Exactly twenty years later, that lawyer, John G. Roberts Jr., would sit before the US Senate Judiciary Committee as the nominee for Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court.
Roberts's speculation about "AIDS transmission" was as indefensible in 1985 as it is today. By 1983, scientists had identified a retrovirus as the cause of AIDS. This retrovirus, later named Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), was known to infect only upon entering the bloodstream, directly or through mucosal membranes--not through intact skin. AIDS had been diagnosed only among individuals having intimate sexual contact with those infected, or those who were exposed to infected blood or blood products. There were no cases of AIDS identified among the caregivers and family members who were not sexual partners of those with AIDS. These patterns had been strong enough for the CDC to announce as early as November 1982 that both airborne and casual contact transmission were unlikely. Not everything was known about transmission by 1985, just as not everything is known to this day. But it is fair to say that casual contact transmission was not among the issues under debate in the scientific and medical community.
Sen. Russ Feingold, who has announced he will vote for Roberts, questioned Roberts about the memo.
During Roberts's Senate confirmation hearing, Senator Russell Feingold questioned the judge about his AIDS memo. In his defense, Roberts strangely noted that if Reagan's statement had "turned out to be wrong it could have been disastrous." But of course, Reagan's statement was wrong, and the hysteria it caused was disastrous. Either Roberts was being disingenuous or he has gained no further insight on the issue over the last twenty years.
Webber concludes,
The AIDS memo, obviously, is only one among many pieces of evidence bearing on Roberts's qualifications to be Chief Justice. Roberts's assistance to gay rights advocates in the 1996 Supreme Court case Roemer v. Evans suggests that he does not hold the virulently antigay attitudes prevalent twenty years ago in the Reagan Administration. Nevertheless, the 1985 memo--and Roberts's refusal to disavow it in any way in his testimony before the Judiciary Committee--is another source of profound discomfort with the idea that its author could soon become Chief Justice of the United States.
[hat tip Peter. G.]
