US President Ronald Reagan first mentions AIDS

Ronald Reagan first speaks about HIV in a press conference in 1985, four years after the first cases of AIDS are announced in Los Angeles. By this time the AIDS epidemic has long been a well-known public health crisis in the USA. In the conference, Reagan expresses sympathy with parents scared of sending their children to the same school as children with HIV. This is despite the Centre for Disease Control having already confirmed that casual contact poses no risk of infection. Reagan’s record on HIV remains controversial, many think he failed to act fast enough.