AMA Calls on States to Trace Sex Partners of AIDS Victims

The American Medical Assn. on Thursday called on the states to trace the sexual partners of people infected with the AIDS virus and urged prisons to test inmates for exposure to the deadly disease.

The AMA approved both measures by voice vote along with a package of other AIDS proposals before adjourning its annual policy-making convention.

“I think that contact tracing (of sexual partners), at least in the heterosexual community, has the potential to substantially reduce the proliferation and spread of AIDS,” Dr. James Sammons, executive vice president of the 295,000-member AMA, said.

Nurses Oppose Plan

On Wednesday, the AMA’s 420-member House of Delegates voted to proceed with an experimental program to train so-called registered care technologists. The plan drew fire from leading nursing organizations that were invited to comment on it.

Dr. Don Chaplin, a delegate from Burlington, N. C., warned that doctors must emphasize the need to protect the identities of AIDS victims.

“I caution us to be very careful to do anything we can to protect confidentiality and to fight any discrimination because it would thwart our efforts to bring this disease under control,” Chaplin said.

The doctors approved the resolution urging what Chaplin said would be “broad expansions on contact tracing” of sexual partners to slow the spread of AIDS among heterosexuals.

Sammons said contact tracing had been effective in reducing such other sexually transmitted diseases as syphilis and gonorrhea.

AIDS Tests in Prisons

The doctors’ organization renewed its call for mandatory AIDS-virus testing of all inmates because of the problems of intravenous drug use and homosexuality in prisons, practices that spread the disease.

The registered care technologists would be trained in two to 18 months after high school and would be paid slightly more than minimum wage. Dr. Robert McAfee said in a telephone interview that they would be trained to transport patients, give back rubs, turn and bathe patients and perform similar menial tasks.

Lucille Joel, president of the American Nurses Assn., said the proposal for the registered care technologist was not “warranted or appropriate.”

“The AMA is recommending we put a minimally trained worker at the patient bedside,” Kathleen Andreoli, dean of nursing at Rush University in Chicago, charged.