Crawling in Circles

The effort to contain and control the spread of acquired immune deficiency syndrome--AIDS--has been made more difficult by stands taken by the Reagan Administration in Washington and by Gov. George Deukmejian in California.

Dr. Otis R. Bowen, secretary of health and human services, has now made official President Reagan’s opposition to legislation that would vastly increase funding for voluntary testing while at the same time enacting anti-discrimination and confidentiality penalties to protect those testing positive to the presence of HIV--the human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS.

Indiscriminate or mandatory testing for AIDS is counterproductive, wasteful and likely to drive high-risk populations underground, most public-health officials agree. But there is virtually unanimous agreement that a broader voluntary testing program aimed at high-risk populations, and including careful counseling, is the most promising way to contain the spread of AIDS. There is, however, no way to gain the cooperation of high-risk groups without ensuring them against inappropriate disclosure of test results and against job and housing discrimination.

Bowen’s preference is that “each state, with its own separate problems and needs, should have the opportunity to set its own rules.”

We do not agree with him. We know of no issue of discrimination that is better addressed by separate state legislation than by uniform federal standards. And we also disagree with his assessment that the present testing program is adequate. Funding for testing covers only a small portion of the high-risk population. Furthermore, broad discrepancies and gaps are already evident among the 29 states that have adopted AIDS legislation.

Deukmejian’s own response to AIDS is a case in point. He has failed to give leadership on the issue. The vacuum of leadership in California has been further complicated by the Republicans in the Legislature who have made a partisan issue of their united opposition to legislation to create a state commission to coordinate the state campaign against AIDS, as recommended by U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop.

The governor has now further set back state efforts by vetoing an excellent bill that would have provided a statewide AIDS education program for all secondary-school students except those whose parents would ask that they be excused. The bill had received bipartisan support and the endorsement of the state’s Roman Catholic bishops. It is not clear whether principle or pettiness motivated the governor, but there is a haunting suspicion that a factor behind the veto was his feud with Bill Honig, state superintendent of public instruction, who was to have shared authority for the educational materials with Deukmejian’s state health director, Kenneth Kizer.

The governor’s veto message contained a dangerous and erroneous concept that continues to plague efforts to educate the public concerning AIDS. He said that local school boards should retain full authority over teaching materials on AIDS lest they “contain material morally offensive to the local community.” That is an echo of the views of Assemblyman Pat Nolan (R-Glendale), the Assembly Republican leader who has argued that the educational video about AIDS should be vetoed as a “how-to lesson in homosexual sex.” In fact, the legislation that was vetoed by the governor called for material emphasizing that sexual abstinence is the only truly “safe” sex. To discuss the risks of disease transmission through sexual intercourse, heterosexual and homosexual, is prudent public education. There is no evidence that such honest discussions encourage sexual experimentation. Nolan was wrong. And the governor, in seeing this as a moral issue, also is wrong.

AIDS is an urgent public-health issue. In the absence of a vaccine, education is the principal means of control. There already are an estimated 300,000 Californians with the AIDS virus. Most of them are likely to contract AIDS or an AIDS-related disease. More than 9,000 already have. And more than 4,000 have died. Just in California.