Portraying AIDS as an equal-opportunity disease that does not discriminate, the CDC regularly released misleading reports suggesting that women were, as the New York Times put it, "the new face of AIDS." Later, backed not only by AIDS advocacy groups but by prominment social conservatives eager to combat promiscuity, the CDC also conducted a campaign to convince teenagers and college students that they, too, were at great risk of contracting the disease. But the risk of contracting AIDS has always been low for people outside the high-risk groups—comparable with getting struck by lightning, drowning in a bathtub, or being killed by a malfunctioning automatic garage door.
The CDC justified its disinformation campaign on the grounds that
the Reagan administration was unlikely to fund initiatives aimed at
high-risk groups, and that the public was less likely to support its
efforts if marginal groups were the perceived beneficiaries. For its
part, the press was also eager to hype the threat of heterosexual
AIDS, perhaps to better relate the story to their audiences, perhaps
out of squeamishness at the prospect of detailing anal sex. A 1987
study by the Center for Media and Public Affairs
found that heterosexuals were eight times more likely to appear as
AIDS victims on television than they were to actually contract the
disease.
