AEGiS-APPJ: AIDS: The Rights of Patients

Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1991. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

AIDS: The Rights of Patients

AIDS & Public Policy Journal 6, no. 1 (Spring 1991): 41-45
J. Charrel et al.

Over the years of the epidemic, the initial state of shock has subsided, and the world is beginning to learn to live with AIDS. It now seems possible to adopt a calmer, more rational, and more constructive approach to these ethical problems. In our public health laboratory, we became interested in all of the ethical problems raised by AIDS. Our first approach was to make a study of all of the AIDS-related literature since 1983 (the date of the publication of the first articles concerning AIDS). Our analysis includes material dating from 1983 until May 1989. Of the 538 articles identified, 14 percent could not be analyzed, either because of language problems, or because of poor distribution (articles that eluded our lending library even after research in London and Switzerland). In this analysis, we aim to present a synthesis of all of the literature concerning the rights of AIDS patients. We have given priority to medical confidentiality, which appears to us to be the most decisive right, and yet--in the case of AIDS--also the most vulnerable.
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APPJ916107

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