When the meeting ended, reporters and television cameras surrounded Lilly leaving him, he said, "shell-shocked" and "scared to death".
[5] On October 7, Mayberry and Myers quit, as did the commission's senior staff adviser for medical and research affairs, Dr. Franklin Cockerill 3d, a Mayo Clinic physician specializing in AIDS.
The administration immediately announced the appointment of James D. Watkins, a retired admiral who had been Chief of Naval Operations.
"[9] On October 9, DeVos said that the president needed to avoid naming commissioners who were "emotionally" involved in the commission's work and that, in one newspaper's account of his statement, "some homosexuals want to 'capture the agenda'".
[13] Without Bauer's approval, Watkins later added two commission members who had track records as critics of the Reagan administration: Kristine Gebbie, Oregon public health commissioner and president of the AIDS Task Force of the American Society of State and Territorial Health Officers and Dr. Benny J. Primm, director of a New York City treatment program for addicts.
"[14] In February 1988, the commission released an interim report focused on IV drugs that called for a $20-billion, 10-year effort to fight AIDS.
"[14] William B. Rubenstein, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) who earlier sued the commission anticipating that its membership would bias its findings, found Watkins' work "a pleasant surprise".
[14] On June 2, 1988, Watkins described the commission's draft report and called for state and federal laws to provide anti-discrimination protection for AIDS patients.
He explained that testing and the identification of sexual partners could not be successful without such protections against discrimination: "So, once those with HIV are treated like anyone else with a disability, then we will find that what is best for the individual is also best for the public health."
[15] In an initial review, Dr. Mathilde Krim, founder of the American Foundation for AIDS Research thought the commission's work both more expert than she expected and free of ideology.
[15] The American Public Health Association called it "an aggressive first step towards developing an integrated national strategy to deal with the AIDS epidemic.
It acted to inform recipients of blood transfusions that they were at risk, made plans to speed FDA drug approvals, and developed proposals to add facilities for the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health.