The President's Commission on the HIV Epidemic was a commission formed by President Ronald Reagan in 1987 to investigate the AIDS pandemic. It is also known as the Watkins Commission for James D. Watkins, its chairman when the commission issued its final report in 1988. Organization President Reagan issued creating the President's Commission on the HIV Epidemic on June 24, 1987. On June 26, he appointed Dr. W. Eugene Mayberry, CEO of the Mayo Clinic, to chair the commission. Jeff Levi, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force objected to the appointment of someone with no experience with the disease, but others praised Mayberry's experience in both medical research and clinical services. Administration officials said it would resist pressure from gay rights activists to include a representative of the gay community on the commission. Gary Bauer, the assistant to the President for policy development who would soon become head of the Family Research Council, said: "I would be very surprised if an administration opposed to making appointments on the basis of race or sex would agree to make an appointment based on bedroom habits". The commission was charged with producing a preliminary report in 3 months and a final report within a year. The president named the other commission members on July 23. Saying AIDS needed to go "the way of smallpox and polio", President Reagan announced the appointments at the commission's first meeting. They included: Dr. Colleen Conway-Welch, dean of nursing at Vanderbilt University John J. Creedon, CEO of Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Dr. Theresa L. Crenshaw, a sex educator and opponent of condoms as a means of preventing the spread of HIV Richard M. DeVos, president of Amway Dr. Burton J. Lee III, a physician at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center Dr. Frank Lilly, a geneticist at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Lilly had served on the board of the Gay Men's Health Crisis (GMHC) from 1984 to 1986. He was "one of the first openly gay Presidential appointees". Dr. Woodrow A. Myers Jr., an African American and the health commissioner of Indiana and president of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officers; named vice-chairman by Mayberry. Cardinal John O'Connor Penny Pullen, an Illinois legislator and advocate of mandatory premarital HIV testing and later founder of the Illinois Family Institute Corinna "Cory" SerVaas, editor of the Saturday Evening Post Dr. William B. Walsh,