An Inclusive Litany

10/11/96

The Wall Street Journal reports that since 1987, the Centers for Disease Control has knowingly misled the public about the otherwise low risk of contracting AIDS through vaginal intercourse, diverting attention and resources from the actual high-risk groups: homosexual men and intravenous drug users or their sexual partners.

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.