These Rumors Are Untrue, but the Fear Is All Too Real

I have a friend who says he doesn’t like to spread rumors but concedes, “I don’t know what else to do with them.”

Maybe that’s the simple explanation for one that’s been flying around some Orange County high schools for the past few months. Maybe someone heard it and then didn’t know what else to do but repeat it. But after first hearing about it two months ago and then spending the better part of a day checking it out before judging it untrue, I felt like I had a personal stake in it.

Still, I didn’t do a column on it, instead abiding by the old journalistic rule of not perpetuating rumors. I wondered, though, why it surfaced. I suspected the reason might say something about life in America.

The rumor was that during a blood drive at Newport Harbor High School, an incredibly high percentage of the students’ donated blood was found to be HIV-positive. The figure I heard from my well-meaning tipster--an adult who made it clear she wasn’t vouching for the accuracy of her information--was that around 20% of the donors were infected.

Yes, that would have been a bombshell. But the story proved false. None of the donors was HIV-positive, according to American Red Cross officials. In fact, according to the organization’s medical director for blood services in Southern California, only one of every 15,000 to 20,000 donors turns up HIV-positive.

End of story. Or, it could have been. But I was still interested in why this particular rumor got life. What did it say about society that, of all the harmless pranks or fabrications that someone could have dreamed up, they thought of this one?

What I’ve heard is that it may have something to do with fear.

Bonnie Maspero, the Newport Harbor principal, was forthright from the start when I called her about it two months ago. Yes, she had heard the rumor and had assigned a faculty member to check it out. No, it wasn’t true, she said then.

This week, with the Red Cross sufficiently concerned to issue a formal press release debunking the rumor, I called Maspero again to ask why this rumor got going.

“I think there’s probably a much more heightened sense of awareness among teenagers that the HIV virus is a real possibility in their lives, and that’s possibly why someone hearing a rumor like this might choose to perpetuate it. They hear in health-related classes that it is a looming possibility out there that people engaging in unsafe health or sexual practices can, in fact, contract this disease and spread it. What’s so unfortunate is that it [the rumor] ends up hurting an organization that depends on volunteerism and donations to protect other people’s health.”

In its press release, the Red Cross took the unusual step of repeating the rumor. Its version was that as much as one-third of the blood at Newport Harbor and nearly 15% of that from student donors at Dana Hills High School was rumored to be tainted. Medical director Ross Herron noted that high school students “in general, constitute a safe donor population and are a welcome part of our donor program.”

Red Cross spokeswoman Judy Iannaccone told me that the rumors from the two schools had been floating around for quite some time. Nor was it the first time that high schools, either in Orange County or around the country, had spawned HIV rumors, she said.

So far this school year, Orange County high schools have held 85 blood drives, with another 21 scheduled before school ends. About 4,400 units of blood have been collected, she said.

Amy Buch, a health educator with the AIDS Services Foundation of Orange County, used to work a lot with teenagers. “It seems to me that rumors crop up like this from time to time,” she said. “People are really concerned with the potential for seeing more teens becoming HIV-infected. We know adolescence is a time that can be characterized with profound experimentation.”

Fueling the concern, or fear, are studies like one given to the White House in March that indicated as many as one or two people under 20 are becoming infected with HIV every hour, Buch said.

Students hear about statistics like that. They know some of their classmates are sexually active and having unprotected sex.

Put it all together and you have a rumor that, on the surface, sounds just scary enough to be true.

So much so that an organization as reputable as the Red Cross finds itself in the rumor business. To that end, the agency has informed high schools through their school newspapers that the Dana Hills and Newport Harbor rumors are false.

Maspero, the Harbor High principal, said her paper handled the subject in its last issue. As for herself, she says she never lost any sleep over the rumor.

“I thought it was hogwash from the minute I heard it,” she said.

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Dana Parsons’ columns appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at the Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.