Helping and Hurting on AIDS
The Senate vote on increased funding for education and research on AIDS is a helpful development, marred only by the unwillingness to reject out of hand the efforts of Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) to handicap public-health efforts with his personal ideological agenda.
More than $1 billion would be provided by this legislation to improve education, the only effective tool now available to control the spread of the disease, and to accelerate research, which has yet to find a preventive.
The importance of congressional action is illustrated with each fresh issuance of AIDS statistics from the Centers for Disease Control. At last count there were 60,583 cases in the United States, and 33,926 deaths. An estimated 1 million Americans have the human immunodeficiency virus, and, on the basis of current research, most of them will develop AIDS or a related disease.
In the absence of a cure, prevention is the only way to curb spread of the disease. And the key to prevention is education. Health workers have already demonstrated that education, to be effective, must deal explicitly with the risks. The highest risks are through sexual intercourse, particularly anal intercourse, and the exchange of blood, notably when unsterilized needles are used by intravenous drug users. Education in both of these areas is crucial because the highest incidence of the disease in the United States is among homosexuals and intravenous drug users.
Helms has successfully led a campaign that seems more concerned about proving his own disgust with homosexual behavior and drug use than about controlling spread of the disease. He has characterized public-health films and printed material dealing explicitly with the risks of these behaviors as promoting sodomy and drug abuse. That is to argue that fire-safety films create pyromaniacs. But, once again, a great majority of the Senate voted with him to bar any materials that “promote or condone†homosexual behavior. That language already has served to cripple efforts to reach the highest risk populations because it deliberately does not define the difference between promotion and education.
Fortunately, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) won Senate approval of a second amendment that will blunt the negative impact of the Helms’ amendment and facilitate the kind of education that has been demonstrated as most effective. Under the Kennedy amendment, public health officials will be authorized to provide “accurate information in reducing the risk of becoming infected.â€
