Presidential Commission On Aids

The presidential AIDS commission sent a strong and far-reaching mandate to the Reagan White House Friday, calling for the expansion of federal anti-discrimination laws to protect the ill and infected and urging sweeping reforms in health care. Wrapping up its nearly year-long assignment, the 13-member panel approved almost 600 recommendations that its members hope will serve as a comprehensive blueprint for a national strategy to combat the deadly epidemic.

When the presidential AIDS commission was created last summer, it was immediately dismissed by many in the public health community and elsewhere as a political gesture by the Reagan Administration that would do little, if anything, about the deadly and burgeoning epidemic. Last week, that view changed dramatically. The first policy statements of the commission chairman, Adm. James D.

President Reagan on Thursday appointed a 13-member commission to recommend a national strategy in fighting the AIDS epidemic and vowed that "we'll not rest till we've sent AIDS the way of smallpox and polio."

President Reagan's AIDS commission issued an urgent call Wednesday for faster approval of drugs for AIDS treatment and said that it will consider proposing such controversial steps as supplying clean needles and syringes to drug addicts, the group among whom the virus is raging out of control. AIDS victims are "crying for more work with experimental drugs" and are "willing to use their own bodies in that test," retired Adm. James D.

Calling discrimination "the most significant obstacle to controlling the epidemic," the chairman of the presidential AIDS commission Thursday issued an exceptionally strong plea for expanded anti-discrimination legislation to protect those suffering from the deadly disease, as well as those infected with the AIDS virus. "Discrimination is rampant--it's not just an isolated set of cases," Adm. James D. Watkins said as he released nearly 600 recommendations.

As the presidential AIDS commission prepares to complete its final report next week, several of its members are expected to propose creating a new department that would deal solely with health issues, now under jurisdiction of the Department of Health and Human Services.

President Reagan's national commission on AIDS was greeted at its first meeting Wednesday by charges of gay activists, minority leaders and health care professionals that its members have little or no expertise and in some cases hold militant right-wing views.