Volume 35, Number 13 · August 18, 1988
AIDS Without End
By Diane Johnson, John F. Murray
Report of the Presidential Commission on the Human Immunodeficiency Virus Epidemic
by James D. Watkins chairman. submitted to the President of the United States, June 24, 1988
US Government Printing Office, 201 pp., $11.00 (paper)
And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic
by Randy Shilts
St. Martin's, 630 pp., $24.95
The first reactions of many doctors, researchers, and patients to the report of the Presidential Commission on the Human Immunodeficiency Virus Epidemic by retired Admiral James D. Watkins, Chairman, were to admire, with some surprise, the humanity and acuity with which he addressed the AIDS epidemic. These qualities are unusual in bureaucratic governmental reports, and especially unexpected in view of the controversies surrounding this commission: its association with the Reagan administration, the lack of experience or the extreme ideology of some of its members, and the resignation of its first director and another early member. A close reading finds Watkins's report to be even more coherent philosophically, and more critical of the management of the epidemic, than could be seen at first glance, and it finds the AIDS situation more grave than other recent views have held. It says that we are dealing with a serious and widening national and world health emergency, which is increasingly concentrated in disadvantaged groups—poor women, blacks and Hispanics and their infants, the homeless—whence it is bound to spread further. To contain it will require a nearly limitless budget to effect major social reforms.
Review, 7821 words
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