AIDS authority speaks on disease

Decades ago, when only six percent of the nation's medical students were women, the University's medical school told June Osborn not to apply. But yesterday, Osborn, now the chairperson of the U.S. National Commission on AIDS, accepted the University's prestigious John Alexander Memorial Prize for prominent medical scholarship. Osborn, the dean of the School of Public Health at the University of Michigan, lectured in the Dunlop Auditorium on "The AIDS Epidemic: Science, Medicine and Metaphor." As a chief figure in Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome research and policy from the birth of the epidemic, Osborn has served as chairperson for the National Institutes of Health advisory committee on AIDS and the U.S. blood supply from 1984 until 1989. She discussed the media's neglect of preventive medicine, attributing this to the topic's inherent lack of excitement. Because the press has no desire to "celebrate things that do not happen," the U.S. public is subsequently unaware of the pressing need for a revamped public health system organized around preventive care, she said. She also called for a health care system which is more accessible to the economically disadvantaged, especially with the recent resurgence of gonnorhea, syphilis and a new multi-drug resistent strain of tuberculosis. Though a sizeable wealth of information has been acquired on the pathogenesis of the retrovirus, she stated that it would take several years for the development of an effective AIDS vaccine. She emphasized the need for greater research in the social and behavioral sciences surrounding the issues of sexual and intravenous needle transmission of the virus and compassionate and efficient care for AIDS patients. Osborn noted said the AIDS-related deaths will soon supercede the death toll of World War II. She denounced the societal attitude purporting "AIDS is God's punishment" and reprehended the medical field for shying away from the social and behavioral aspects of AIDS. "The whole world is pertinent to us as never before," Osborn said. "We have more in common with our neighbors than we'd like to admit." The audience which was primarily composed of medical students, healthcare workers and medical school faculty members, said they enjoyed the lecture and admired Osborn. "She was truly inspiring," said Donna Frazier, a Hospital of University of Pennsylvania employee and prospective medical student. "A much needed voice to the medical profession."