Fed-Bashing on AIDS Funding Is Unfair

Out of the mouths of entertainers. . . .

Singer Elton John is quoted, in a Q&A; interview that focuses on his AIDS Foundation and related fund-raising and educational efforts, as stating that “ . . . it’s important to do something because most of the money for AIDS . . . comes from the private sector, not government” (“Having a Go at ‘Indifference, Intolerance,’ ” Calendar, Sept. 22).

How do they get away with it?

No documentation for this conclusion. No evidence to back it up. Just a statement that some readers are,given John’s stature as an entertainer, likely to accept as gospel--even though it is a claim that turns out to be wildly preposterous and inaccurate.

The interview comes hard on the heels of the controversial HBO dramatization of Randy Shilts’ ”. . . And the Band Played On,” a made-for-TV-movie that Entertainment Weekly magazine calls “ the politically correct entertainment event of the season,” which both explicitly and implicitly castigates the Reagan Administration for having ignored the epidemic of HIV infection in its infancy. Government reaction to AIDS was, so conventional wisdom and this film have it, a classic example of “too little, too late.”

“Late” it admittedly seemed, though it was not the first time (nor will it likely be the last) that the breadth and magnitude of an emerging epidemic has been underestimated in its infancy. And, as Shilts’ book eloquently and repeatedly points out, there was as much denial of the potential magnitude of the AIDS epidemic in the gay community as there was in Washington.

If “too little” characterized government AIDS funding in the early 1980s, there has been a concentrated attempt to make up for lost time, to the extent that many scientists feel that AIDS funding has now become the tail that wags the biomedical research dog. Last year, according to the Journal of NIH Research, National Institutes of Health AIDS spending exceeded $1 billion. At least four components of NIH--the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Neurological Disorders and Stroke, Mental Health and the National Cancer Institute--fund massive internal and extramural initiatives focused on key elements of HIV-related disease that range from dementia to opportunistic infections to malignancies.

Consider, by comparison, that NIH last year spent approximately $290 million on Alzheimer’s disease, less than $110 million on stroke and about $161 million on arthritis.

Which brings us back to Elton John’s claim that the private sector funds the majority of AIDS research. The American Foundation for AIDS Research (AmFAR), arguably the largest private sector organization supporting such work, this year will pay out an estimated $10 million to $13 million in research support grants. While the phenomenal efforts of Hollywood movers and shakers such as John, Elizabeth Taylor and David Geffen to raise money that can be used to fight this are admirable, even exemplary, they are only a supplement to the huge and productive (though not yet successful!) AIDS research enterprise that federal and state governments oversee.

Yes--there is no cure yet for AIDS. But neither is there one for brain tumors or many other forms of cancer, heart disease, atherosclerosis, stroke and Alzheimer’s disease (to name only a few of many), illnesses that have been recognized and studied diligently by researchers for decades, even centuries.

Please--at least in this arena--let the Washington-bashing come to an end!

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