The American Way of Death Revisited - Jessica Mitford [41]
There follows a call to action. There will be a hearing at the state capitol (date and address given) to vote on the proposal. “It is incumbent upon all funeral directors to take immediate action to protect the best interests of the bereaved public we are dedicated to serving.”
So the brethren rallied, and the lobbyists lobbied, and the proposal was defeated. Dead, yes, but destined to be reincarnated five years later in the Federal Trade Commission’s Funeral Rule.
The funeral folk soon had another opportunity to show their tender concern for the feelings of those in bereavement. When, in the early eighties, the outbreak of AIDS became a matter of public anxiety, there was panic on the part of funeral directors and embalmers for their own safety. Most mortuaries refused to accept cases where it was believed that the deceased had been exposed to the HIV virus; those that did accept AIDS victims refused to wash, dress, or embalm the victim.
The New York State Funeral Directors Association (NYSFDA), on June 17, 1983, advised members to institute a moratorium on the embalming of AIDS victims. Reaction was quick.
Peter Slocum, a spokesman for the State Department of Health, said that funeral directors had previously been advised to handle the bodies of victims of AIDS as they handle victims of hepatitis B—that is, to wear latex gloves, a procedure that had already been prescribed to prevent spread of any contagious disease and required for health care workers under all circumstances when working with dead bodies. “We have not seen anything that suggests that there needs to be any precautions beyond that.”
Governor Mario Cuomo introduced a bill in the state legislature which would make funeral directors liable to loss of license if they refused to embalm AIDS victims, saying, “We must not permit AIDS sufferers and their families to be subjected to irrational and unscientific behavior born out of fear, not fact.” One week later, the NYSFDA lifted its moratorium on embalming, and the bill died in committee.
This, however, is by no means the end of the story. It is now cash-in time. The mortuaries that did take AIDS cases began charging healthy “AIDS handling fees,” usually $200 to $500. Others used subcontractors to do the embalming, covertly adding the cost by inflating the basic service fee. When the problem began to reach crisis proportions in New York City, the Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC), with the help of volunteers, surveyed the city’s five-hundred-odd licensed funeral homes to identify their AIDS policies. With that information in hand, it put together a guide recommending only forty-two of the five hundred mortuaries to the thousands of friends and relatives of people with AIDS.
The New York City Human Rights Commission got involved in the matter and, as reported in the Boston Phoenix (March 12, 1993), published GMHC’s list, which fanned public outrage. Loss of business and some successful damage actions helped produce a turnaround, and many mortuaries asked to be added to the referral list.
Elsewhere, however, the AIDS surcharge persisted in one form or another, despite its illegality under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which requires funeral homes to “provide their services on a non-discriminatory basis to persons who have had AIDS.” Since the government was doing nothing to ensure compliance, California assemblywoman Jackie Speier, prodded by the funeral and memorial societies, in 1992 introduced two antisurcharge measures in the state legislature. The leaders of the campaign—Ann Tompkins, president of the California-Hawaii Federation of Funeral and Memorial Societies, and Karen Leonard (dubbed by the Boston Globe the “scourge of the funeral industry”)—feeling that something was needed to waken the legislators from