History reveals a cold republican heart... Another wonderful Reagan legacy

[liberal N proud]

Nancy Reagan refused to help dying Rock Hudson get AIDS treatment

Nancy Reagan refused to help Rock Hudson, one of the leading Hollywood stars of the 1950s and 1960s, as he sought treatment for AIDS from a pioneering doctor in Paris, it has been revealed.

Hudson, who kept his homosexuality secret while starring in a string of box-office hits with actors such as Elizabeth Taylor and Doris Day, flew to France in July 1985, during the last months of his life, to seek experimental treatment with the drug HPA-23 that was unavailable in the US.

But he collapsed at the Ritz hotel, and was taken to the American hospital in the French capital. His publicist contacted the White House – the Reagans were old friends – in an attempt to speed up a transfer to a military hospital to be seen by Dr Dominique Dormant, a French army doctor who had previously treated Hudson in secret.

But the commanding officer of the Percy military hospital in Clamart initially refused to admit Hudson because he was not a French citizen. According to documents published by BuzzFeed, Nancy Reagan, the US first lady, declined to help.

Hudson was eventually admitted to the hospital, but died in October 1985. He was the first high-profile celebrity whose death from complications relating to the illness was openly acknowledged, and the revelation that such a big star had AIDS helped raise awareness about the disease in the US and other western countries.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/movies/news/nancy-reagan-refused-to-help-dying-rock-hudson-get-aids-treatment/ar-AA8W3HO

[deutsey]

1. Imagine how he must have felt:

facing his mortality and, in a moment of desperate need, abandoned by his so-called "friends".

[secondwind]

2. I will K&R this, and I don't like Nancy, but I DO remember all the hysteria about AIDS back then...

and they probably didn't know enough about it, and didn't want to endanger troops.

I will give her a "pass" on this one...

[Bluenorthwest]

4. Hysteria? That year, 1985 saw the death toll rise over 15,000 with 5,636 deaths, Ryan White was

being harassed at school, HIV was found and named, the World Health Organization had the first ever AIDS conference and amfAR was established. This was year 5.
I ask you to compare and contrast the 'hysteria' during year 5 with massive deaths to the display we saw around that one straight man with Ebola. I promise you that every LGBT person who lived through Reagan thought of those times and American reaction to the two viral threats constantly while the US had an Ebola panic.

It would be another 2 years before your chosen President would bother to say 'AIDS' out loud:
1987
41,027 persons are dead and
71,176 persons diagnosed with AIDS in the US.

After years of negligent silence, President Ronald Reagan finally uses the word "AIDS" in public. He sided with his Education Secretary William Bennett and other conservatives who said the Government should not provide sex education information. (They are still saying it!)

On April 2, 1987, Reagan said: "How that information is used must be up to schools and parents, not government. But let's be honest with ourselves, AIDS information can not be what some call 'value neutral.' After all, when it comes to preventing AIDS, don't medicine and morality teach the same lessons."
http://www.actupny.org/reports/reagan.html

[mountain grammy]

10. The Reagans' legacy of death and destruction.

The most immoral administration in my lifetime.

[cordelia]

5. Fuck Nancy Reagan.

It's people like her and that monster husband of hers that make me wish I could believe in Hell.

[Bluenorthwest]

6. Thank you cordelia....

nt

[vlyons]

8. Oh no, she don't get no pass!

I lived in SF during the Aids epidemic. I had friends and neighbors, who died from Aids. People that I loved. The science of the causes was well known. There was research being done in the whole field of viruses and immunology. She could have picked up the phone and made a call. She probably knew for many years that Hudson was gay. It wasn't much of a secret. But the "taint" of friendship with a queer was too threatening to her image. And so, she abandoned her "friend." Rock Hudson was a very nice man. He deserved better.

[Bettie]

3. Does it really surprise anyone that Mrs. Reagan

was cold-hearted?

I feel for this man though, thinking that he had friends and finding out that they were not what he believed them to be.

[rurallib]

7. taught Hudson a lesson he'll never forget, that's what they did

they did it for his own good. Sometimes you must show people the error of their ways and show them tough love, even if it kills them. It is good for them. And God wants it that way.

I think, for the humor impaired.
or maybe I am starting to think like a bagger

[hughee99]

9. I think I would feel different about this

If Hudson had asked the Reagans to allow anyone in his situation the same consideration he was asking for, but it didn't look like he was. If the Reagans had said yes, we'd now be having a discussion about how awful the Reagans were for giving special consideration to a famous friend that others didn't get.

[Thespian2]

11. Re-read thread.

The Reagans didn't give a flying shit about anyone, not even their own family. This ass-hole excuse for a president didn't care to help any AIDS patient.

[hughee99]

12. I read the thread, and the one yesterday which had the acutal telegram that was sent

to the White House.

There's no doubt the Reagan administration was awful on AIDS policy, but this thread isn't really about that. It's about how a politically connected friend asked the president NOT to change the policy, but to make a one-time exception for him, and how that shows how uncaring the Reagans were.

Personally, I think a much better example of how uncaring they were would be the tens of thousands of deaths that didn't seem to sway them, not the one friend they wouldn't make a special exception for.

[JEB]

13. We'd be better off today if

Rock Hudson had been President and the Reagans had died too young.