Aids Rumor Mills Spewing Ugly Cloud Over Hollywood

LOS ANGELES - ABC News was on the phone. When, the caller wanted to know, would Madonna announce she had tested positive for the AIDS virus?

Warner Bros. Records wasn't planning any news conference. Its pop siren was in good health. But a Hollywood rumor had so vigorously circulated that fiction was being taken as fact.

This practice of branding stars with an AIDS diagnosis because of weight loss, an impromptu vacation or a simple change of plans has become so prevalent that AIDS activists gave it a name.

They call it "outing by disease."

Madonna's incorrect public diagnosis forced her to issue an increasingly common statement. She was not sick. She was not HIV positive. Instead, she had become the latest victim in the latest spinoff of a very old game.

Gossip, Hollywood style. Or: "Is it true you tested positive?"

"The dam burst and we couldn't hold it back anymore," said Bob Merlis, Warner's vice president of national publicity. "With nobody denying it, it takes on a life of its own.

Madonna was not alone. Elizabeth Taylor, co-founder of the American Foundation for AIDS Research (Amfar) has been subjected to speculation about whether her health problems were AIDS-related. She has issued several statements saying they weren't.

Similar rumors about Burt Reynolds, Richard Pryor and television actor Joe Penny grew so rampant - in tabloids and more conservative publications - that each felt compelled to deny the stories.

This rumor-mongering is occurring in an industry with one of the world's largest concentrations of people with AIDS. Hollywood also is the leader in fund-raising for the epidemic.

Yet Tinseltown, while promising to turn out in force Tuesday for a gala Amfar benefit honoring Madonna for her efforts to educate the public about AIDS, nonetheless is burning up phone and fax lines gossiping about who is - or more accurately, is not - infected.

The sniping intensified after Magic Johnson announced last month he was HIV positive.

Indeed, many activists look to Johnson, the former Los Angeles Lakers basketball star, to provide mainstream support for AIDS education. For the past 10 years, as the disease ravaged Hollywood's creative community, many hid their diagnosis.

Public-health workers and gay activists are disturbed by the upswing in AIDS gossip. It's far from harmless, they say, and instead provides an environment that only adds to the stigma.

Dr. Mervyn Silverman, director of Amfar and the former public health director of San Francisco, said the rumors about Taylor and Madonna reflect a homophobic perception that "if you're helping, it must be because you have some identity in the (gay) community and not that you want to help mankind."

Richard Rouilard, editor of the Advocate, a national magazine for homosexuals, said: "This represents the most vindictive kind of rumor mill in the world.

"It's garbage, it's homophobic and its AIDS-phobic. They're trying to ruin people."

David Wexler, board chairman of AIDS Project Los Angeles, cautions that the attention on celebrities may keep average people from worrying about their own behavior.

"It shouldn't be important to the general public whether Madonna has AIDS. It should be important whether they may have AIDS and whether they should be tested," he said.