Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1987. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Chicago Tribune (CT) - Friday October 2, 1987
John N. Maclean. Tribune science writer Jon Van contributed to this report
But the members of Congress addressing the commission hearing Wednesday acknowledged that they have been unable to deal with the AIDS threat in a comprehensive manner. Congress has 42 separate pieces of legislation on AIDS pending before it with the 100th Congress only half over, according to the Library of Congress.
Even conservatives, such as Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R., Kan.), a presidential aspirant, said the federal government cannot be "just a spectator." "The federal government can play a leadership role. . . . We simply can't disregard the federal role out of hand," Dole said.
The commission, formally called the Presidential Commission on the Human Immuno-deficiency Virus Epidemic, was appointed by the Reagan administration in response to repeated charges the administration has either ignored AIDS or condemned the disease on moral grounds.
The 13-member commission, in turn, has been been criticized as being ignorant or ideological about the disease, which has infected an estimated 1.5 million Americans. Two days of hearings last month were picketed by anticommission demonstrators.
In contrast, Wednesday's meeting was sparsely attended and there were no protests or demonstrations. The closest the hearing came to an emotional moment was when Sen. Lowell Weicker (R., Conn.), in heated tones, called on the group to prove it is "not just an extension of the far Right" more concerned with "moralizing" than with curing AIDS.
Weicker said he at first had opposed the creation of the commission because he thought it would do little to help matters. But he said he has considered the "quality of the people" on the commission and believes it can accomplish something before its term expires next June, a year after it was formed.
The commission chairman, Dr. Eugene Mayberry, chairman of the board of the Mayo Clinic, said the meeting was the first of several with members of Congress as part of "our efforts to prevent the spread of the HIV virus, to care for those who are sick and to assist in finding a cure for AIDS."
Each of the members of Congress appearing before the panel emphasized the need for the federal government to disseminate reliable information about AIDS. They said state initiatives deal only piecemeal with the issue.
Meanwhile, a study published in Friday's Journal of the American Medical Association concluded that mandatory AIDS testing for people who want to be married, recently enacted for Illinois couples, will waste a lot of money and do little to thwart the disease.
If such tests were required across the country, they would cost more than $100 million a year, said the analysis by Dr. Paul Cleary and colleagues at the Harvard University School of Public Health. Because the tests aren't perfect, considerable confusion would result from their use in a group with low incidence of AIDS infection, the study predicted.
Out of 3.8 million tested in a given year, 9,000 would test positive for infection on the first test, but only 1,300 would really be positive. After getting a different follow-up test, 1,200 truly infected individuals would be identified in this group and 100 who have the infection would be negative on the second test, the analysis predicted.
The Harvard analysis is based upon results from tests already done in other groups at low risk for AIDS virus infection, especially blood donors.
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