Legislators Prod UC to Expand AIDS Prevention Research

Social and sexual behavior have been badly neglected in the distribution of state money for AIDS research, according to state legislators who on Friday urged the University of California to give greater priority to AIDS prevention research.

The Assembly subcommittee on higher education also suggested that the university initiate a survey of the sexual behavior of Californians, in light of the paucity of research in the field and the federal government’s reluctance to support a nationwide survey.

The vast majority of AIDS research money has gone to the search for treatments and a cure--a goal the subcommittee described as laudable but elusive. Members said that work has come at the expense of more short-term research in stopping the spread of the the disease.

“There is no cure in sight,” said Assemblyman Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica), releasing the subcommittee’s report on the university system and AIDS. “ . . . The only so-called cure lies in the realm of prevention and behavioral change, which can be achieved through education.”

According to Hayden, the subcommittee chairman, only 14.3% of the nearly $29 million that the university has awarded for AIDS research since 1983 has gone to behavioral research. More than half of that money went to just four researchers, the subcommittee found.

Similarly, only $24 million of this year’s $1.23 billion federal AIDS allocation is going to research on changing high-risk behavior. Administration officials have not acted upon scientists’ calls for an extensive survey of the nation’s sexual behavior.

“It has been extremely difficult to obtain federal money for research into sexual practices,” Dr. Charles Lewis, a UCLA professor of medicine, said Friday at a press conference with Hayden. “ . . . This is really an emotional and social problem.”

The subcommittee report is the product of a six-month investigation into the AIDS epidemic in California and the university’s role in combatting it. The other recommendations made by Hayden and the subcommittee include the following:

- Hospital and physician reimbursement rates under the state’s Medi-Cal insurance program must be increased to attract private physicians and hospitals into AIDS patient care, alleviating a burden that has fallen disproportionately on UC hospitals.

- The university should do more to recognize and promote clinical faculty active in patient care. If not, the state should “re-evaluate its heavy reliance on a research university to provide treatment to AIDS patients.”

- The university should recruit and retain black, Asian and Latino researchers to study how to change risky behavior in their communities--a subject the subcommittee said has received short shrift from AIDS researchers.

- The university should consider suspending for a year any of the recently imposed limits on the number of AIDS patients in its hospitals, “to protect the right of AIDS patients to treatment until the rest of California’s health care system assumes a more proportionate share of the burden.”

The University of California has received a total of more than $40 million in this decade in state money for AIDS services, and currently receives nearly $10 million a year. It has also received even larger sums from the federal National Institutes of Health in recent years.

The five university hospitals constitute the state’s largest providers of care for AIDS and AIDS-related diseases, serving nearly one third of the state’s AIDS patients. They also train many of the health-care providers who will work with AIDS patients in other settings.

From testimony gathered in a series of hearings held throughout the state earlier this year, the subcommittee concluded that the university has given low priority not only to social and behavioral research but also to attracting experts in those fields.

Hayden blamed an “emphasis on the search for a magic bullet” and “the stickiness of getting into sexual behavior.”