SH,
I'm sorry, but your comments are either the result of stultifying ignorance or deliberate misstatement. You need to do a lot more research or at least think about your comments before you post them.
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As of January 2006, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and the World Health Organization (WHO) estimate that AIDS has killed more than 25 million people since it was first recognized on June 5, 1981, making it one of the most destructive epidemics in recorded history. In 2005 alone, AIDS claimed an estimated 2.4–3.3 million lives, of which more than 570,000 were children.[5]
AIDS - Wikipedia Oh, but those children must have borne the mark of Caine for the wickedness of their parents, I suppose.... I suggest you look at the article and note the chart: imated per act risk for acquisition of HIV by exposure route hich demonstrates that blood transfusion is almost guaranteed to result in infection. Heterosexual intercourse is the primary mode of HIV infection worldwide. Approximately 30% of women in ten countries representing "diverse cultural, geographical and urban/rural settings" report that their first sexual experience was forced or coerced, making sexual violence a key driver of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. In the absence of treatment, the transmission rate between the mother to the child during pregnancy, labor and delivery is 25%.
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The AIDS epidemic officially began on June 5, 1981, when the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report newsletter reported unusual clusters of Pneumocystis pneumonia (PCP) caused by a form of Pneumocystis carinii (now recognized as a distinct species Pneumocystis jirovecii) in five homosexual men in Los Angeles.[40]

Over the next 18 months, more PCP clusters were discovered among otherwise healthy men in cities throughout the country, along with other opportunistic diseases (such as Kaposi's sarcoma[41] and persistent, generalized lymphadenopathy [42]), common in immunosuppressed patients.

In June 1982, a report of a group of cases amongst gay men in Southern California suggested that a sexually transmitted infectious agent might be the etiological agent,[43] and the syndrome was initially termed "GRID", or Gay-Related Immune Deficiency.[44]

Health authorities soon realized that nearly half of the people identified with the syndrome were not homosexual men. The same opportunistic infections were also reported among hemophiliacs,[45] heterosexual intravenous drug users, and Haitian immigrants.[46]

By August 1982, the disease was being referred to by its new CDC-coined name: Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS).
So, so far most of the "facts" previously quoted have been shown to be absolutely wrong, but let's get back to Mr. Reagan:
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Although AIDS was first reported in the medical and popular press in 1981, it was only in October 1987 that President Reagan publicly spoke about the epidemic. By the end of that year 59,572 AIDS cases had been reported and 27,909 of those women and men had died. How could this happen? How could Reagan not say anything? Do anything?

The Reagan administration’s reaction to AIDS is complex and goes far beyond Reagan’s refusal to speak out about the epidemic. A great deal of his power base was born-again Christian Republican conservatives who embraced a reactionary social agenda that included a virulent, demonizing homophobia. In the media, people like Reverends Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell portrayed gay people as diseased sinners and promoted the idea that AIDS was a punishment from God and that the gay rights movement had to be stopped. In the Republican Party, zealous right-wingers, such as Representative William Dannenmeyer (CA) and Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC), hammered home this same message. In the Reagan White House, people such as Secretary of Education William Bennett and Gary Bauer, his chief domestic advisor, worked to enact it in the Administration’s policies.

In practical terms this meant AIDS research was chronically underfunded. When doctors at the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institute for Health asked for more funding for their work on AIDS, they were routinely denied it. Between June 1981 and May 1982, the CDC spent less than $1 million on AIDS, but $9 million on Legionnaire’s Disease. At that point over 1,000 of the 2,000 AIDS cases reported resulted in death; there were fewer than 50 deaths from Legionnaire’s Disease. This drastic lack of funding would continue through the Reagan years.

When health and support groups in the gay community instigated education and prevention programs, they were denied federal funding. In October 1987 Jesse Helms amended a federal appropriation bill that prohibited AIDS education efforts that “encourage or promoted homosexual activity”(that is, tell gay men how to have safe sex).

. . .

Throughout all of this Ronald Reagan did nothing. When Rock Hudson, a friend and colleague of the Reagan’s, was diagnosed and died in 1985 (one of the 20,740 cases reported that year), Reagan still did not speak out.
The Truth About Reagan And AIDS Now I know that I am going to get the objection that the author is biased, but the facts are not in dispute, only the interpretation. Other sources are even more biased. Part of the problem is that many sources - on both sides - use "retrospective" interpretations. There are claims, for example, that AIDS funding doubled each year of the Reagan presidency, failing to note that that was not for research, but for "discretionary" spending - much of it the result of the costs to treat victims.


A well reasoned argument is like a diamond: impervious to corruption and crystal clear - and infinitely rarer.

Here, as elsewhere, people are outraged at what feels like a rigged game -- an economy that won't respond, a democracy that won't listen, and a financial sector that holds all the cards. - Robert Reich