Subject: Program to Warn Children on AIDS Proposed by Koop
Date: Published: 10/23/86 71 lines
Source:  Wall Street Journal.  Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc. 

   Program to Warn
   Children on AIDS
   Proposed by Koop
    ---
   Surgeon General Also Calls
   For Big Effort to Combat
   Disease Among Minorities
    ---
   By Joe Davidson
   Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

   WASHINGTON -- Surgeon General C. Everett Koop advocated a
strong sex-education program to warn children about the
dangers of acquired immune deficiency syndrome and called for
special efforts to combat the disease among minority groups.
   At a news conference to release an AIDS report that
President Reagan ordered in February, Dr. Koop said, "AIDS
education must start at the lowest grade possible as part of
any health and hygiene program."
   "The threat of AIDS should be sufficient to permit a
sex-education curriculum with a heavy emphasis on prevention
of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases," he added.
He called for frank discussions with young people about
homosexual and heterosexual practices so they know "the
behaviors to avoid to protect themselves from exposure to the
AIDS virus."
   Department of Education officials feel Dr. Koop may have
gone too far with his emphasis on explicit sex education.  A
spokesman said Education Secretary William Bennett personally
opposes school-based health clinics that supply birth-control
devices because they may tend to legitimize teen-age sexual
activity.
   Concerted educational efforts must be aimed at blacks and
Hispanics, Dr. Koop said, because of the comparatively high
incidence of AIDS in those populations.  Of all children with
AIDS, 80% are black or Hispanic, according to Dr. Koop.  And
while 12% of the U. S. population is black and 6% is Hispanic,
25% of the AIDS patients are black and 12% are Hispanic.
   Rudolph Jackson, a professor at the Morehouse College of
Medicine in Atlanta who has studied AIDS among blacks and
Hispanics, said in an interview that intravenous drug abuse
is the single greatest cause of AIDS transmission in minority
communities.  He added that drug addicts, unlike gay groups,
aren't well-organized in the AIDS fight.
   Dr. Koop said there are no new scientific advances in the
fight against AIDS to report.  He said the disease has claimed
15,000 American lives since it was first recognized in 1981.
By 1991, federal officials expect that number to have jumped
twelvefold.
   Dr. Koop said that AIDS victims include heterosexuals as
well as gays.  The report said, "In the future AIDS will
probably increase and spread among people who are not
homosexual or intravenous drug abusers in the same manner as
other sexually transmitted diseases like syphillis and
gonorrhea."
   Quarantine and compulsory blood testing aren't effective
weapons in the AIDS fight, according to the surgeon general.
"Quarantine has no role in the management of AIDS because
AIDS is not spread by casual contact," Dr. Koop said.
"Compulsory blood testing is unnecessary, unfeasible and cost
prohibitive," he added.

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