AIDS: No on Prop. 69

The broad opposition to Proposition 69, including political leaders led by Gov. George Deukmejian, and public-health officials and agencies, including the California Medical Assn., is hardly surprising. This is a mischievous, perhaps disastrous, proposal that undoubtedly would do harm to the efforts to contain the AIDS pandemic.

California voters have already spoken on this issue with a resounding rejection of an identical initiative two years ago. Proposition 64 in 1986 and Proposition 69 this year are the work of supporters of Lyndon H. LaRouche Jr., whose extremism in the political arena is troubling.

Ostensibly the initiative strengthens the hands of public-health workers by declaring AIDS, and the condition of carrying the human immuno-deficiency virus that produces AIDS, “infectious, contagious and communicable” under terms of the Health and Safety Code. In fact, the initiative gives public-health workers nothing that they do not now have in the way of tools to control the spread of the disease. Furthermore, the language of the initiative, which seems to be deliberately ambiguous, mandates responses to the disease that could limit the discretion now used effectively by health officers. One particular risk is that it could be interpreted as requiring the quarantine of persons with the virus or with AIDS. The cost of such a measure, given an estimate of 500,000 infected people in the state, would be prohibitive, out of all relationship with its usefulness as a control.

Another regrettable element surrounds the initiative. It is promoted with a campaign of fear, exaggeration and inaccurate information. AIDS is lethal, and that makes it a critical public-health problem. But its risks are narrowly limited. It is difficult to transmit. It can be transmitted only through sexual intercourse, blood exchange and in pregnancy from mother to child--and perhaps through mother’s milk. It cannot be transmitted through casual contact. But fear of that possibility is exploited in statements supporting the measure.

Among those who are urging a no vote on Proposition 69 are the governor; the presidents of the California Medical Assn., the California Nurses Assn. and the California Assn. of Hospitals and Health Systems, and, by unanimous vote, the Los Angeles County AIDS Commission. To their voices we add ours. It is a defective, indeed dangerous, proposition. We urge a No vote on 69.