AEGiS-APPJ: Widespread Testing for AIDS: What Is the Question?

Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1987. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

Widespread Testing for AIDS: What Is the Question?

AIDS & Public Policy Journal 2, no. 4 (Fall-Winter 1987): 3-4.
June E. Osborn

The uses of the antibody test are important and have played a beneficial role in the epidemic. Indeed, we need to enhance the availability of testing and counseling for worried individuals, which we can accomplish both by increasing access to confidential and (as needed) anonymous screening opportunities, and by strengthening legal protection of confidentiality, as currently proposed in legislation put forward by Congressman Henry Waxman. However, testing is virtually irrelevant to a broad array of pressing issues that are being pushed aside in the furor over mandatory or routine deployment of the antibody test. If one turns to the fundamental question of how we should protect the public from risk, the answer is not by testing but through education.
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