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Originally posted by Reds6
[B]
I did some research about the Pros and Cons of his presidency.
Lets also keep in mind Reagan REFUSED to fund any AIDS research. This could have made such a huge difference in the spread of AIDS in our country.
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Reagan's government spent almost 6 billion on AIDS research. It would seem to me that the assertion that he just let people die is a myth. If anyone remembers that far back (okay, I was like 5, but I watch the History Channel
) we didn't even have a name for it at first. No one knew what it was. I've seen news footage where someone with "GRID" had a car wreck and there was blood on the ground, so HAZMAT was called!
Yes, there were (and are) depictions of Ronnie in the media that show him being darth-vaderesque in his approach to gays and AIDS. On that fairly recent CBS special written by Frank Gifford and later showed on Showtime, it had Mr Reagan saying "If you live in sin, you should die in sin" (or something to that effect) when Nancy was trying to convince him to do something about AIDS. And outright, complete, total fabrication.
The truth is that since the disease was discovered in 1982, Reagan gave it a fairly large amount of funding (considering the fact that at the beginning, the disease was not widespread and not very well known). During his administration, 5.727 BILLION dollars were spent on AIDS research. In 1986, he put AIDS 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."
In 1989, he had ratcheted the AIDS budget up to 2.32 Billion dollars. I think Frank Gifford's CBS special on Reagan is a good example of why we shouldn't believe everything we see on TV.