WASHINGTON (AP) - The Smithsonian's National Museum of American History is marking the 30th anniversary of the emergence of HIV and AIDS with a special display and website.

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The display opening Friday in Washington examines the public health, scientific and political responses early in the global AIDS pandemic between 1981 and 1987.

The museum display features photographs, magazine covers and the equipment that Dr. Jay Levy used to isolate the HIV virus in his lab at the University of California, San Francisco. It will include the government's position on AIDS in a 1986 report by then Surgeon General C. Everett Koop after President Ronald Reagan had been silent on AIDS for years.

The museum also created exhibits to mark anniversaries of the X-ray, the polio vaccine and other scientific milestones.

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Online:
http://americanhistory.si.edu/hivaids