A brief history mostly off the top of my head
1 - reagan didn't care at all about aids until an actor friend of his died of it;
2 - the strong perception within the fda was that reagan didn't care about aids / didn't want anything done about it;
3 - reagan allowed his staff to delete a mention of ryan white from a speech;
4 - reagan didn't mention aids publicly until mid 1987
Writing in the Washington Post in late 1985, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Los
Angeles, stated: "It is surprising that the president could remain silent as
6,000 Americans died, that he could fail to acknowledge the epidemic's
existence. Perhaps his staff felt he had to, since many of his New Right
supporters have raised money by campaigning against homosexuals." [1]
6 - I don't remember this as well, but I believe hiv patients also had to fight the fda for early-ending of clinical trials, because they were insisting that people taking placebos should basically die
So some of this is similar to why many gay people of the right age hate Ed Koch, but an aggressive intervention by the reagan administration might have saved many lives.
[1] http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/openforum/article/Reagan-s-AID...
It's also wrong that Reagan didn't utter the word "AIDS" until 1987. Any reporter who bothered to check facts would find that Reagan discussed AIDS funding in a 1985 press conference, just for starters. But let's turn that around on the rest of Washington. Does that mean no reporter asked Reagan about AIDS in the 1984 presidential debates? And that every interview President Reagan granted to a national or local media outlet failed to solicit Reagan's opinions on AIDS until 1985? Using this phony-baloney spin line - that federal policy hinges exclusively on the presidential bully pulpit - is an exercise in liberal hyperbole over hard data."
From the wikipedia page:
Journalist Brian Montopoli of Columbia Journalism Review in 2005 labeled MRC "just one part of a wider movement by the far right to demonize corporate media" rather than "make the media better." Additionally, Montpoli wrote that "false equivalence is at the very root of MRC’s beliefs."
The original book criticizes then-president Reagan, but also the media (specifically including the NYT) and elements of the medical establishment.
It also gets into controversies within the gay establishment, such as whether to make a fuss about the problem (which could attract attention and lead to "outing" of people), and whether to close bathhouses as health risks.
2 - nor does a record of funding disprove reagan's intentional oversight; by 1992 aids was the #1 cause of death for US men ages 25-44 [1] and by 1994 the #1 cause of death for all americans age 25-44 [1]; the funding was wildly insufficient to mount a proper response. And were it not for reagan's homophobia and bigotry, a more vigorous response could reasonably have saved many more lives
3 - while it is true that federal policy doesn't hinge exclusively on what the president says, nice attempt to change the goals. The point was not that the federal government and medical establishment -- despite reagan -- did both their job and their moral duty, but that he intentionally hampered the response. I repeat: it's indisputable that if a disease affecting, well, reagan supporters had killed 20 thousand americans it would have garned a much more vigorous response, one which could be triggered and pushed by the president himself. For example, see the improvement in response under Clinton. I'm sure it's just a coincidence that AIDS was a priority under a president who isn't a homophobe.
4 - brent bozell is a proud homophobe; what a surprise that he manages to find supposed evidence -- though you shouldn't believe a thing he says without consulting a primary source -- finding that reagan didn't intentionally fail a group of americans reagan despised
[1] http://aids.gov/hiv-aids-basics/hiv-aids-101/aids-timeline/
edit because i forgot the link
http://aids.gov/hiv-aids-basics/hiv-aids-101/aids-timeline/
Reagan has been criticized for his complete non-response to AIDS as well. He mentioned it in passing in 1985, and didn't actually address the issue until 1987. Since AIDS mostly affected homosexuals and drug users, AIDS wasn't exactly a high priority for the Reagan administration in light of the Religious Right's massive power at the time. The popular rhetoric of the era was more akin to "AIDS is God's punishment for homosexuality" than compassion.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/09/politics/09policy.html
To quote Reagan's biographer: "Reagan's response to this epidemic was halting and ineffective."
I take your point (and the sibling commenter's point) about the epidemiologic response to AIDS; I may be over-fixated on the research and development side of the issue.
I'm not an epidemiologist so I can't compare the relative complexity of the SARS virus to HIV. But I'm skeptical that HIV presented a massive and insurmountable biologic challenge compared to other viruses.
I also encourage you to look into the epidemiological and sociological aspects of AIDS. It's horrifying, and it colors my above skepticism. The gay community referred to AIDS as a holocaust back in the early 80s, and I would encourage you to read this article at your leisure to see why: http://www.nytimes.com/1988/10/23/books/l-aids-and-the-holoc...
To get some perspective, 1981 was as close to 2013 as it was to 1949.
Edit: Yes, I meant 2013, thanks. Point being: I remember the mid (not early) 80's and it SEEMS so recent and modern but it's as far removed from our life today as 1950's life was then.
2003 1981 - p
22
1981 1949 - p
32http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_the_Band_Played_On#Subject
That's specific to the early years though, pre-Rock Hudson. Obviously a lot's changed since then.
In other words, it's not as if the drug was invented in response to the AIDS crisis. Once the NIH/NCI made AIDS research a priority, it was a rather straightforward matter to start testing known anti-retroviral drugs. One can reasonably argue that if the government had made HIV research a priority in the late 70s and early 80s, the effective treatments would have been found before the epidemic exploded (for example, contrast to SARS or bird flu, where the index patients are chased down and isolated, and immunological research begins before there are even tens of thousands of patients.)
My impression is (and I have not studied this) the failure in the HIV epidemic (pandemic?) wasn't a failure to develop drugs, it was a failure to perform basic epidemiological interventions to learn about and slow the progress of the disease.