Listen To This3lesson 21

A committee of scientists is calling on President Reagan to launch a billion-dollar information campaign to keep the AIDS epidemic from spreading to catastrophic proportions. The National Academy of Sciences convened the panel which says education efforts must be used because effective treatment and a vaccine appear to be years away. The report urges the establishment of a new federal office to head a nationwide education effort as well as an advisory commission for research and education. The scientists say the White House should lead an action campaign the way it has led a new crackdown on illegal drugs.


Gunmen kidnapped a French television photographer today as he drove from the Christian east to the Muslim western sector of Beirut. Jean Marc Srucie is the 9th French National missing and presumed abducted in Beirut. Two women were in the car with him but were released. No one has claimed responsibility.


An Israeli court has indicted a retired auto worker, alleging he was a Nazi death camp worker known as "Ivan the Terrible". Jam Demjanjuk is in jail in Israel after being extradited and maintains his is a case of mistaken identity. The BBC's Paul Reynolds has more in this report from Jerusalem. "The indictment charges Demjanjuk with crimes against the Jewish people, against humanity, and with war crimes. He's said to have been responsible for herding Jews into the gas chambers and often stabbed or whipped flesh from them as they went in. It's said that he personally turned on the motors to discharge the poison gas. The state of Israel will be calling eight former Treblinka inmates and an SS guard who will identify Demjanjuk as "Ivan the Terrible". Demjanjuk's defense, though, will be quite simple. He'll say he's somebody else. His American lawyer has been seeking out other camp survivors who can't support the identification, and the whole trial will resolve around this question. Demjanjuk's trial is expected to begin at the end of the year and could take as long as six months.


Today, a panel of the nation's leading scientists and physicians issued a major review of the government's response to the AIDS epidemic. The panel was convened by the National Academy of Sciences. The scientists called for massive increases in funding for AIDS research and education. They also urged President Reagan to lead the fight against disease. NPR's Richard Harris has the story:
Six months ago, the Academy decided that AIDS was so serious a problem that they needed to review that nation's fight against the disease. They chose Nobel laureate, David Baltimore to head their panel and enlisted the cooperative of leading health researchers. The Academy has no control over the federal budget, but they have considerable prestige. And they banked on that prestige today when they called for a billion dollars a year for AIDS research by 1990. That translates into a four-fold increase in funding over the next three years. Today, Chairman David Baltimore said the country should spend another billion dollars a year for AIDS education.
"We are saying that a program that is at all responsive to the needs of the situation will cost billion dollars. And we are not specifying where that billion dollars should come from because it's made up of whole lot of little pieces," pieces that should be shared by local government and private industry. The panel said education efforts so far have been, as they put it, "woefully inadequate", inadequate because officials have spent 1/8 as much money as they should have, and inadequate, they said, because health officials have been too squeamish to talk about sex or to promote the use of condoms. Baltimore said these attitudes must change now, because the AIDS epidemic is at critical point.
"The virus has now spread widely as far as we know outside of the high-risk groups. We are afraid, in fact there is perfectly good evidence, that such spread is possible, and are calling for people to take precautions in situations where they may not have though they were at risk."
Baltimore said that anyone who has sexual relations with more than one partner should take precautions against exposure to the AIDS virus. The panel said condoms are one way to avoid infection. The report does not predict that AIDS will spread rapidly by heterosexual contact in the next five years, but recurring theme in the report is that now is the time to prevent the epidemic from becoming even worse. Already more than 25,000 Americans have been diagnosed with AIDS. Baltimore called on President Reagan to declare war on AIDS the way he declared war on illegal drugs.
"We are talking about President taking that form of leadership, and it's clear that when the President speaks out on an issue in such forceful terms, that the whole nation sees it in the different way."
The National Academy report, like the Surgeon General's recommendations last week, gives the president a convenient way to take on AIDS as an issue. Both reports stress that AIDS is not just a disease that can infect gay men and drug abusers. They say now AIDS is a sexually transmitted disease that can affect anyone. In Washington this is Richard Harris.


Hard Choices is a low-budget film that has been well received by many critics this past summer, but that does not make it a runaway hit. In fact, its thirty-four-year-old producer, Robert Michaelson, has been found at the film's openings passing out fliers in front of the theaters. Critic Bob Mondello says he shouldn't have to do that.
In a perfect world, little movies about Tennessee kids who get caught on the wrong side of the law would get the publicity they need, and film companies would stop hyping pre-sold blockbusters about psychotic cops. This is not, however, a perfect world. And I don't want to imply that Hard Choices is a perfect movie, either. But it's so much more involving and suspenseful and just plain interesting than most of the junk Hollywood putsout that it makes you want to do hand flips. It's the story of a rural sixteen-year-old, named Bobby, played winningly by new comer Gary McCleary, who goes along for the ride one evening with his hell-raising older brothers. When they decide to rob a local pharmacy, Bobby stays out in the truck, and that's where he is when one of his brothers panics and kills a policeman. Bobby's soon on the run with his brothers, and soon in jail. Now, up to this point, this could be any of a dozen rebel-rousing teen movies, but Bobby's not your average teen protagonist. He's a sweet kid, so innocent in fact, that he can't even lie to his mother, who's a bit innocent herself.
"Bobby, how come everybody says you boys took drugs? I know you wasn't sick."
"Cause it's true. We did."
Now, talking about the innocence of a kid who takes drugs may seem a little odd, but what made Hard Choices such a compelling movie is that it doesn't settle for easy answers. Having Bobby sit in jail is clearly not in anyone's best interests. So when his case is taken by Laura, a young social worker played by Margaret Clenk, you're mightily relieved. Unfortunately this kid isn't very lucky in the folks who take a shine to him. Clenk, who's probably best known as Edwena Louis in the soap opera "One Life to Live", makes Laura a tired activist who's so won over by Bobby's lopsided grin and optimism, she's soon doing something supremely dumb: pointing pistol at the Sheriff.
Woman: Do you have a gun, Bobby?
Bobby: It's on the wall.
Woman: Go get it.
Bobby: Wait a minute.
Woman: Go get the gun!
Man: Bobby, don't do it. You're making a big mistake. I'm going to have to come and get you.
Woman: Don't you want to be free?
Since he's being tried as an adult, that is a hard choice. Now, this may remind you of a real life story recently in which a lawyer in Tennessee fell in love with her client and helped him escape, or it may just generally remind you of real life. One of the best things about Hard Choices is that everything in it seems so utterly natural. The supporting cast, for instance, which includes Secaucus Seven director, John Sales. It's generally terrific, which you could also say about Rick King's casually suspenseful direction. He keeps you just a little off balance, which is wonderful. Unfortunately, his movie seems to have its Hollywood's sponsors a little off balance, too. Despite reviews that called the sleeper of the summer, Lorimar Pictures can't seem to get handle on how to sell it. And frankly, with major media advertising costing what it does, if a film can't be described in a phrase of six words or less, like "crime is the disease, cobra's the cure". Tuisel Town often has to throw up its hands. The thing is that Hard Choices is just what Hollywood needs right now. With idiotic fantasies about talking ducks costing as much as $40,000,000, this is practically the definitive small movie, made for what most Hollywood epics spend on catering. I don't want to oversell it. It's certainly not perfect. But it sure makes the adrenaline flow. And when you take its budget into account, it's nothing less than amazing. If the studios can't figure out how to make a picture like this work, they deserve disasters like Howard the Duck . The problem is, if you want to see it, you may have to search for Hard Choices because it's not being released all at once. There are only a few prints. But it's worth asking your local theater owner to book. With summer hold-overs as the alternative, it makes your September movie going an easy choice.
Hard Choices opens tomorrow in Chicago and Minneapolis. Next weekend in San Francisco and at the Boston Film Festival. Bob Mondello was the film critic for "All Things Considered".