Ethical Behavior & Issue of HIV/AIDS
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Currently the world is facing several crisis situations. People read in the news about the problems with gangs, the school systems' deterioration, drug usage, and the decay of the family. All of these problems can be traced to a single root cause--the inability of people to behave ethically and morally. A large portion of this problem is the changing ethical climate. People are not certain what the ethical standard of behavior should be. The need for ethics clarification is a primary cause of the AIDS controversy. Medical personnel are not clear on how they should act in the face of the epidemic of HIV virus and full blown AIDS. The ethical issues are being determined in the courts and in medical offices throughout the county. As the medical community wrestles with the question the general public is also being forced to face its fears and grapple with the question of how to work and accept HIV and AIDS patients in daily contact. Issues such as confidentiality, mandatory testing, notification, media's coverage, homosexuality, and the social issues of drugs and sexual promiscuity are being grappled with by normal people who come in contact with someone affected by the disease. The medical community's position on these ethical issues largely determines the attitude of the general population. The initial impact of the HIV virus and resulting AIDS infection was first felt in the United States in the homosexual community (Wilkerson, 1994, p. 330). The fear, misunderstan
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informed consent. The absence of an explicit objection is taken as a consent to test (Bayer, Dubler, & Landesman, 1993, p. 650). In the case of tuberculosis, the harm principle and the principle of beneficence both are in action. The harm principle of harm principle permits the restriction of liberty of an individual for the good of many. The principle of beneficence requires the adoption of policies which will benefit others. In the case of tuberculosis the act of breathing can infect another person. An individual with an active tubercular infection is a danger to anyone breathing the same air. By diagnosing the infected individual, the public is protected and the patient can be cured. The public and the patient are both better off.
In the case of AIDS, the infected individual must usually have engaged in risky behavior to become infected and continue those same behaviors to infect others. By isolating AIDS infected individuals the spread might be contained, but the spread of the disease to any individual is a matter of the individual choosing to engage in high risk behaviors. Aside from rape, most sexual encounters are with consent and intravenous drug usage is voluntary. Therefore, isolating HIV infected individua
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Approximate Word count = 2412
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)
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