United Press International; Tuesday, 21 July 1987.
Mark Schwed, United Press International

This was not the way it was supposed to happen. An Enemy Among Us, airing tonight at 8 on Channels 4, 11 and 34, was originally scheduled in the daytime as a CBS Schoolbreak Special.

But CBS Entertainment President B. Donald "Bud" Grant recognized the opportunity to reach a much larger audience by presenting it right before the Miss Teen USA pageant: Kids and their parents would be watching. Now they'll get the facts, then the fantasy.

An Enemy Among Us, starring Danny Nucci as the kid, Scott, Dee Wallace Stone as his mother and Gladys Knight as a doctor, is quality with a capital Q.

It starts out timidly. CBS takes the easy way out. This boy is not gay, nor is he shooting heroin or having sex with AIDS-infected hookers. He got the AIDS virus from a blood transfusion after a bike accident three years earlier.

This way it's easier to feel empathy for Scott. But that's the only drawback to this sensitive special.

Scott is a good 16-year-old who has a swell life. He's learning to drive, he is popular at school, he has a pretty girlfriend, he's on the school baseball team.

But when doctors tell him he has the HIV virus that causes AIDS, his beautiful life begins to unravel. His school throws him out, he's off the baseball team and his parents' best friends ban Scott from seeing their daughter, Karen.

On one side we get the stigma, hysteria and fear caused by the epidemic of ignorance about AIDS. On the other, An Enemy Among Us uses that fear to inform and educate in a tasteful manner.

Scott has a 30 percent or higher chance of developing AIDS. He does not have the symptoms yet -- sweating at night, dramatic weight loss, swelling of glands. He is not contagious. To spread, the AIDS virus must get into someone else's bloodstream.

There is no cure.

Much of the information is spread by Knight, the singer who makes her dramatic television debut as Dr. Donna Robinson, the chief immunologist and AIDS educator. She talks to the school administration about getting Scott back into the classroom and speaks to the kids about the myths.

Knight makes a pip of a professor and this is where the program and CBS become bold. There is frank language about AIDS. AIDS doesn't care whether you're straight, gay or bisexual, rich or poor, black or white, American or Swahili. It is spread through sexual intercourse and the exchange of body fluids such as semen, blood and vaginal fluids. Although the AIDS virus is present in saliva and tears, there have been no known cases of transmission from either.

In the classroom with the kids, Knight gets across her message.

"Use of condoms or rubbers can greatly reduce the risk of spreading AIDS and of catching it," she says. "But the best way of all is to hold off on sex until you're older, married or committed to someone who can share the responsibility of this act of love.

". . . The freewheeling '60s and '70s are over."

This is highly unusual talk from the networks. It recognizes that kids have sex (about a million unmarried teens will become pregnant this year) and that sex is a healthy part of relationships even when people are not married.

An Enemy Among Us is an intelligently made special that airs in the perfect time slot -- the so-called family hour. It's also an excellent forum for spreading truth about AIDS.

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