The below is an editorial and my opinon only, after the editorial I have copied and pasted an article posted online at web address http://www.nationalreview.com/murdock/murdock200312030913.asp

Written by Deroy Murdock . I chose this article because of all the information online, his seemed the most factual and researched with supporting documentation.
There were many people that chose to ignore AIDS simply because no one understood it. Many Doctors, nurses, family and friends were afraid and prejudice simply because they did not know the facts about this disease. Lives were not lost because of President Reagan... Lives were lost because of the disease. I don't disagree that more should have been done and still be done but if we have any blame to place its on society as a whole and our own inability to accept rather than persecute. Jerry Falwell was the leader of the Moral Majority during that time and was quoted as saying "AIDS is the wrath of God upon homosexuals." AND he in turn along with the Moral Majority tried to prevent funding for AIDS education programs and counseling. Just for the record, I did not and do not agree with his statement, and I think It is crude and ill- informed and racist. The media forms our preceptions of our leaders and sometimes not with all the facts and tonight I hope I bring you a few. If I am wrong, show me and I will gladly re-consider my position.


Now for the article… It is not of my own writing and credit belongs solely to Deroy Murdock…..


Few men have known Ronald Reagan longer or better than Edwin Meese III. He began working in 1967 with then-governor Reagan in Sacramento, California. He became a president adviser on January 20, 1981, and was appointed Reagan's attorney general in February 1985.
Meese described to me the TV movie's take on Reagan, AIDS, and gays as "totally unfair, and totally unrepresentative of his views or anything he ever said." Meese, who now chairs the Heritage Foundation's Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, recalls AIDS as a key issue with which Reagan's senior staff grappled.
"I can remember numerous sessions of the domestic-policy council where the surgeon general provided information to us, and the questions were not whether the federal government would get involved, but what would be the best way. There was support for research through the NIH. There also were questions about the extent to which public warnings should be sent out. It was a question of how the public would respond to fairly explicit warnings about fairly explicit things. Ultimately, warnings were sent out."
"As I recall, from 1984 onward — and bear in mind that the AIDS virus was not identified until 1982 — every Reagan budget contained a large sum of money specifically earmarked for AIDS," says Peter Robinson, a former Reagan speechwriter and author of How Ronald Reagan Changed My Life. "Now, people will argue that it wasn't enough," Robinson adds. "But, of course, that's the kind of argument that takes place over every item in the federal budget. Nevertheless, the notion that he was somehow callous or had a cruel or cynical attitude towards homosexuals or AIDS victims is just ridiculous."
In February 1986, President Reagan's blueprint for the next fiscal year stated: "[T]his budget provides funds for maintaining — and in some cases expanding — high priority programs in crucial areas of national interest…including drug enforcement, AIDS research, the space program, nonmilitary research and national security." Reagan's budget message added that AIDS "remains the highest public health priority of the Department of Health and Human Services."
Precise budget requests are difficult to calculate, as online records from the 1980s are spotty. Nevertheless, New York University's archived, hard copies of budget documents from fiscal year 1984 through FY 1989 show that Reagan proposed at least $2.79 billion for AIDS research, education, and treatment. In a Congressional Research Service study titled AIDS Funding for Federal Government Programs: FY1981-FY1999, author Judith Johnson found that overall, the federal government spent $5.727 billion on AIDS under Ronald Reagan. This higher number reflects President Reagan's proposals as well as additional expenditures approved by Congress that he later signed.
Table 5 of Johnson's report shows annual federal AIDS spending during Ronald Reagan's watch. This is hardly the portrait of a do-nothing presidency:

Government Spending on HIV/AIDS
Fiscal Year ($ Millions) % growth over previous year
1982 8
1983 44 450.00
1984 103 134.09
1985 205 99.03
1986 508 147.80
1987 922 81.50
1988 1,615 75.16
1989 2,322 43.78

Total 5,727 (billion)
Source: Congressional Research Service

Free-marketeers may argue that the federal government should have left AIDS research and care to the private sector. Whether or not one embraces that perspective, no one justifiably can regard Reagan's requested and actual AIDS spending as a gleefully applied death sentence for AIDS sufferers.
Besides, could much have been done with an even larger cash infusion during the infancy of AIDS?
"You could have poured half the national budget into AIDS in 1983, and it would have gone down a rat hole," says Michael Fumento, author of BioEvolution: How Biotechnology Is Changing Our World. "There were no anti-virals back then. The first anti-viral was AZT which came along in 1987, and that was for AIDS." As an example of how blindly scientists and policymakers flew as the virus took wing, Fumento recalls that "in 1984, Health and Human Services Secretary Margaret Heckler predicted that there would be an AIDS vaccine by 1986. There is no AIDS vaccine to date."
Reagan also is accused of staying mum about AIDS. According to The Encyclopedia of AIDS: A Social, Political, Cultural, and Scientific Record of the HIV Epidemic edited by Raymond A. Smith, "Reagan never even mentioned the word 'AIDS' publicly until 1987."
Actually, as official White House papers cited by Steven Hayward, author of the multi-volume Age of Reagan show, the 40th president spoke of AIDS no later than September 17, 1985. Responding to a question on AIDS research, the president said:
[I]ncluding what we have in the budget for '86, it will amount to over a half a billion dollars that we have provided for research on AIDS in addition to what I'm sure other medical groups are doing. And we have $100 million in the budget this year; it'll be 126 million next year. So, this is a top priority with us. Yes, there's no question about the seriousness of this and the need to find an answer.
President Reagan's February 6, 1986 State of the Union address included this specific passage where he says the word "AIDS" five times:
We will continue, as a high priority, the fight against Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). An unprecedented research effort is underway to deal with this major epidemic public health threat. The number of AIDS cases is expected to increase. While there are hopes for drugs and vaccines against AIDS, none is immediately at hand. Consequently, efforts should focus on prevention, to inform and to lower risks of further transmission of the AIDS virus. To this end, I am asking the Surgeon General to prepare a report to the American people on AIDS.
Could Reagan have said more about AIDS? Surely, and he might have done so were he less focused on reviving America's moribund economy and peacefully defeating Soviet Communism. Could he have done more? Of course. Who could not have? But the ideas that Ronald Reagan did nothing, or worse, about AIDS and hated gays, to boot, are both tired, left-wing lies about an American legend.
----Deroy Murdock


(note from Re’ I deleted the portion regarding homophobia since it is not pertinent to my point. But I do suggest reading the whole article and you can find it on the address I listed above)


I totally agree with the authors last comments and feel my editorial could not do justice…. Thanks…