Reagan again

By PaUL BRENNaN

Thirty-six years after the Reagan administration began a long-delayed public education campaign about HIV/AIDS, Gov. Kim Reynolds and Republicans in the Iowa Legislature have decided that education about HIV/AIDS is no longer needed in public schools.

One of the provisions of SF 496—a bill introduced by the governor’s office that makes major changes to Iowa’s schools—eliminates the requirement that a public school provide students with age-appropriate information about HIV/ AIDS as part of its health curriculum.

That section of the bill also ends the requirement to provide information about human papillomavirus (HPV), and the safe and effective vaccine to prevent it. HPV is spread through sexual contact and can cause cancer. The HPV vaccine became available in 2006, and the next year the Iowa Legislature mandated students receiving information about it. (In 2007, both chambers of the legislature and the governor’s office were controlled by Democrats.)

“Limiting teens and young adults from learning about this preventive approach to limit HPV infection is detrimental and illogical,” a group of public health researchers and educators said in a letter to the Gazette

“Don’t remove education on HPV/HIV from schools,” they concluded.

Gov. Reynolds has not said why she wants to remove that education, and most Republicans supporting the bill claim it doesn’t prohibit such instruction.

Of course, many conservative activist groups have objected to schools sharing information about safe sex since the 1980s. And preventing people from getting accurate information about the HPV vaccine is a top goal of the anti-vaxxer movement.

Just as the vaccine has proven effective against HPV, advances in medical research have turned HIV from an exceptionally lethal virus to a chronic, but treatable, one. But before those advances, it was public education efforts led by activist groups like the Gay Men’s Health Crisis, ACT UP and, closer to home, the Iowa Center for AIDS Resources and the AIDS Coalition of Johnson County, which were eventually joined in that work by federal, state and local health agencies to help Americans cope more effectively with the disease. section chief telling him. “They said, ‘Look pretty and do as little as you can.’”

In a 2012 article published in the Journal of Public Health, Dr. Donald Francis, an epidemiologist at the CDC in the 1980s, recalled how political consideration trumped public health consideration in the Reagan era.

Francis was involved with the CDC’s work on AIDS since it began in June 1981, six months after President Ronald Reagan was sworn in for his first term.

“By January 1983, the full picture had emerged. AIDS was a deadly infectious disease transmitted by sexual activity and by the sharing of blood and blood products,” Francis recalled.

As long as the people suffering and dying from AIDS were primarily gay men or IV drug users, inaction suited the personal and political prejudices of White House leaders and their supporters.

“[W]ith AIDS, the Reagan administration prevented [the CDC] from responding appropriately to what very early on was known to be an extremely dangerous transmissible disease,” Francis wrote.

Francis was put in charge of creating the nation’s first AIDS prevention program, which involved public education on how to prevent virus spread. In early 1985, his section chief at the CDC took the plan to the White House. Even though no one at the CDC expected much from the White House, Francis was still surprised by the reaction to his plan.

“Don, they rejected the plan,” he recalled his

It wasn’t until Sept. 17, 1985, four years after the start of the epidemic and seven months after the start of his second term, that President Reagan first mentioned AIDS in public. He did so in response to a reporter’s question during a news conference. Reagan said it was a “top priority” for his administration. That, of course, was a lie.

But responding to public pressure led by AIDS activists, two months after that news conference, Congress appropriated $190 million for AIDS research, almost double what the administration requested.

In 1987, the Reagan administration finally launched its first concerted effort to raise public awareness about AIDS. Things did begin to improve after Reagan’s vice president, George H.W. Bush was elected president in 1988. But the Bush administration still prioritized politics over public health, seeking to placate the conservatives and religious fundamentalists in the base of the Republican Party, many of whom embraced the superstitious belief that AIDS was divine vengeance instead of a virus.

“The elite of the Reagan administration, and later the Bush administration, had no idea of their responsibility to protect the health of the people who had elected them,” Francis wrote.

It’s understandable that the provision of SF 496 ending mandatory HIV and HPV education didn’t

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