs in heterosexual
romance films. At the dinner, First Lady
Nancy Reagan noticed that Hudson looked gaunt, and when she sent him photos from the dinner, she urged him to get a doctor to look at the red blotch on his neck. When Hudson went for a checkup on June 5, 1984, doctors identified the blotch as
Kaposi's sarcoma, and Hudson tested as HIV-positive. Hudson attempted to hide his illness throughout the rest of 1984 and well into 1985, despite the deterioration of his health. In his public appearances, he progressively appeared more and more emaciated, leading to public speculation on his health. Finally, on July 25, 1985, four days after Hudson collapsed at the
Hôtel Ritz in Paris, Hudson publicist
Yanou Collart publicly confirmed that Hudson had AIDS.
Hudson's plea At the time Hudson was diagnosed, treatments for AIDS were still in their infancy, and even trials were unavailable in the United States. In 1985, as his disease worsened, Hudson travelled to Paris, where he sought to seek treatment from Dominique Dormant, a
French Army doctor who had secretly treated him for AIDS in the fall of 1984 with
HPA-23. After his collapse at the Ritz Hotel on July 21, 1985, Hudson was admitted to the
American Hospital of Paris; Dormant, however, was working at a military hospital and was denied permission to admit Hudson, as Hudson was not a French citizen. Further, Dormant was at first not even able to enter the American Hospital to see Hudson. Staff and doctors at the American Hospital wanted to throw Hudson out, as they felt associating the renowned hospital with the "gay disease" of AIDS would tarnish its reputation, and pressure built on Hudson to transfer to the military hospital. On July 24, 1985, Hudson sent a message to Nancy Reagan via
telegram, in which he pleaded with her to ask the French government to admit him to the military hospital, the only hospital he believed had a chance of curing his illness, as Dormant thought that "a request from the White House or a high American official would change [the hospital commander's] mind". Nancy turned down the request, instead forwarding it to the
American consulate in Paris, and Hudson was ultimately not admitted to the hospital. The reason given by Nancy was that the White House did not want to be seen as making exceptions for friends, though some critics have pointed to other occasions where the Reagans did appear to make exceptions or do favors for their friends. The same day the telegram was received, President Reagan, who to that point still had not acknowledged AIDS publicly, called Hudson to wish him well. In the evening of July 24, 1985, thanks to Yanou Collart's connections with French officials, Dormant was finally allowed to enter the American Hospital to see Hudson. When Dormant saw him, however, he realized that Hudson's HIV infection had progressed too far, and further HPA-23 treatments would be ineffective. On July 28, 1985, Hudson chose to stop seeking treatment in Paris and return home, secretly chartering a
Boeing 747 at a cost of more than $250,000 to return to Los Angeles, where he was taken to the
UCLA Medical Center. Two months later, on October 2, 1985, Hudson died of AIDS complications.
Effects The illness and death of Hudson marked a major turning point in the public perception of AIDS. Hudson, a man who was famous, masculine, and for most of his life perceived as heterosexual, brought a new kind of understanding of those suffering from AIDS to the American public. As
Randy Shilts writes in
And the Band Played On: "There were two clear phases to the disease in the United States: there was AIDS before Rock Hudson and AIDS after." Just weeks after Hudson's death, the
United States Congress doubled the federal funds allocated to finding a cure for AIDS. Reagan was personally deeply affected by Hudson's battle with AIDS, despite the fact that in his own words he "never knew him too well". According to John Hutton, a
Brigadier General in the
United States Army and one of Reagan's personal physicians in 1985, before it was announced that Hudson was dying of AIDS, Reagan believed that AIDS "was like measles and it would go away". After seeing the reports that Hudson had AIDS, however, Reagan asked Hutton to explain the disease to him. After Hutton was done explaining, he says Reagan remarked, "I always thought the world might end in a flash, but this sounds like it's worse."
Ron Reagan, President Reagan's son, agreed that President Reagan needed the death of someone he personally knew to make him understand the gravity of the AIDS epidemic, as he commented, "My father has the sort of psychology where he grasps onto the single anecdote better than the broad wash of the problem." The number of internal White House documents concerning AIDS greatly increased following Hudson's death, and Reagan began discussing the topic with his advisors; primarily aide
Gary Bauer and
Secretary of Education William Bennett.
Reagan acknowledges AIDS On September 17, 1985, less than two months after Hudson had come forward with his AIDS diagnosis, Reagan publicly acknowledged AIDS for the first time when he was asked a question about it by a reporter at a presidential press conference. Since the
CDC first announced the emergence of AIDS in 1981, more than 5,000 people had died from the disease, and thirty presidential news briefings had passed without Reagan being asked about AIDS. The reporter asked Reagan about the urging of
Robert Gallo that funding be greatly increased for AIDS research in a "moonshot" program, similar to the targeting of cancer in
Richard Nixon's
National Cancer Act of 1971. Reagan responded by defending his administration's actions on AIDS to that point, describing it as one of the administration's "top priorities" and defending the amount of funding provided for AIDS research, citing budgetary constraints and saying the funding would be increased the following year. In a follow-up question, the same reporter noted that Gallo was specifically discussing Reagan's proposed amount of funding and increases, and had called it "not nearly enough at this stage to go forward and really attack the problem". Reagan defended the amount budgeted as a "vital contribution" before moving on to other questions. Later in the conference, Reagan was asked another AIDS question by a different reporter, who wanted to know if he would have sent his children to school with a child who had AIDS. Reagan responded that he was "glad I'm not faced with that problem," and said he sympathized with parents who were faced with that choice. He also said, "medicine has not come forth unequivocally and said, this we know for a fact that it is safe" for children with AIDS to attend school. Some scholars, including historians and those involved in the CDC's work such as HIV/AIDS researcher
Don Francis, have challenged the idea that AIDS was a "top priority" for the Reagan administration. According to Francis, despite the public claim that AIDS was a top priority, "Within their own halls, the Reagan Administration maintained that federal health agencies should be able to meet the growing AIDS threat without extra funds, simply by shifting money from other projects."
Koop Report , the Reagan administration's
Surgeon General from 1982 to 1989
Commissioning and creation On February 6, 1986, Reagan began his administration's first significant initiative against AIDS when he declared finding a cure for AIDS to be "one of our highest public health priorities" and ordered
Surgeon General C. Everett Koop to assemble a "major report" on AIDS. Administration officials, including Bauer and Bennett, believed that Koop, a conservative
Presbyterian, would write a report that would emphasize morality and sex only within the confines of
heterosexual marriage as the solution to AIDS. According to Koop, he had previously been "cut off" from discussions on AIDS since the start of the crisis.
Henry Waxman, then the chair of the
United States House Energy Subcommittee on Health and an AIDS advocate, criticized the Reagan administration's requisitioning of the report, accusing them of playing a "shell game" with federal funding as he noted that the same day, the Reagan administration had also proposed a budget which included a $51 million cut to AIDS funding for the following fiscal year. Koop enlisted the help of
Anthony Fauci, his personal physician and the head of the
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, to learn more about HIV and AIDS, undertaking, according to
Karen Tumulty, a "full scale effort to discover everything that could be known about AIDS." As part of his research process, Koop invited representatives from 26 different groups with a wide range of opinions on the AIDS crisis, including the
Southern Baptist Convention,
Gay Men's Health Crisis and the
National Coalition of Black Lesbians and Gays, to hold confidential meetings in his office where he listened to their perspectives on the AIDS crisis. Richard Dunne, invited as a representative of Gay Men's Health Crisis, said of his meeting with Koop, "One of the things that impressed me is that he really listened, and most people at that level find it hard to do so." The report went through 26 drafts before Koop felt it was ready to release. Believing the Reagan administration would censor the report if given the chance, Koop chose not to submit it for an internal review with Reagan's policy advisors before releasing the report to the public.
Contents The 36-page report was released on October 22, 1986, and was an immediate bombshell. The report projected that 270,000 Americans would contract HIV/AIDS and 179,000 would die from it by 1991. At the suggestion of Fauci, the report was unsparing in its language, describing the methods of transmission of AIDS through "semen and vaginal fluids" during "oral, anal and vaginal intercourse", while also correcting common myths about AIDS, such as the ability to contract it from saliva or
mosquito bites. While Koop acknowledged that abstinence was the only way to guarantee AIDS prevention, he also suggested teaching
safe sex, specifically the use of
condoms, to stymie its spread. He also argued that since "information and education are the only weapons against AIDS", education about the disease needed to begin as early as possible, specifically citing third grade (8- and 9-year-olds) as the age at which he would like to begin educating students on AIDS. Koop also wrote that sex education needed to contain information on both heterosexual and homosexual sex. Further, he advocated for confidential, optional testing to encourage those at risk to get tested, as the groups which were at the highest risk of AIDS, such as
queer people and drug users, were often societally marginalized. This went against a popular conservative position of the time held by some conservatives in the White House including Bauer, which was to require mandatory testing for those at risk, as well as a public registrar of people with AIDS.
Reactions Reactions to the report among conservatives were sharply negative.
Phyllis Schlafly, the chairperson of the conservative
Eagle Forum think tank, was said to have been incensed by the report, saying it "looks and reads like it was edited by the
Gay Task Force". She further accused Koop of advocating for teaching third graders "safe sodomy". Responding to this, Koop said to reporters, "I'm not Surgeon General to make Phyllis Schafly happy. I'm Surgeon General to save lives." He is also reported to have later bemoaned of Schlafly, "Why anybody listened to this lady is one of the mysteries of the eighties." Bauer, whose proposed plan to enforce mandatory AIDS testing was opposed by Koop's report, was so frustrated by the report that he began an internal investigation into Koop's research and sources, saying he was concerned that the government was "preparing materials that [were] offensive to people concerned about their children's education". Reagan was described as "uncomfortable" with the report's implications, saying of its recommendation for
comprehensive sex education over
abstinence-only sex education, "I would think that sex education should begin with the moral ramifications, that it is not just a physical activity that doesn't have any moral connotation."
William Bennett also reacted negatively to the Koop report, calling Koop's rhetoric on AIDS "homosexual propaganda" and making
abstinence-only sex education one of his top priorities while publicly ridiculing Koop's advice to teach condom usage. White House aides attempted to pressure Koop into "updating" the report to remove any mention of condoms, but Koop refused. Most on the other side of the aisle, however, including former Koop critics
Henry Waxman and
Edward Kennedy were surprised by the report's frankness and pleased with its contents. Koop was a deeply faithful conservative
Presbyterian, and his appointment had been opposed by a number of prominent liberals on the grounds that he was unqualified—unlike most surgeon generals, Koop's specialized in
pediatric surgery, rather than
public health—and that his religion would bias him away from medical- or science-based decision making. After the release of the report however, Koop gained a reputation among liberals as "the only straight shooter in the Reagan administration," and some, including Waxman and Kennedy, even apologized for their opposition to his nomination. Gay activists were described as shocked that their advice had been taken into consideration and included in the report, and
Randy Shilts described Koop as "a certifiable AIDS hero". The Reagan administration did not ultimately act directly on the report's suggestions, and Reagan did not have any meetings with Koop on the subject, nor did he read the report himself. In February 1987, Reagan contradicted Koop and endorsed Bauer's perspective in a memo requiring that any AIDS materials produced or funded by the federal government must "encourage responsible sexual behavior—based on fidelity, commitment, and maturity, placing sexuality within the context of marriage." Over the following years, Koop would continue contradicting the President by promoting his view of how the AIDS epidemic should be stopped in public speeches around the country. In 1988, under a mandate from Congress, Koop created the brochure
Understanding AIDS from the report. On May 5, 1988, it was announced that a copy of the brochure would be mailed to every household in America, numbering 107 million copies, making it the largest mass-mailing in US history at the time.
Speech at the American Foundation for AIDS Research on May 31, 1987. In the spring of 1987,
Elizabeth Taylor, a longtime friend of Nancy Reagan, co-star and confidant of
Rock Hudson, and the national chairperson of the
American Foundation for AIDS Research (amFAR), invited President Reagan to speak at an amFAR fundraising dinner, which would precede a massive scientific conference on AIDS. At the urging of Nancy, Reagan accepted the offer, and began preparing for what would be his first speech on the subject of AIDS. By this point, AIDS had already killed more than sixteen thousand Americans.
Landon Parvin, an outside consultant and Nancy's favorite among Reagan's speechwriters, was brought in to write the speech, as the Reagans were aware that the audience would likely be hostile. In the course of creating the address, Parvin discovered that Reagan had never had a meeting with
C. Everett Koop about AIDS. Koop had attempted "at least a dozen times" to set up a meeting with Reagan on AIDS, but had been refused. Parvin arranged for Reagan and Koop to have a one-on-one meeting on the subject, but the White House insisted on adding political advisors such as
William Bennett and
Gary Bauer to the meeting, resulting in an argument between Koop, who favored emphasizing what was known about the spread of AIDS from a medical perspective, and the conservative advisors, who wanted to emphasize AIDS victims' lifestyle choices (such as drug use and homosexuality) as the reason for the spread of AIDS. In the end, however, Parvin mostly favored Koop's perspective, and none of the most extreme conservative suggestions made it into the speech. Reagan delivered the address on May 31, 1987. The audience, many of whom had AIDS, booed and jeered Reagan several times throughout the speech. The speech emphasized compassion for AIDS victims, and the need to educate the public better on how AIDS spreads; however, several parts were unpopular with the audience, such as one passage where Reagan gave his sympathy to the suffering of some specific groups susceptible to HIV infection, including
hemophiliacs and the babies of infected women, but excluded any mention of gay people; the speech as a whole never mentions the words "gay" or "homosexual". The audience also reacted negatively when the President called for routine AIDS testing of prisoners, and marriage-license applicants, as well as mandatory AIDS screening for incoming immigrants. Parvin would later say of the speech, "There was some good stuff in it, but not enough." Reagan biographer
Lou Cannon similarly views the speech as a positive, though he writes that it was not the "
clarion call" it needed to be, as it was too little, too late in the epidemic to have the needed impact. Still, the speech marked a turning point for Reagan's public acknowledgement of AIDS, and Reagan himself wrote that he was "pleased with the whole affair" despite the boos. Two months later, Reagan visited the
National Cancer Institute to hold an HIV-positive 14-month-old baby.
President's Commission on the HIV Epidemic , including remarks from Reagan, on the day of the creation of the President's Commission on the HIV Epidemic
Creation of the commission and membership On June 24, 1987, Reagan issued , creating the Presidential Commission on the Human Immunodeficiency Virus Epidemic to investigate HIV/AIDS. Quickly, the Reagan administration was inundated with suggestions for committee members from across the political spectrum.
Senator Strom Thurmond proposed
Paul Cameron, a psychologist from
Nebraska who wanted to institute a "rolling quarantine" of homosexuals, and
Gary Bauer suggested
William F. Buckley, a right-wing publicist who proposed to
permanently tattoo all people who tested positive for AIDS, on the arm if they were drug users and on the buttocks if they were gay. Other nominees included
Stephen Herbits,
Eunice Kennedy Shriver,
Barbara Jordan, and
Bob Bauman. Nancy Reagan pushed strongly for the inclusion of a
gay man on the committee, believing it was important for one of the groups most affected by AIDS to have representation. She was opposed by Bauer, who was staunchly against including any homosexual person in the commission. He argued to Reagan that they would not consider including an
IV drug user, and thus there was no reason to include a gay person. In a memo on June 30, 1987, Bauer wrote to Reagan, "Millions of Americans try to raise their children to believe that homosexuality is immoral. For you to appoint a known homosexual to a Presidential Commission will give homosexuality a stamp of acceptability. It will drive a wedge between us and many of our socially conservative supporters." He urged Reagan that if he had to include a homosexual person, he should make it a "reformed" homosexual who was not currently in a same-sex relationship. In the end however, Nancy's pressure on her husband won out, and at the recommendation of Nancy's stepbrother Richard A. Davis,
Frank Lilly, a board member of the
Gay Men's Health Crisis organization and the chairperson of the
Albert Einstein College of Medicine genetics department, was chosen for a spot on the commission. Lilly's appointment to the commission proved to be controversial, as it was attacked for legitimizing the "homosexual lifestyle" by conservatives including Republican Senator
Gordon Humphrey, who complained the administration "should strive at all costs to avoid sending the message to society—especially to impressionable youth—that homosexuality is simply an alternative lifestyle." Far-right writer
Joseph Sobran similarly protested of Lilly's nomination that it was giving "legitimacy to the homosexual" and cited the reason for the nomination as Nancy Reagan's inner circle "containing a number of the breed over the years." Controversial among AIDS groups was the snub of any AIDS advocate for a spot on the committee, with the
National Association of People with AIDS even unsuccessfully attempting to sue the president over the lack of an AIDS advocacy representative on the commission. The committee also included several prominent
social conservatives with no medical or scientific expertise, including
John O'Connor, a
cardinal of the Catholic Church, and Theresa Crenshaw, a
sex therapist who had advocated for widespread AIDS quarantines and the expulsion of HIV-positive students from schools. According to historian Jennifer Brier, most members of the commission were chosen for their conservative backgrounds, though the appointment of Eugene Mayberry, the head of the
Mayo Clinic, as the chairperson of the committee provided some advocates with a source of optimism. On October 8, 1987, after months of infighting and little progress, Mayberry resigned from the post alongside Health Commissioner of Indiana
Woodrow Myers, with both saying they were unable to accomplish their goals in a group that also contained people acting on political, rather than medical, motivations. Following these departures, Reagan appointed
Admiral James D. Watkins of the
US Navy as the new chairman of the committee, and the commission would become unofficially known as the Watkins Commission.
Report The Watkins Commission report (officially titled
Report of the Presidential Commission on the Human Immunodeficiency Virus Epidemic) was released on June 27, 1988. The report was unflinching in its assessment of the Reagan administration's response to that point, describing a "lack of leadership" as one of the biggest obstacles to progress against AIDS. The Watkins Commission report also made a number of policy suggestions, many of which overlapped with the suggestions in the Koop Report. In total, the 203-page report makes 579 specific recommendations for fighting AIDS, including: • A push for public understanding and federal legislation to fight discrimination against individuals with AIDS, and calling on the Reagan administration to cease their opposition to such a law. • Comprehensive public education about AIDS, starting in kindergarten and continuing through grade 12. • $3 billion more per year for funding against AIDS for federal, state, and local governments. • New emergency powers for the
Surgeon General, to act quickly in the event of public health crises. • Ensuring "rigorous maintenance of confidentiality" for all HIV/AIDS victims. • Notifications to all people who received a blood transfusion since 1977 (when HIV was believed to have entered the blood supply) to inform them they should be tested for AIDS.
Reactions The scientific community's response to the report was mixed, with some criticizing it as "confirming what the president wanted to hear". The Reagan administration itself was also "lukewarm" on the report according to medical historian Jonathan Engel, who writes that the Watkins Commission "surprised almost everybody". On August 2, 1988, Reagan outlined a 10-point "action plan" against AIDS based on the Watkins Commission report. The plan implemented some of the report's proposed policies, such as notices to those who received blood transfusions between 1977 and 1985 that they should get tested for AIDS, barring federal discrimination against civilian employees with AIDS, and an increase in local programs to help provide AIDS education to those at high risk of AIDS infection. However, the plan stopped short of many of the report's major suggestions, as the president declined to support a national ban on discrimination against people with AIDS. The Reagan administration did not implement any more of the report's policy proposals before Reagan's term ended in January 1989. AIDS advocates were generally unhappy with Reagan's actions, believing they did not go nearly far enough, and ignored the Watkins Commission report's central recommendations. AIDS advocate
Elizabeth Glaser, who had personally lobbied Reagan to listen to the commission's report, said of the administration's implementation: "Time went by, and nothing happened. It was almost unimaginable, but the White House took the report and put it on the shelf." ==Reagan's personal views==