Because of its association with homosexuality and intravenous drug use, AIDS became enmeshed in the moral politics of the conservative Reagan administration, which did not take a stand on the epidemic for more than five years after it was first detected in North America in 1981. President Ronald Reagan himself did not mention AIDS until April 1, 1987, when he touched on it briefly in a speech in Philadelphia. Throughout the Reagan years, Koop was the only prominent federal official to speak out on AIDS consistently and in unflinching detail.
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