Appalling Rates of Bias Found Against HIV Positive People

The story of "Mrs. M" haunted the young lawyer:

Back in 1999, the elderly woman, who had contracted HIV through a transfusion in the early years of the AIDS epidemic, was admitted to a hospital in Los Angeles County because of kidney problems and a soaring fever.

Soon, she was transferred to a skilled nursing home. Within a month, though, she developed pneumonia and was briefly re-hospitalized.

But this time, the nursing home knew Mrs. M was HIV positive. It refused to take her back.

"No way," the facility's nursing director told Mrs. M's sons and physician. The director said the staff would revolt if they had to care for Mrs. M now that gossip had alerted them that she was infected with HIV.

That any health care provider would illegally and unethically turn away everyone with HIV is appalling. And it's mind-boggling that decades into the AIDS epidemic some health professionals don't know to take proper precautions with every patient. After all, an estimated 250,000 Americans are HIV-positive but don't know it.

Unfortunately, as Mrs. M's family quickly discovered, HIV discrimination isn't an isolated problem. Four more facilities refused to take Mrs. M before one on the far side of the county welcomed her.

Tragically, Mrs. M spent her last month largely alone, rarely seeing her husband, who was too frail to reach the distant facility on his own.

"It was the saddest story," recalls lawyer Brad Sears, who helped the grieving family force the nursing facilities to stop breaking anti-discrimination laws, including the Americans With Disabilities Act.

Sears continued to be troubled by the mistreatment of Mrs. M and by stories of other HIV-positive people being cruelly and illegally turned away — for cheek implants to counter facial wasting, for example, or for procedures unrelated to HIV, like hair transplants and hip replacements.

Sears, a law professor at the University of California at Los Angeles, asked his students to help him test his hunch that illegal HIV discrimination is common.

Posing as discharge planners from hospitals or as HIV-positive patients, they contacted skilled nursing facilities, plastic surgeons and obstetricians in Los Angeles County.

What they found is shocking: 55 percent of surveyed obstetricians, 46 percent of nursing facilities and 26 percent of plastic surgeons told Sears' student sleuths that they had a blanket policy of rejecting anyone with HIV.

(To read the report, Google "Williams Institute" at UCLA.)

Responses included: "We try not to ... I am just being honest." Or, "No, AIDS has to go to a hospital." One obstetrician's receptionist assumed any pregnant woman with HIV wanted an abortion. (With proper prenatal care, babies are rarely born with HIV now.)

Excuses offered for discriminating: inexperience with HIV, inadequately trained staff and the claim that HIV patients always need "specialists." Of course, those kinds of blanket refusals are precisely what federal law intends to prohibit.

Sears, now the Williams Institute's executive director, plans to investigate dentists. What he's already shown is the need for tougher enforcement of anti-bias laws and for heath care providers to better educate themselves about proper HIV protections — and their legal and moral duties.

Ignorance worsened Mrs. M's suffering. Her story should haunt anyone tempted to turn away patients because they have HIV.

Deb Price of The Detroit News writes the first nationally syndicated column on gay issues. To find out more about Deb Price and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

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