AIDS: Action and Inaction

The City of Los Angeles has taken an enlightened step in outlawing discrimination against people with acquired immune-deficiency syndrome, many of whom have been unjustly ostracized by landlords, employers and even health practitioners though the deadly disease cannot be spread by casual contact.

It is true that existing housing and employment laws probably already ban some of the practices that the new law addresses, but few AIDS patients have the will and the strength--or the life expectancy--to initiate protracted legal proceedings. The new Los Angeles law, which was sponsored by Councilman Joel Wachs, establishes a civil mechanism by which the city attorney’s office can step in and get action. In many cases a phone call from the city may be enough.

The first-in-the-nation law also serves to get the facts out and to allay understandable public fears about AIDS, which is now striking two new victims a day in Los Angeles County and killing one person a day. But AIDS is not like the flu. It can be spread only through sexual contact or through tainted blood. It cannot be transmitted through the air or by touching an object that an AIDS patient has touched.

People fear what they don’t know. The City of Los Angeles is leading the way in helping everyone find out about this growing epidemic. At the same time, it is protecting sick people who need all the help they can get.

The City Council’s action is in marked contrast to the woeful inaction by the county Board of Supervisors, who have shown so little interest in the AIDS epidemic that the state Department of Health Services is bypassing them altogether in spending $1.25 million for public education programs here. Instead of giving the money to the county, the state will give it to the AIDS Project / Los Angeles and the Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center--two private agencies that are picking up the slack.

The supervisors need to get their heads out of the sand and recognize the menace that AIDS presents. In the absence of a vaccine or a cure, public education is the most effective way of limiting the spread of the disease, and public education is clearly a government responsibility.