In responding to the AIDS disaster, the Federal Government failed to fund education, research, and care; the gay male community failed to warn, educate, and change behavior quickly; State and local governments failed to respond quickly; and the blood industry failed to ensure the safety of its product. One explanation for these weak organizational responses to AIDS is that organizations typically fail to respond immediately and effectively to crises due to the inherent inefficiency of bureaucratic systems. Another explanation is the inability or unwillingness of organizations to produce the heavy funding required for an adequate response. Permeating and compounding these two factors has been the influence of a vigorous "moral majority" lobby that has insisted on giving low priority to addressing a disease prevalent among stigmatized groups, i.e., male homosexuals and intravenous drug users and their sexual partners (the latter group tends to be composed of poor urban minorities, another group having low priority for public funding). What is needed is an all-out war on AIDS that addresses sexual discrimination, moral absolutism, and poverty. Subject index and 176-item bibliography