the real reagan legacy

In 1982 AIDS infected 1200 and killed nearly 500. In the Tylenol scare of the same year, seven people died from cyanide laced capsules. Within five weeks the FDA had 1100 employees testing millions of pills. They filled 11,000 pages, in 26 volumes, with probe reports.

Between the middle of 1981 and the middle of 1982, the Centers for Disease Control spent less than $1 million on what was then called, GRID, or “gay-related immune deficiency,” but $9 million on Legionnaire’s disease....

AIDS killed two generations of gay men in America, and the lasting legacy of their death will be silence about the realities of the epidemic.