Doctors Seek Law to Relax AIDS Secrecy

In a move to relax the strict secrecy governing AIDS testing in the state, members of the California Medical Assn. voted Tuesday to urge passage of laws to let doctors notify the sexual partners of people who test positive for the AIDS virus.

The CMA’s 441 policy-making delegates also voted to urge state lawmakers to allow physicians to notify other doctors on a confidential basis if a patient they all are caring for tests positive for the AIDS virus. More controversial, however, was the added recommendation to let physicians share that patient’s name with local health officers.

Under current state law, doctors must have written consent to notify a patient’s spouse or others in danger of contracting the deadly virus. The CMA voted Tuesday to ask legislators to grant doctors immunity if they notify endangered people--sexual partners or those with whom an infected person might share an intravenous drug needle--if the patient isn’t willing to notify the partner himself.

Dr. John McNally, chairman of the CMA committee that reviewed the AIDS resolutions, told the crowded room of delegates at the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim that “a sound, scientifically based medical approach to prevention, diagnosis and treatment is essential, even though such an approach may at times be socially unpopular or politically sensitive.”

Speaking in opposition to the added language that would allow doctors to notify public health officers of AIDS virus carriers, the medical association’s AIDS task force chairman, Dr. Mervyn Silverman, argued that it could prevent people from seeking the AIDS antibody testing out of fear that their names would become known.

“The CMA now has a reputation around the country of acting very responsibly in recognizing the problem of confidentiality,” Silverman said.

“If we change this resolution, we then open up a Pandora’s box. Names, in essence, are on a registry, and the very people that we seek to encourage to be tested will not be tested,” he said.

The association’s delegates, representing 34,000 California doctors, also asked legislators to provide more money to state, federal and private organizations searching for a cure to the disease and for an increase in funding to teach school children about the usually fatal disease.

Acquired immune deficiency syndrome is an affliction that attacks the body’s immune system, leaving it vulnerable to fatal diseases and infections. It is caused by a virus carried in bodily fluids and is transmitted primarily through intimate sexual contact or the sharing of hypodermic needles.

Several other AIDS proposals were debated by CMA delegates, including controversial ones that went down to defeat.

Resolutions by Dr. Stanley L. Monteith of Santa Cruz that would have had the CMA seek legislation mandating premarital testing for the AIDS virus as well as mandatory testing for pregnant women were both voted down.

The CMA voted instead to encourage voluntary premarital and prenatal testing.

Delegates also voted to ease restrictions prohibiting doctors from sharing AIDS patient information with blood banks and to seek legislation allowing doctors to perform the AIDS virus test with only a patient’s verbal consent, rather than written consent as is required by current law.