Gary Bauer and other Christian Rightists tried to prevent Dr. Koop from warning public about AIDS

[ck4829]

D. Michael Lindsay discussing the problems Surgeon General C. Everett Koop ran into when tasked with drafting a report on AIDS for President Reagan:

(In 1986) President Reagan asked the surgeon general to prepare a report on AIDS as the United States confirmed its ten-thousandth case. Leaders of the evangelical movement did not want Koop to write the report, nor did senior White House staffers who shared Koop's evangelical convictions. As Dr. Koop related to me, "Gary Bauer (Reagan's chief advisor on domestic policy) ... was my nemesis in Washington because he kept me from the president. He kept me from the cabinet and he set up a wall of enmity between me and most of the people that surrounded Reagan because he believed that anybody who had AIDS ought to die it. That was God's punishment for them."

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/random-book-blogging-bauer-thought-aids-victims-deserved-die

How much blood is on the hands of the leaders of the Christian Right because they hassled Dr. Everett Koop and his doctors from warning people about AIDS?

[applegrove]

1. That isn't religion. That is pure evil.

[DeSwiss]

6. I see no difference. n/t

[immoderate]

9. Good people will do good things, and bad people will do bad things...

...But for good people to do bad things — that takes religion." -- Steven Weinberg


--imm

[JI7]

2. i don't get it, it says Reagan asked him to prepare a report on AIDS

so what was the problem ? yeah, the wingnuts oppose it. but it says Reagan who is the leader asked Koop to do it .

i didn't read the whole thing so there might be more there.

[Angry Dragon]

3. If they wish to put god above man

then they need to stay within their churches never to leave them and leave the secular world to the ones that wish to either live in the secular world or try to find a balance between the two.

[Canuckistanian]

4. Gary Bauer has blood on his hands

Thousands of needless deaths. And all because of his self-righteous belief in "vengeance".

If there IS a Satan, he'll be waiting patiently for Gary Bauer.

[ruggerson]

5. it was also Pat Buchanan and Phyllis Schlafly

they wanted a total media blackout on AIDS.

Koop tells the story, in detail, of going on the Today show in the mid 80's and the WH communications office called ahead of time and instructed the interviewers that there were to be no questions about AIDS.

Reagan never even mentioned the word until five or six years after the epidemic started.

[Democrats_win]

7. Tax false religion! They earned it.

[Mojorabbit]

8. I was a nurse during this time

and we saw these young boys coming in and they were dieing and I can't stand him because I still have so much anger over how the whole situation was handled. It was very traumatic and I was very young.