Privately Run AIDS Clinics Shut, Change

The boom of private AIDS testing has gone bust in San Diego.

Gone are last spring’s widespread--some say hysterical--fears among heterosexuals that the AIDS virus was lurking inside their cells. Gone are concerns that county-run test sites might not be able to keep up with demand.

And gone is business for the private testing centers: One of two testing clinics that opened last spring has closed, and the other has changed its focus.

Business Tumbled

“All the media hype decreased, and people just stopped caring very much,” said S. Michael Khoury, operations director at the AIDS Testing and Education Center until it closed Oct. 30.

From about 300 people a month who visited the center on El Cajon Boulevard for tests last summer, the number had declined to perhaps 100 a month by October, Khoury said, blaming the efficiency of San Diego County’s free AIDS testing.

“When we opened it, we were kind of betting that the county wasn’t going to get its act together,” Khoury said. “And the county actually ended up doing an excellent job. It’s very hard to compete against a free service. We just couldn’t make enough money.”

The county program did 13,400 anonymous tests in 1987, contrasted with about 1,000 that were done by the private clinic.

Meanwhile, the other private AIDS testing center, founded by a drip-irrigation entrepreneur in March, 1987, has moved from a profit-making focus to an educational one under a new physician-owner.

“I just purchased this, and I’m going to discontinue the ID cards,” Dr. Jesse Ungar said.

American Life Systems has offered one of the more controversial features of private AIDS testing, a card certifying that the bearer “passed” an AIDS test. Critics pointed out that such cards are not only meaningless but also apt to give people a false sense of security.

800 Number Installed

Ungar agrees. American Life Systems will continue to give $47 AIDS tests, which number perhaps 30 a month, but will move its main focus to education.

“We just put in an 800 number that anybody can call in Southern California,” Ungar said. “What I’ve realized is that the gay community knows the route to go through to find information. The heterosexual, middle-aged couple doesn’t have a clue.”

Television and newspaper ads offering AIDs information are in the works, as is planning for corporate seminars on the disease.

Ungar doesn’t expect to make money on the venture, but he said overhead costs are low enough that he expects the business “to perpetuate itself.”

“I really want to do this for the sake of people,” he said. “Yes, I have to make a living, but I don’t want to get this so blown out of proportion that I lose sight of why I went into medicine.”

AIDS, acquired immune deficiency syndrome, is a fatal disease that destroys the body’s infection-fighting immune system. Caused by human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, it is spread through blood or sexual contact. AIDS was first detected among homosexuals, but other at-risk groups are intravenous drug abusers, recipients of untested blood or blood products, heterosexual partners of drug abusers or bisexual males, and children born to women who carry the virus.

In San Diego County, there have been 817 cases of the disease, and 460 of those people have died. Last month, the first two cases of San Diego children who acquired the virus in utero were found.