WASHINGTON -- Actress Elizabeth Taylor took her AIDS crusade to Capitol Hill, testifying in a packed hearing room that $50 million is needed next year for development of a vaccine to prevent the rapid spread of the deadly disease.
Taylor, appearing Thursday before a subcommittee of the Senate Labor, Health and Human Services Committee, decried budget and staff cutbacks at the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control, the key agencies in the government's fight against the disease.
Instead, she said, the government should be stepping up its effort with more research, extensive testing to detect the disease and a wide public education campaign.
'The AIDS virus is now spreading among heterosexuals, particularly among women,' she said as the constant clicking of cameras often drowned out her testimony. 'AIDS is a women's health issue of increasing importance, and therefore also a growing threat to infants.' She said there are at least 1,000 babies in the United States with the disease.
Taylor, chairwoman of the American Foundation for AIDS Research, said her interest in drawing attention to the AIDS problem intensified last year when her friend, actor Rock Hudson, died of the disease.
The actress apologized for her somewhat graphic testimony at the early-morning hearing, saying, 'This obviously is not breakfast conversation,' and called for $30 million to be used for public information about acquired immune deficiency syndrome to dispel untruths including 'that anal sex is the only way it's transmitted.'
'AIDS is crossing over, inevitably, from groups at high risk, to lower-risk groups,' she said as dozens of reporters and photographers pushed into the normally reserved hearing room.
'Funds available for AIDS vaccine development now total less than $10 million. Because new vaccine preparations need to be developed, and because all need to be tested, I recommend that $50 million be allocated for AIDS vaccine development in 1987.'
Subcommittee Chairman Lowell Weicker, R-Conn., said he had to, 'in effect, grovel' for more money for health research during the budget-making process for fiscal 1987.
Weicker said medical breakthroughs are occurring today because Americans 'put their money down 10 years ago' in the form of taxes for federal health research programs.
Money for AIDS '10 yearsfrom now will be too late,' Taylor interjected.
