I thought it was Reagan as the aids problem became a monster during his Presidency. My mistake.
From the Real Clear Politics article:
For the record, Reagan first mentioned AIDS, in response to a question at a press conference, on Sept. 17, 1985. On Feb. 5, 1986, he made a surprise visit to the Department of Health and Human Services where he said, “One of our highest public health priorities is going to be continuing to find a cure for AIDS.” He also announced that he’d tasked Surgeon General C. Everett Koop to prepare a major report on the disease. Contrary to the prevailing wisdom, Reagan dragged Koop into AIDS policy, not the other way around.
As for Waxman’s recollections about AIDS funding, he does an unusual thing for a politician: He’s forgotten the success he and other Democrats had in convincing Reagan to spend more money. The administration increased AIDS funding requests from $8 million in 1982 to $26.5 million in 1983, which Congress bumped to $44 million, a number that doubled every year thereafter during Reagan’s presidency.
As I recall the sequence of events, AIDS emerged as a growing cause of death during the Reagan years, and the administration moved in a straightforward way to address it as public health authorities would address any new disease. This meant a focus on epidemiology, including investigation of modes of transmission and contact tracing, as well as the search for improved treatment and a cure. So far, so good. But this sensible approach ran directly into the buzzsaw of militant homosexual activism, which was also emerging at the time. The homosexual lobby did not want gays to be stigmatized, did not want AIDS identified as a "gay disease," did not want contact tracing and partner notification because that would involve invasions of privacy, and above all did not want any limitations on the exuberant promiscuity that was (and is) so widespread in homosexual culture. So: AIDS became politicized.
We have in AIDS the first (and, let us hope, the last) situation in which disease vectors came to be regarded as a privileged and protected class, the victims of a disease systematically resisted basic epidemiology, and honest discussion was denounced as homophobic. In the view of the homosexual lobby, the ONLY legitimate role of public health authorities was to produce a cure, immediately, and provide it at public expense. Meanwhile, the sexual carnival would continue unabated. The whole thing is insane.