Encore for AIDS Initiative

Allies of Lyndon H. LaRouche Jr. have again qualified their AIDS initiative for the California ballot, and voters, who resoundingly defeated the measure in November of last year, will vote again in June of next year.

The measure is as unwelcome now as it was then. As the council of the California Medical Assn. said in 1986, “No public-health purpose would be served by this action.” But the campaign to defeat the measure diverted $2 million that otherwise could have been spent on AIDS research and education. That will be necessary again, for the passage of the initiative could set in motion incredibly costly state programs of mandatory reporting, testing and quarantine that would serve only to disrupt the control effort.

Existing laws are adequate to protect the public health. AIDS is remarkably unlike many other contagious diseases in the extremely limited ways in which it can be transmitted, exclusively through sexual intercourse, blood exchange and pregnancy.

The LaRouche initiative may look sensible to some people. It declares that AIDS and the presence of AIDS-causing viral agents constitute an “infectious, contagious or communicable condition” reportable under the state administrative code and subject to quarantine and isolation. But it would strip public-health officials of discretion in handling cases by mandating their response in ways that could cost hundreds of millions of dollars, according to state officials. Thus this innocent-appearing language masks a program that would divert state resources from the only known effective programs, research and education, to a largely meaningless program of listing and trying to isolate the tens of thousands of infected individuals.

This in turn has led observers to speculate that it may be intended primarily to punish homosexuals and intravenous drug users, the two communities that have suffered the most cases of AIDS in the United States. In the process it would raise the risks for the public at large by diverting funds from programs that count.