No Mandatory AIDS Tests, VA Doctors Urge Reagan

WASHINGTON —  Chief Medical Director John Gronvall acknowledged today that Veterans Administration doctors sent a confidential memo to the White House opposing mandatory AIDS testing at VA hospitals.

Gronvall, testifying before the Senate Veterans Committee, reluctantly said that a story in today’s New York Times detailing the memorandum “appears on first reading to be correct.”

Under questioning, Gronvall declined to go into details, noting that the message was confidential. He promised to provide the committee with a copy on condition it not be made public.

In the leaked memorandum bearing Gronvall’s name, the doctors claimed mandatory testing would “not curtail the spread of infection” and would be “legally unacceptable” without the patient’s consent.

The VA memo is consistent with the position taken by Surgeon General C. Everett Koop and other medical authorities on the inadvisability of mandatory AIDS tests.

The memorandum was prepared as part of a review Reagan, in a May 31 speech, said he had called for to determine the appropriateness of mandatory testing at the VA’s 172 hospitals--which care for nearly 6% of all AIDS patients in the country.

In his speech, Reagan called for a wide range of testing for AIDS. A week later, the Justice Department announced plans to test federal prisoners and aliens seeking admittance to the United States.

VA officials told the newspaper that White House staffers had pressed them to endorse routine AIDS tests for all VA hospital admissions.