AIDS: No on 102

The opposition to Proposition 102, the AIDS reporting initiative, is almost unanimous among health-care providers, public-health workers and business and religious leaders--and for good reason. The initiative would mandate an end to the nationally endorsed programs now in place, and at the same time would require a massive diversion of scarce funds into activities that have never been tested and may well be of no value.

A few doctors have been attracted to the initiative, arguing that it would command the reporting procedures already required of many other communicable diseases. So why not AIDS? The answer lies in the unique aspects of this disease, above all in the fact that no cure is yet known. That is why the Presidential Commission on the Human Immunodeficiency Virus Epidemic, the California AIDS Leadership Committee, officials of the Centers for Disease Control, public-health experts at UCLA and UC Berkeley and AIDS researchers at UC San Francisco all support the existing program, including its reliance on voluntary cooperation. Indeed, the single most effective instrument for reaching high-risk populations is the anonymous test center that would be outlawed by this initiative.

The initiative not only would destroy the existing demonstrably effective programs, it would also play havoc with the whole public-health system. For example, it would mandate contact tracing by public-health officers and a system of reporting by doctors and infected persons that the public-health officers themselves argue would be wasteful and without significant benefit. Tens of millions of dollars--desperately needed for testing, treatment, counseling and research--would be diverted to the wasteful tracing.

There is only one way to control the disease, and that is through education. The critical key is to get out the word so that everyone potentially at risk knows that only through sexual abstinence or a monogamous relationship with an uninfected person can the disease be avoided. In the absence of those restrictions, condoms offer some protection. That applies to all sexually active persons--men and women, adolescents and adults, heterosexuals and homosexuals. A strong educational program, matched with easy access to testing and counseling, already has proved effective in changing behavior, reducing risks of further infection. But the vital links in that carefully constructed chain of services would be broken by this initiative. It would be a terrible setback at a critical time.

That is why we have been urging, and why we urge again, a No vote on Proposition 102.