inevitable consequence of this is the formation of a presidentialncommission. And as we can see, this has alreadyntaken place, with the attendant bickering over the compositionnof the commission consuming most of the time andnenergy of the trouble-shooting body. At a more proximatenlevel, a somewhat typical plea to “do something” wasnregistered in an issue of The New Republic, which boldlynpresented “Our Cure for AIDS.” Arguing that in anresponse similar to Father Paneloux’s at the outbreak of ThenPlague, all neutrality is culpable, judgment a form ofnwithdrawal, while only action becomes a moral necessity. Sonthe first step toward a policy is a calibration of the moralntrade-offs (i.e., private rights versus public goods), withneverything else logically ensuing from there.nMartin Peretz then moves from the general to thenspecific rapidly: (a) public educational campaigns that aren”explicit, colloquial, and geared less to restrictions on sexualnpleasure than to guidelines for the possibility of safe, andnenjoyable sex”; (b) the dispensing of condoms and theirnplacement “in all bars and clubs” including “handing outncondoms at the exit door of any club charging admissionnafter 9:00 p.m. and at all rock concerts”; (c) reaching thenneediest (i.e., blacks, Hispanics, and the poor, the fastestngrowing group of AIDS victims), which would includendispensing and providing clean needles to drug addicts onndemand.nAt the conservative end of the spectrum, the concerns arenless with a policy to protect the victims of AIDS than tonsafeguard the innocents from exposure to the AIDS victimsnor carriers. It might be said, therefore, that these arendemands for antipolicy, i.e., the cauterization and isolationnof AIDS victims from the general society. To be sure, whennefforts are made to foist the AIDS victims or their childrennon the general population, the revulsion is as violent as it isncomplete. Fire-bombings, school boycotts, withdrawal ofninsurance premiums are now random, sporadic but alsonfrequent.nThe philosophical foundations of such an antipolicynposition are set forth by Adam Meyerson in the journalnwhich he edits, Policy Review. It is his view that “with thenAIDS scare and the death of prominent athletes and actorsnfrom cocaine. Nature has been confirming conventionalnmorality by showing that there are certain things the humannbody is not supposed to do.” It is clear that the use of thenword “Nature” is precisely equivalent to the word “God.”nAnd if nature or God carry demonstrable proscriptions onnaction, then clearly, policies intended to reverse suchnpatterns can only be viewed as antinatural or worse,nblasphemous.nA serious problem with the pure conservative approach isnthat even if a laissez-faire environment were desired, innwhich the victims of AIDS would self-destruct, the naturenof disease would still demand a policy to protect the generalnpopulation. Society still needs a set of policies on how tonquarantine the victims, how to tell the victims fromnnonvictims (i.e., medical clearance and surveillance of thenpopulation as a whole), with forms of indemnification fornthe victims as well as types of punishment for carriers whonspread the disease knowingly. Only the most parochial viewnof policy would equate “doing something” with providingnnnMARCH 1988 / 21n