[megatherium]

Arthalion: The actual virus wasn't even identified until '88 or '89, so nobody knew what they were fighting.

The virus was identified in April of 1984, three years after the disease was identified (June of 1981). The cause was not clear in 1981-82, but the epidemiology was clear -- it was sexually transmitted.

Arthalion: We have spent over 15 BILLION dollars

The funding for AIDS was relatively small before 1985, several million per year. Public health people were well aware that the situation was ominous -- the case load was small (a few thousand) before 1985, but growing exponentially. There were scientists urgently calling for more funding but for several years they were not heeded.

Reagan apparently wasn't clued in on this issue early on. I heard the historian Haynes Johnson claim on NPR that Reagan didn't know about AIDS until his friend Rock Hudson died of it -- he had to ask his personal physician what AIDS was.

[fight_truth_decay]

http://www.nationalreview.com/flashback/murdock200406081045.asp

You might want to read this source.

Regards
F_T_D

[fight_truth_decay]

NPR..laughs..sorry.

[supercat]

The funding for AIDS was relatively small before 1985, several million per year. Public health people were well aware that the situation was ominous -- the case load was small (a few thousand) before 1985, but growing exponentially. There were scientists urgently calling for more funding but for several years they were not heeded.

Gay activists did far more to encourage the spread of disease than any amount of funding could have done to stop it.