Surgeon General C. Everett Koop said today that a wave of public ``retribution'' against groups whose problems are seen as their own doing, including smokers and drunken drinkers, could spread to AIDS victims by the next decade. ``Such a response would be tragic, but not unexpected to the health profession,'' Koop said. He cited the recent passing of laws to segregate smokers and public ``retribution against drunk drivers, teenagers who become pregnant, drug addicts and wife beaters.'' The anti-smoking attitude, he said, is being expressed in the adoption of laws setting up no-smoking areas in restaurants and banning smoking from entire office buildings and workplaces. ``These are examples of public retribution exercised against smokers,'' he said, also telling his audience, ``Most Americans would like to see all smokers stop.'' And he said it is possible that the American people, ``already traveling the road of retribution,'' will extend that retribution against AID victims in the 1990s, ``when the annual health bill for the disease reaches $5 billion.'' He did not say what retribution might be taken against people suffering from the fatal disease. The challenge to health professionals, he said, will be to move reaction to more responsive, productive and tolerant attitudes toward those with AIDS. The surgeon general commented in a speech after reeceiving an honorary fellowship from the American College of Legal Medicine. AIDS, or acquired immune deficiency syndrome, is a contagious disease that attacks the body's immune system, rendering it incapable of resisting other diseases and infections. The virus most often is spread through close contact with blood, blood products or semen from infected persons. The incurable condition is believed caused by an unusual virus, now called human immunodeficiency virus or HIV, discovered in France and the United States. Its chief victims have been homosexual men and intravenous drug users, although a small percentage of cases are attributed to transfusions of contaminated blood, heterosexual contact and spread from infected pregnant women to their offspring. As of July 4, AIDS had been diagnosed in 66,464 Americans, of whom more than half, or 37,535 have died since June 1981, according to the CDC. No one is known to have recovered from AIDS.
