Wasting Time

In the fight against AIDS, time is as precious as any of the resources being poured into stopping its spread. President Reagan’s response to a crucial element of his own commission’s overall strategy for coping with the disease guarantees that valuable months of that time will be squandered.

The commission, headed by retired Adm. James D. Watkins, told the President that protections from discrimination against people stricken with AIDS are essential. Failure to protect those with the illness from losing their jobs or homes would lead them to avoid testing and shun help, thus driving the disease further underground.

The President’s plan to implement the commission report might be welcome as an interim measure while he waited for Congress to enact laws forbidding discrimination. But, standing alone, the White House plan is attractive only by comparison with doing nothing at all.

The only move against discrimination involves federal employees. Reagan directed government agencies to adopt a policy against firing federal workers who have AIDS or who are infected with the human immunodeficiency virus. He also asked the Health and Human Services Department to schedule conferences, and urged Congress to adopt his next AIDS budget--one that presumably would fall as far short of need as did his last AIDS budget.

Except for some gentle rhetoric, including a call for the equitable and sympathetic treatment of Americans who have AIDS, the White House announcement was wooden, pro forma and of no particular use in adding to the sense of urgency about the AIDS pandemic. It was distributed second hand, without even an appearance by the President to add substance to the little that was being offered.

As one Capitol Hill observer said after an advance look at the White House plan: “Why did he bother having a commission?”

Certainly the President’s action is a far cry from what the commission had in mind, dealing with job discrimination only where federal workers are concerned and ignoring discrimination in housing altogether. Chairman Watkins had asked for a declaration of a “public-health emergency,” but the President’s text spoke only of a “health threat that has touched the lives of Americans with alarming speed and frightening consequences.”

Congress must prevent the squandering of more time by acting in the next few months to ban discrimination against those with AIDS and making its own estimate of how much money it will take to get AIDS under control. The task will be more difficult in the face of virtual White House indifference, but it must be done.