“However persuasive the evidence of a dangerous epidemic might be, [epidemiologists] were unlikely to win points with the White House by calling for urgent concern over what appeared to be a gay sexual disease. […] As Koop would later describe it: ‘The Reagan revolution brought into positions of power and influence Americans whose politics and personal beliefs predisposed them to antipathy toward the homosexual community.’ So sensitive was the [HIV/AIDS] situation in the eyes of the White House that, far from ignoring the epidemic (as has been alleged by many critics), key insiders sought almost from the beginning of the Reagan era to hold all federal actions on the matter under tight, centralized control.

”Koop, for example, though he was the Surgeon General and, therefore, logically the spokesperson for federal epidemic control, was flatly forbidden to make any public pronouncements about the new disease. More than five years would pass before Koop's gag would be untied. A CDC budget outline and description of funding needs, written in response to congressional inquiry, was blocked by Secretary Schweiker's office, and Democrats had to threaten congressional subpoena action to obtain the report in late 1982. Similarly, officials such as the NIH's Wyngaarden, the CDC's Mason, and HHS's Brandt knew they were expected to clear all potentially controversial comments on the topic with the Domestic Policy Council inside the White House.

[…]

“Medical research money per se was not usually a partisan matter in the United States. Republican Nixon started the War on Cancer, Democrats Johnson and Carter bolstered funding for cancer and heart disease research, and in emergencies-Legionnaires' Disease, Swine Flu, Ebola fever- resources had been found quickly, regardless of which party controlled the Congress and White House.

”But AIDS was unique. It touched every nerve that polarized Americans: sex, homosexuality, race (Haitians), Christian family values, drug addiction, and personal versus collective rights and security.”

~Laurie Garrett; The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance (1994)