Surgeon General Talks on AIDS

More than 20,000 new cases of AIDS have been reported this year and those figures are expected to double by next year, Surgeon General C. Everett Koop told a capacity crowd of 700 people at the Kennedy School of Government last night.

The government official, who last October published at controversial report on AIDS at President Reagan's request, has stressed that the government should support sex education and public awareness about the disease.

"We decided to focus on informing young people about the risks of AIDS. Their sexual activity will determine whether our society will survive this devastating disease," Koop said last night at the Institute of Politics (IOP) forum.

Harvard's approach to AIDS also centers on education, said Vice President and General Counsel Daniel Steiner '54 after the speech. There have been a total of six known cases of AIDS at Harvard, according to Steiner, and a small group of central administrators and health officials was formed three years ago to coordinate University policy on the issue.

Following Koop's remarks, a Boston Globe editor who has written extensively on the AIDS crisis commented on the scope of the problem and criticized the Reagan Administration for responding inadequately to the public health issues involved.

"The whole problem is not whether we tell the kiddies or not," said deputy editorial page editor Loretta McLaughlin, "the problem is that the disease spreads."

"We're still arguing about the niceties of TV. condom ads," she said, referring to the Surgeon General's appearance yesterday

Education and research can help combat the

spread of AIDS throughout the population, U.S.

Surgeon General C. Everett Koop said last night in

an interview following his speech at the Kennedy

School.

Koop said in his speech that he is not a policy

maker and can only put moral pressure on the

Administration to allocate funding to AIDS

research. But in the interview, he added he

supports a "massive" research and education

program for AIDS.

During his speech, Koop likened the government

to a freight train on a track and himself to an

engineer, adding, "You can do anything you want,

but the driver is hermetically sealed in the cab."

The government should support the continued

search for a vaccine and an investigation into the

use of spermicides, which may be more effective in

preventing the disease than condoms, Koop said in

the interview. "There's a whole new field

[spermicides] which could be studied and might be

one way out for people who have a promiscuous

lifestyle," he said.

In addition, Koop said, "an absolutely

unbelievably massive program" is needed to educate

the population in order to prevent AIDS from

spreading to the rest of society.

"The great majority of people are

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