Poll: 97 Percent of Parents Want Kids Educated About AIDS

With the publication of the first official government report on AIDS in 1986, Surgeon General C. Everett Koop was paid a visit by President Reagan's policy advisers. According to Koop, "it soon became very clear there were four words they wanted removed -- penis, vagina, rectum and condom." He refused. Then, when Koop used the report to call for sex education in public schools, "that resulted in more threats on my life than anything else I said in eight years."

On the 20th anniversary of AIDS, a new national survey showed that 97 percent of Americans want their children educated about HIV transmission and prevention. The survey, conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation, also found that when asked for the most urgent health problem facing the nation, 26 percent named AIDS. Thirty-seven percent said AIDS was the most urgent international health problem.

The survey of adults was conducted between August and October of last year and included interviews with 2,683 Americans. Two-thirds of respondents thought that the government is not doing enough to fight the AIDS epidemic; two-thirds thought parents should do more; and 51 percent thought schools should do more. Fifty-eight percent of Americans favor needle exchange programs to prevent the spread of AIDS through infected syringes, while 35 percent oppose such programs. Sixty-one percent said drug users should be able to purchase needles from a pharmacy.

According to the report, more than four in 10 Americans know someone who is either living with HIV/AIDS or has died of the disease. More than one in three are personally concerned with becoming infected, and 71 percent of parents are worried that their children will become infected.

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