CNN's Cooper and Gupta Bemoan Reagan's Indifference to AIDS(CNN's INDIFFERENCE to the FACTS)

MRC ^ | Thursday June 10, 2004 | BrentBaker

[fight_truth_decay]

On Tuesday night CNN devoted a segment of Anderson Cooper 360 to how, as CNN's Dr, Sanjay Gupta put it, throughout his presidency "many would accuse President Reagan of ignoring AIDS," as if Reagan talking about it would have done more to prevent it than those in the homosexual community modifying their unsafe sex practices. Leading into a Reagan clip from 1987, Gupta complained that "the first time President Reagan would utter the word AIDS in public would be well into his second term, six years after the virus was discovered." In fact, Reagan talked about AIDS in 1985 and cited it repeatedly in his 1986 State of the Union address. Gupta relayed how one "AIDS activist" believes "the administration avoided AIDS all those years because of homophobia."

Interviewing Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health, Cooper pointed out how "the San Francisco Chronicle said that Ronald Reagan was guilty, and I quote, of a 'shameful abdication of leadership in the fight against AIDS.'" When Fauci wasn't sufficiently anti-Reagan, Cooper reminded him: "The criticism is that earlier on in 1981 or '82, they had been more vocal they might have made a difference. I think part of the anger, too, is that Reagan's communication director, Pat Buchanan, you know, was quoted as saying in print that AIDS is the wrath of God upon homosexuals."

Unmentioned by CNN, how, as Deroy Murdock conveyed on National Review Online: "In a Congressional Research Service study titled 'AIDS Funding for Federal Government Programs: FY1981-FY1999,' author Judith Johnson found that overall, the federal government spent $5.727 billion on AIDS under Ronald Reagan. This higher number reflects President Reagan's proposals as well as additional expenditures approved by Congress that he later signed."

For Murdock's piece, which quotes Reagan's comments about AIDS in 1985 and 1986, as well as how Patti Davis denied her father was any kind of homophobe: http://www.nationalreview.com/flashback/murdock200406081045.asp

(Cooper's segment on Reagan and AIDS aired the same night, MRC analyst Ken Shepherd noticed, that he devoted a story to the suddenly wise Nancy Reagan for opposing President Bush on stem cell research. He introduced that story: "Well, as President Bush remembers Ronald Reagan, he is also reminding America of his admiration of the Republican icon and of course, Reagan's wife Nancy, as well. But there is one sticky subject where the president and the wife of the former president part company, stem cell research. It is an anathema to many conservatives, but to a woman who just lost her beloved husband to Alzheimer's, it is a topic that transcends 'Raw Politics.'")

[Lizavetta]

Having never participated in that 'scene' I can only conjecture, but something tells me that the promiscuity rates among bathhouse patrons were probably higher than among those who went home for their 'relationships'.

Probably, but it still comes down to a disease that is spread not by airborne germs, not by water, not by tainted food but by personal behavior.

I also have a feeling that there were and are many 'homosexual activists' who wanted and still want AIDS to spread so they can portray homosexuals as 'victims'.

Completely agree with you here. Why would AIDS activists want AIDS to go away? Look at the meal ticket they've been given. Along the same lines why would social workers or welfare case workers want their 'clients' to actually become self-sufficient and/or mentally stable? Their job would disappear overnight. Victims produce a lot of jobs for others.

I think we're on the same page, supercat.

[spodefly]

Wasn't it called G.R.I.D. for the first few years (until political correctness took over?)

[Arthalion]

Jeez, I just had this conversation with a leftie student today who was screeching on about how AIDS was Reagans fault, and that made him an evil person.

Student: Reagan didn't take AIDS seriously. Me: Would the opinion of one man have made the disease dissapear? Student: No, but he could have supported research to stop the disease. Me: We have spent over 15 BILLION dollars [ed: look it up yourself, NIH numbers) of taxpayer money on AIDS research and prevention programs since 1985, and even with all of our new technologies like electron microsocopes and gene sequencers, we still can't stop it and are still debating exactly how it works. What difference would a few million in extra funding have made when 15 billion couldn't do it? Student: He could have put the money into prevention programs to keep it from spreading. Me: AIDS was primarily a homosexual disease in 1983, but very few homosexuals really believed that AIDS was transmitted by sex. Even those that believed AIDS was caused by sex refused to change their ways or wear condoms, because they were sure that a cure would be found quickly. Student: The government could have educated them about it. Me: I was only a kid at the time, but even I remember all of the press discussions about homosexual sex causing AIDS, a homosexual would have had to live in a cave to not know. But most refused to change their behavior. Student: The government should have told them that a cure would take a while. Me: The actual virus wasn't even identified until '88 or '89, so nobody knew what they were fighting. How were they supposed to know how long it would take to cure it? The doctors at the time were pretty optomistic and thought they'd have a cure in a year or two. NOBODY suspected back then that we'd still have this disease 20 years later. How exactly was Reagan supposed to predict that? Student: Maybe they couldn't have predicted it, but they could have stopped it. Me: How, by shutting down the gaybars? By forcibly testing "at risk" people and interning infected people? Would you have supported that? Student: Of course not, that's fascist! Me: So if you were Reagan, what would you have done differently? Student: <blank stare for about 30 seconds> Student: You right wingers are all alike. You have to worship your God Ronnie and think he walked on water. He was evil and killed a lot of innocent people because he didn't care about AIDS!

And with that, she stormed out of my programming class. She never did answer my question either :-)

I'm firmly convinced that lefties exist only because people don't think. Like many subjects, this libbie had no clue how to react when her communist mantra fount itself in the cold glare of the light of truth.

[fight_truth_decay]

"The former British and Canadian leaders were joining Bush and his father Friday in eulogizing Reagan to close the curtain on the capital's elaborate state funeral – Washington's last goodbye before Reagan's sunset burial on the grounds of his presidential library outside Los Angeles. Besides the first President Bush, the other living former presidents were expected, too: Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton." - http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/nation/20040610-1737-ronaldreagan.html

[KosmicKitty]

Interviewing Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health, Cooper pointed out how "the San Francisco Chronicle said that Ronald Reagan was guilty, and I quote, of a 'shameful abdication of leadership in the fight against AIDS.'"

Now, let me get this straight. It's the responsibility of the POTUS to , let's say, make a public service commercal reminding a homosexual man to be sure to "wrap that rascal" before having anal intercourse with another man???

Sorry, but perpetual victimhood is getting old, real old.

[El Sordo]

"Republicans wanted to curtail the actvities which spread AIDS; liberals opposed any action to curtail such activities. So the Republicans are at fault for the fact that the disease was spread by people participating in such activities?"

Bingo, you got it.

[hgro]

Lets not confuse CNN with the facts.

[megatherium]

The first AIDS cases were reported in the June 5, 1981 weekly morbidity and mortality report of the CDC.

[rod1]

So about half the audience numbers watching FOX actually might have seen this so-predictable CNN hatchet job. And everyday fewer and fewer will watch.

I channel sufered yesterday and crossed CNN to hear O'l Judy Woodruffd somehow trash both Bush and Regan in the same sentence no less. She must have stayed up have the night trying to get that sentence constructed.

Their agenda is sooo obvious.

[fight_truth_decay]

"You could have poured half the national budget into AIDS in 1983, and it would have gone down a rat hole," says Michael Fumento, author of BioEvolution: How Biotechnology Is Changing Our World. "There were no anti-virals back then. The first anti-viral was AZT which came along in 1987, and that was for AIDS." As an example of how blindly scientists and policymakers flew as the virus took wing, Fumento recalls that "in 1984, Health and Human Services Secretary Margaret Heckler predicted that there would be an AIDS vaccine by 1986. There is no AIDS vaccine to date."

..Pass her this note next time you see her. Source posted above.

[randog]

Good point.

[WinOne4TheGipper]

This thread goes on my links page. Great information!

[jnarcus]

And they don't want to address the fight that these young gay men put up to prevent the bathhouses in SF from being closed or the reporting of this nasty STD to public health...Hell why doesn't any one of these guys admit that it is their own behaviour that is killing them

[WinOne4TheGipper]

LOL! I like this post.

[megatherium]

Arthalion: The actual virus wasn't even identified until '88 or '89, so nobody knew what they were fighting.

The virus was identified in April of 1984, three years after the disease was identified (June of 1981). The cause was not clear in 1981-82, but the epidemiology was clear -- it was sexually transmitted.

Arthalion: We have spent over 15 BILLION dollars

The funding for AIDS was relatively small before 1985, several million per year. Public health people were well aware that the situation was ominous -- the case load was small (a few thousand) before 1985, but growing exponentially. There were scientists urgently calling for more funding but for several years they were not heeded.

Reagan apparently wasn't clued in on this issue early on. I heard the historian Haynes Johnson claim on NPR that Reagan didn't know about AIDS until his friend Rock Hudson died of it -- he had to ask his personal physician what AIDS was.

[fight_truth_decay]

What FRUSTRATES me most is that those like the student (and a voter, I assume) poster Arthalion mentions above..DON'T WANT TO LEARN THE TRUTH..THEY ARE HAPPY TO BELIEVE LIES AFTER YOU SPOON FEED THEM WITH FACTS.

I don't worry as much about a foreign born terrorist attack as much as an assassination attempt by some young misguided media brainwashed liberal thinking Bush-hating extremist!

[fight_truth_decay]

http://www.nationalreview.com/flashback/murdock200406081045.asp

You might want to read this source.

Regards
F_T_D

[fight_truth_decay]

NPR..laughs..sorry.

[kenth]

Should we take a guess as to how she's performing in a class that relies on logic? Another question, can not these screeching leftists stay focused long enough to get through even a programming class without erupting into their usual ranting selves?

[megatherium]

spodefly: Wasn't it called G.R.I.D. for the first few years (until political correctness took over?)

Yes, Gay Related Immune Deficiency. But drug users were getting it, and it was appearing in Haitians. People started to refer to the 4-H club: Homosexuals, Haitians, Hemophiliacs and Heroin users.

Reminds me of the old joke: What's the worst part of getting AIDS? Trying to convince your mother that you're Haitian.