Did Anyone Really Gain From Disclosures About Liberace?

When Riverside County Coroner Raymond Carrillo announced that Liberace had died a victim of AIDS, he created a string of problems for public health officials. At the base of these problems is a tension between two public policies.

On one hand, the community has a justifiable interest in controlling a terrible disease. Thus public officials must be informed on how extensively AIDS has ravaged the community.

On the other hand, a man with death in mind justifiably will try to protect his family and his estate.

The coroner forced a public dialogue among doctors, lawyers and civil libertarians on this issue when he revealed that Liberace had AIDS.

Behind his dialogue are questions of the right of privacy. In general one should hope that when an individual’s privacy is invaded by the power of government there is an overriding public good to be gained.

But what if the claimed “overriding public need to know” goes beyond invading the privacy of an individual and the associates of that individual? What if massive damage is done to others?

In this case it is arguable that the coroner drove a wedge of distrust between people afraid of damage associated with a revelation of AIDS and public health officials. If Liberace’s heirs and his estate could be endangered by the coroner’s revelation, what chance would an ordinary person in a small town have?

The California Legislature recognized that it was not good public policy to drive the disease underground. By law, written consent is required to test for AIDS antibodies. And by law, results of such a test may not be delivered to a third party without written consent.

California recognized that fear of unjustified job loss and social rejection would prevent people from taking the test for antibodies if this information could be made public. So special clinics were created in which no name or identification is necessary to test for AIDS. The blood sample is given a number. Only the person with that number gets the result of the test. Counseling is given at the time of the test and at the time of the result.

So the dialogue that the coroner from Riverside started has got to result in reconciling the necessary public health policy of determining the number of persons affected by the disease with concern for the well-being of individuals and their heirs.

If public policy of encouraging reporting while protecting the individual and his family is to be effective, a new system of reporting death is required. Names should be deleted from public documents and revealed only for cause or confidentially to the undertaker.

This dialogue may limit what a coroner may properly reveal to the public.

The Riverside circus put the rich and famous of Palm Springs on notice that if they wanted to die in dignity, protecting their heirs, Riverside County may not be the place to do it.

What about a middle-class person in a more modest place like Banning? What would happen to the surviving wife and the two children in school? What would happen to the family grocery store left to them?

That is where the cruelty of the circus really hits.

What about young people at risk who have been taught by this circus not to trust public officials? Will fear of exposure keep them away from medical advice that can save their lives? Has the coroner signed a blank string of death warrants?

When the dialogue develops in Sacramento, it will expand into the issues of privacy that affect public health policy.

I am not sure that the Riverside County coroner is going to enjoy this dialogue.

It is time for the Legislature to define professional qualification for coroners. What should the medical qualification be? What should the legal qualification be?

Surely the days of frontier sheriffs are over.