The New York Times - November 10, 1985

The Soviet reports have avoided saying the disease, acquired immune deficiency syndrome, is prevalent among homosexuals, since male homosexual acts are a crime in the Soviet Union and the subject is rarely mentioned in print. The press has said instead that "in foreign countries AIDS is primarily found among people who lead a dissolute sex life and are inclined to sexual perversions," as well as among drug addicts who use unsterilized needles.

The first reports on AIDS appeared shortly before thousands of foreigners came to Moscow for a youth festival this summer. The intention was evidently to familiarize Russians with a disease, as well as to warn against excessive fraternization.

Coverage in West Increases

Apparently another reason for the decision to publicize the disease was that coverage in the West sharply increased over the summer and news began filtering into the Soviet Union.

An early article on AIDS in the youth newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda in July was written in reply to a letter from a reader who asked: "I heard that a new virus has appeared in the world. Is this true?" The Soviet authorities maintain that AIDS has not appeared in the Soviet Union.

"We have registered no instances of this disease," the chief Soviet health inspector, Dr. Pyotr N. Burgasov, wrote in the newspaper Trud. "The point is that the problem is in many ways social, since it is associated with sexual looseness. This, alas, is condoned in certain circles in the West, but in our society it is considered unnatural."

Though denying the spread of AIDS to this country, the Soviet press has reported extensive investigations into the disease. In July, Dr. Rem Petrov, a senior Soviet medical authority, wrote in Moskovskaya Pravda that several medical institutes were "researching the AIDS problem" under the direction of the Immunology Institute of the Ministry of Public Health.

Disposable Syringes

One reason for Soviet concern was noted by Dr. Burgasov in the English-language Moscow News. "To fully keep this country free from AIDS," he said, "efforts are under way to study the problem, to develop diagnostic preparations and to provide health services with disposable syringes."

Disposable syringes are in only limited use in the Soviet Union, and Dr. Burgasov urged that "even if AIDS had not appeared, we should all the same make use of such syringes, since the problem of the virus hepatitis, transmitted with blood, exists."

Sovetskaya Rossiya reported the attention that American news organizations gave to the death of the movie star Rock Hudson, who died of AIDS on Oct. 9.

"The American tendency toward sensation and hypertrophied emotions is well known," the reporter, Aleksandr Lyutin, wrote from Washington, saying there was no mass epidemic. "But who cares about what medics say if the television companies can attract the curiosity of viewers, and thus the advertisers with fat wallets, with naturalistic depictions of the death agonies of the victims of the virus!" ---- China Sets Up AIDS Plan PEKING, Nov. 9 (Reuters) - China has announced a strategy against AIDS, including checks on foreigners and Chinese who work with them, the official China News Service said last week.

Centers in cities such as Peking and Shanghai will monitor tourists, foreign students and tour guides and will systematically test blood samples, the agency said. The agency said no Chinese residents had been found to have AIDS.

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