Morticians Urged to Embalm Bodies of AIDS Victims

Massachusetts funeral directors are ethically obligated to embalm bodies of AIDS victims, a consumer regulations spokeswoman said Thursday.

“What it means, more or less, is that funeral directors, according to their code of ethics, should not discriminate between the cases they are going to treat,” said Dot Nichols, a spokeswoman for the Executive Office of Consumer Affairs Business Regulations.

The agency on Wednesday issued safety guidelines for handling the bodies of AIDS victims after complaints that undertakers were refusing to embalm them. AIDS, or acquired immune deficiency syndrome, is an often-fatal disease for which no cure is known.