A Change Is in Order

The California AIDS Leadership Committee, consisting of many of the state’s experts on the human immunodeficiency virus epidemic, has unanimously called for a change in the federal regulations that led to the imprisonment of an AIDS-prevention official from the Netherlands en route to an AIDS control meeting in San Francisco. The committee correctly concluded that the regulation does not serve the public interest.

The committee acted after meeting with Hans Paul Verhoef, the 31-year-old Netherlands official, following his release by an immigration judge. He had been imprisoned for five days pending the hearing. Under the regulation, a waiver is required for persons entering the United States with specified communicable diseases. AIDS was added to the list in 1987.

As the committee pointed out, applying the regulation to AIDS serves no effective public health purpose. Unlike most communicable diseases, AIDS is difficult to transmit, with most infections transmitted through unprotected sexual intercourse or blood exchange. Applying the rule to AIDS only encourages false fears and exaggerated responses. Furthermore, the regulation could serve to block next year’s international AIDS conference, scheduled for San Francisco, a major annual event in the effort to control the global pandemic. A substantial number of those participating in the international research and public health programs are themselves carriers of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Paradoxically, it is Americans, not foreigners, who have been the principal carriers of the virus to other lands.

The committee apologized to Verhoef for the incident. In so doing, they spoke for many of us deeply concerned when hysteria diverts the nation from the appropriate course of fighting AIDS.