Medicine: Frank Talk About the AIDS Crisis &

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Watkins proposed education initiatives that "are of such vital importance . . . that they must be implemented immediately," including comprehensive health courses in the schools and a program tailored to minority communities that have been hardest hit by AIDS. The chairman also suggested that the Surgeon General act as the Government's principal spokesman in health-care emergencies, with the authority to forge effective public policy speedily. As if to underscore the urgent tone of Watkins' draft report, the San Francisco department of public health and the federal Centers for Disease Control predicted last week, for the first time, that infection with the AIDS virus will almost certainly result in death unless effective treatments are found.