Frank Cockerill - The AIDS Commission

Frank Cockerill - The AIDS Commission Frank Cockerill is an internationally recognized microbiologist who has been associated with the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota for most of his professional life. His standing in the research community was such that in 1987 he was named by then-President Reagan to be a Deputy Director on a newly-formed, blue-ribbon panel investigating HIV and AIDS. Known as the President's Commission on the HIV Epidemic, the panel consisted of thirteen Commissioners and a large staff that included prominent physicians and scientists like Frank Cockerill. Created by Executive Order 12601, the advisory commission was directed "to investigate the spread of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and the resultant acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) in the United States." The was also instructed to "advise the President, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, and other relevant Cabinet heads on the public health dangers including the medical, legal, ethical, social, and economic impact, from the spread of the HIV and resulting illnesses including AIDS, AIDS-related complex, and other related conditions."

The primary focus of the Commission was to recommend measures that Federal, State, and local officials could take to protect the public from contracting the HIV virus; to assist in finding a cure for AIDS; and to care for those who had already contracted it. It was directed specifically to evaluate the efforts that had to date been made by educational and other public and private institutions to provide education and information about AIDS, and to analyze the efforts then underway to combat it.

As Frank Cockerill recalls, the Commission released an interim report in early 1988, and its final report the following summer. That final report included more than five hundred recommendations.

Some of them were semantic, such as replacing the term "AIDS" with the term "HIV infection." It also contained stronger recommendations, such as increasing testing in order to facilitate an understanding of the disease; the treatment of HIV infection as a disability under state and federal law; stronger legal protection of the privacy of people who had been infected with HIV; and the immediate implementation of preventive measures, such the confidential notification of partners who might be at risk of developing HIV infection.

During its life the Commission was hampered by the sensitive nature of the disease and the political implications of treating it. The Reagan Administration had by then already come under criticism for its slow response to the international health crisis.

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