Naming Medical Center for Reagan

* It was with mixed sadness and irony that I read (April 20) that UCLA was naming its new medical center in honor of Ronald Reagan, in exchange for a $150-million donation. Reagan was not only anti-University of California, he was also anti-intellectual.

In my UCLA classes I regularly remind my students of his well-known public advocacy of biblical creationism in preference to scientific evolutionary theory. What won’t university administrators do for money? What’s next? A Rush Limbaugh Institute of Political Science?

HENRY HESPENHEIDE

Los Angeles

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As a graduate of UCLA, a member of the UCLA Medical Center board for more than 20 years and as its former chairman, I am thrilled and delighted with the announcement that our magnificent new facility will be named the Ronald Reagan Medical Center.

The quotes of some ultraliberals and their critical comments give me even more satisfaction, as it obviously galls them that a champion of smaller government, lower taxes, lower government spending and the principal architect of the end of the Cold War would be so honored.

Achievement of the finest 21st century health care facility, implemented so significantly by this $150-million pledge, will redound to the benefit of not just medicine and quality health care, but further advances Los Angeles as one of the most outstanding and richly endowed metropolitan centers of the world.

ROBERT B. WOLCOTT JR.

Glendale

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It made me sick to read that the chancellor has sold out to wealthy and political interests in naming the medical center after Reagan. We must stop the process of prostituting the integrity of our institutions to people who will, in most cases, write off these contributions for tax purposes.

New York University put a stop to this process and has surpassed the levels of contributions it receives. If anything, the building should be named after the low- and middle-income taxpayers who funded more than half the cost with FEMA money.

RENE RIVERA

Torrance

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Former UC San Francisco Chancellor Philip Lee repeats a falsehood, that the Reagan-Bush administration failed to provide research money at the outset of the AIDS epidemic.

As a member of President Reagan’s White House Office of Policy Development from 1982-83, I raised the issue of funding for AIDS, a disease first recognized in 1981, according to the Merck Manual. From 1982 to 1984, the amount of federal funds going to AIDS research almost tripled from $5.5 million (1982) to $13.2 million (1983) to $16.1 million (1984). These numbers include research funds from the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and all U.S. Public Health Service units. To quote an April 1983 memo to me from Robert Carleson, President Reagan’s White House health policy advisor and former California Health and Welfare Agency director, “As information unfolds on the AIDS problem, more resources are being diverted to do further research on this new disease.�

Let’s set the record straight.

VELMA MONTOYA PhD

UC Regent, Hollywood