AIDS Education Grants Frozen : Officials Seek Acceptable ‘Level of Explicitness’

Federal health officials, fearing a “backlash” from both the public and the White House, have instituted a freeze on AIDS educational grants nationwide until they can decide “what level of explicitness . . . is acceptable for U.S. Public Health Service-funded projects.”

Officials at the federal Centers for Disease Control confirmed Tuesday that they have placed “on hold” eight AIDS “innovative risk reduction” proposals whose funding requests totaled more than $1.6 million.

The proposals were sought by the agency as part of a campaign to halt the spread of AIDS, which is transmitted primarily through intimate sexual contact. The materials, both written and audio-visual, presumably would instruct male homosexuals and bisexuals--the most common victims of AIDS--on “safe” sexual practices.

“There was some concern that there would be a backlash against the federal government funding ‘pornography,’ ” CDC spokesman Donald Berreth said. “This is a problem that has existed before with sexually transmitted diseases, not just AIDS. It’s something we have struggled with within CDC.”

Berreth insisted that the delay was initiated by CDC without outside influence. “The holdup was on the part of CDC,” he said.

Nevertheless, he said, CDC has already awarded $1.3 million to local health departments for community-based demonstration projects. However, these projects are considered less controversial than the “innovative risk reduction” proposals.

The dispute, similar to one that developed several months ago in Los Angeles County, is said to have placed CDC officials in a frustrating position. Dr. James O. Mason, the CDC’s director, who has said publicly that education “could stop this epidemic in its tracks,” has privately told homosexual rights groups and others that he is under considerable pressure from the White House not to sponsor sexually graphic educational materials. The policy of the Reagan Administration has been to discourage government-supported sex education.

Conservative Attack

Mason also has been under attack by a group of conservative congressmen led by California Rep. William E. Dannemeyer (R-Fullerton). In a recent letter to President Reagan, Dannemeyer characterized the response of Public Health Service officials to the AIDS epidemic as “inadequate” and complained that public health agencies have protected “the sensibilities of the victims of AIDS” but “failed to take any prudent steps to ensure that AIDS will not spread to the population at large.”

California Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on health, characterized the criticism leveled against Mason as “uncalled for” and added: “What worries me is this can have a chilling effect on the department doing what it thinks is necessary to educate the public to stop the spread of this disease.”

Luis Maura, deputy executive director of AIDS Project LA, whose group had applied for $200,000 in educational funds from CDC, said: “The only tool we have is education. We have to be more graphic than normal. We’re not talking about milk and cookies here. You can’t educate people to take care of themselves by blindfolding them and talking sweet.”

Other AIDS projects waiting for CDC money include Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York and the Gay Men’s Health Crisis, also in New York.

“The whole purpose is to demonstrate there are healthy sexual alternatives to practices that spread AIDS,” said Lori Behrman, a spokeswoman for the Gay Men’s Health Crisis. “Of course it’s going to be explicit. We’re not talking about changing one’s diet--we’re talking about changing one’s sexual behavior.”

She said her organization proposed distribution of “a safe sex video” that she said “would show people exactly how they can have safe sex” and a proposed series of graphics “of visual images showing that safe sex can be erotic.”

‘Healthy Sex’ Is Goal

She added: “One of the points is not to give the impression that safe sex is boring. We want people to practice healthy sex. We’re not going to emphasize what you can’t do, but what you can do.”

In Los Angeles, a privately funded brochure called “Mother’s Handy Sex Guide,” which used street language and eroticism to encourage male homosexuals to engage in safe sex, came under fire last August from members of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, who declared it “pornographic.”

AIDS, or acquired immune deficiency syndrome, destroys the body’s immune system, leaving it powerless against otherwise rare infections. It is transmitted through the exchange of bodily fluids, such as semen and blood, and through the sharing of unsterilized hypodermic needles. It also has been spread through transfusions of contaminated blood or blood products, although a blood screening procedure begun last year has now made that risk slight.

Those at highest risk include male homosexuals and bisexuals, intravenous drug users and their steady sexual partners. As of Monday, 15,172 cases and 7,777 deaths had been reported.