By early 1984, the Reagan administration had spent three years being accused of inaction on AIDS--ever since the Centers for Disease Control first began tracking cases. Now the administration was keen to trumpet its progress.

To have heard Margaret Heckler tell it at her April 23 news conference, it was all over but the shouting. Only a year earlier, said the secretary of health and human services, she had "made the conquest of AIDS the federal government's number-one priority." And now not only had the "probable cause" of acquired immune deficiency syndrome been found; it had also become possible--thanks to a newly developed blood test--to identify AIDS victims and AIDS-tainted blood "with essentially 100 percent certainty." And to top this dazzling array of accomplishments, Heckler announced that a preventive vaccine should be "ready for testing in approximately two years."