ID Verifying AIDS Test Results Worries Officials, Gay Groups

A company operating out of a Van Nuys medical office is advertising and performing a test for exposure to the AIDS virus and offering clients “a photo ID verifying negative test results.” But AIDS researchers say this test can be unreliable, sometimes generating false positives or false negatives and possibly encouraging AIDS carriers to infect others.

The company’s president, Brian Hymes, said he is “doing a service to the community.”

AIDS researchers and spokesmen for organizations representing AIDS victims and the homosexual community said test results can easily be misinterpreted, leading either to a false sense of security or a false sense of impending doom.

“We are very concerned about how this sort of an operation is represented,” said Peter Scott, a spokesman for AIDS Project Los Angeles, a counseling, lobbying and assistance service for AIDS victims. “The danger is that it confuses people . . . into believing that a carrier of such a card has status that he or she doesn’t have,” he said. “Having that card is no assurance that they weren’t infected already and certainly they could become infected once they have the card.”

The last local attempt by a company to market a card verifying negative results on a test for the AIDS virus began last January but ground to a halt after the City Council, led by Councilmen Zev Yaroslavsky and Joel Wachs, ordered investigations of a West Los Angeles firm called the National Assn. for AIDS Awareness.

At the time, Wachs called the idea of marketing such cards “disgusting and misleading.”

The firm “never got off the ground,” a company spokesperson said last week.

Hymes said his company is different. “We don’t tell anyone how to use the card,” Hymes said. “The card gives someone a fresh start at a given point in time. It’s meant to give someone . . . a new beginning.”

The business has been in operation since January, but has only recently started promoting itself, “actually advertising and advertising the card,” he said.

Medical Screening Services, now based at a small walk-in medical office at 7554 Woodley Ave., is advertising in the LA Weekly, the Free Press, which caters to heterosexuals who engage in recreational sex, and Frontiers, a biweekly homosexual-oriented magazine.

Wrote to AIDS Project

Customers “are not beating the doors down,” Hymes said. An employee at the office said Medical Screening was testing “one person every three or four days.”

Hymes said he wrote to the AIDS Project in January, seeking an endorsement, but got no response. Groups promoting homosexual rights “don’t want anyone else getting into the act,” he said. “They say it’s our disease.”

According to Hymes, AIDS is everyone’s concern. “Who is in a high-risk group?” Hymes asked. “Anyone who considers themselves sexually active.” A number of heterosexuals have sought out the service, he said.

For $100, Medical Screening gives its customers a “head-to-toe” physical examination, and performs tests for several sexually transmitted diseases. These include the HTLV-III Elisa test, which detects antibodies in the blood that show whether a person has been exposed to the AIDS virus--called HTLV-III or HIV in the United States.

Test ‘Overly Sensitive’

The Elisa test, developed to screen the nation’s blood supply, is “overly sensitive” and apt to produce many false positives, said Charles Schable, chief of the AIDS diagnostic laboratory at the federal Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.

Moreover, a negative result doesn’t guarantee that a person will not pass on the AIDS virus, he said. If the person was exposed to the virus not long before the test was taken, telltale antibodies may not have developed yet.

If Medical Screening performs an Elisa test and it comes back positive, Hymes said, “we automatically rerun the test.” If the second one is positive, he meets with the patient, gives him or her a file of brochures on sexually transmitted diseases and recommends a final, confirmatory test called the Western Blot. This test is more expensive--in the neighborhood of $100, contrasted with the $10 laboratory cost of the other test--but is far more accurate.

No Medical Degree

Hymes also recommends that the person get psychological counseling. But, he added, “We’re not a counseling service.”

Hymes said he wears a white laboratory coat when he meets with patients to discuss test results. He has no medical degree, but he has a bachelor’s degree in clinical psychology, he said, and “I have done my homework on this.”

If the client tests negative for the various diseases, he or she is offered a small green card, topped with the word “Healthcheck,” that bears the message: “The person whose name and photograph appear on this HEALTHCHECK was examined by a physician on (date) and on that date tested NEGATIVE to the following laboratory procedures. . . .”

The list includes tests for syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia as well as the Elisa test. A note of “Caution” at the bottom of the card reads: “The significance of the laboratory test results as set forth on this card must be explained by your physician.”

‘The Wrong Message’

“The whole problem here is that the company is giving the wrong message on the subject,” said Dr. Martin Finn, medical director of the AIDS Program Office of the Los Angeles County Department of Health. “The right one is: This is the time to be cautious, to be responsible. These cards almost give an individual license to be other than responsible.”

A spokesman for the AIDS section of the state Department of Health Services said the only required license--other than the license for the physician performing the checkup--is for the laboratory doing the AIDS test. Physicians Reference Laboratory, in Huntington Beach, which does the Elisa test for Medical Screening, is properly licensed, the spokesman said.

For those who want to be tested for AIDS exposure but do not want an identity card, according to Peter Scott, at the AIDS Project, there are several centers “where people can have the same test free of charge and results are anonymous.” Two in the Los Angeles area are the Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center in Hollywood and The Center in Long Beach.