Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1996. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
The Miami Herald, Inc.; a Knight Ridder publication. One Herald Plaza, Miami, FL 33132-1693 - Sunday, October 13, 1996 Edition: Final Section: Editorial Page: 2L Word Count: 430
Herald Staff
Then it got worse: Someone made copies of those disks, which contained about 4,000 names, and sent them to two Tampa Bay area newspapers and the Pinellas County Health Department.
William Calvert admitted that he took the files home, administrators at the Department of Health Rehabilitative Services said. He is accused of using them in a gay bar to warn friends away from dating people with AIDS. This is a frightening breach of confidentiality that AIDS advocates rightly have warned of. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement is investigating. Mr. Calvert has been fired, deservedly so. But scary implications remain. They must be vigorously addressed.
The state has collected the names of AIDS patients since 1983. Come Jan. 1, the state's new Department of Health will become the repository of thousands of others -- names of people with HIV, which causes AIDS. A law passed this year by the Legislature will allow Department of Health investigators to collect the names from health clinics, hospitals, and physicians whose patients test positive for HIV.
The law's logic is sound: The state will notify the sexual partners of the infected person, allowing them to get tested themselves and, it is hoped, keep them from infecting anyone else if they test positive. The state already collects the names of people with other sexually transmitted diseases.
HIV should be treated similarly. It is one more vital tool, especially needed in South Florida, to catch the virus as early as possible and break HIV's devastating ripple effect. Sadly, though, AIDS and HIV patients still encounter a social stigma as infectious as the disease. Therefore the security of the names in state files must be airtight.
Health administrators cannot view Mr. Calvert's breach as anything but a grave offense. Dr. James Howell, who will head the state Department of Health, says that he might delay the law's implementation to ensure that even the smallest holes are plugged. New guidelines, which now seem obvious but were unevenly in force, will be in place: investigators may not take their computer disks home; employee background checks will be standardized and vigilant.
The department seriously must consider cataloging HIV patients by number rather than name. The new law mandates anonymous testing sites in every county. But the law carries, too, the imperative that it must help save lives, not destroy them through carelessness.
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