Agenda Packets - 1987/02/09 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Information on the AIDS epidemic. New statistics being made public by state health personnel and Governors' Task Forces indicate the following: in New York City, 1 in 10 people is infected with the AIDS virus; in Miami, Fla. 1 in 14; in the city of Atlanta, 1 in 27; in Baltimore, 1 in 20. In the state of Michigan, 1 in '10 are infected ntatewide, and i in 60 in Maryland. In Maryland, the release of the Report of the Governor's Task Force on AIDS. The report estimates that 60,000 Marylanders 37,500 of them in the city of Baltimore are now infected with the HIV virus, It projects that by 1990, 208,000 Marylanders will have AIDS or AIDS Related Complex, or be HIV - 'infected. New York City Health Commissioner Dr. Stephen Joseph revealed Jan. 16, in an interview taped for TV, that there are "500,000 people in this city who are infected" with the killer disease AILS --equivalent to one in every 10 adults in the nation's largest city. He said, "We are at the center of the epidemic in North Amerioa.It'a a long dark tunnel, and we don't have any light at the end of it yet." The projected rise in AIDS cases, he added, "will change everything about the city, its demography, the political and economic life of the city." Joseph predicted that by 1990, New York will have recorded 40,000 cases of AIDS, compared to about 9,000canes so far. Added to these cases, he said, will be up to 150,000 victims of AIDS -related illnesses, which do not fit the Centers for Disease Control definition of AIDS. Washington Yost Jan. 18, headlined "Time to Panic About AIDS." The world Health Organization has projected 100 million AIDS deaths within the next five years. In MD magazine today, the results of the first poll of private physicians on AIDS were published. 'Those results make plain that American doctors do not buy the delusions Roop and the CDC are peddling. Forty-five percent of those polled said they would not permit a family member undergoing elective surgery to receive a blood transfusion, for fear of infection. Twenty- eight percent favored outright quarantine of AIDS victims, and many res- pondents charged that the government and public health establishment are "negligent" for not having applied quarantine already. Fifty-one percent said they favored mandatory AIDS tent before marriage licenses are issued; and an extremely high 78y supported universal screening for high -risk groups, to be followed by tracing of sex partners of those found infected: American Spectator magazine, Christopher Monckton, a former adviser to British Prime Minister Margaret 'Thatcher, called for compulsory testing for AIDS, and for those who are found to be infected to be separated from those who are not. lie advised that governments carry out the policy now, since, if they don't, they will be forced to carry out such policies later, under far worse circumstances.