One of the more controversial medical topics of recent years is that of mandatory testing for AIDS. While AIDS testing has been described in some quarters as "an essential component of any effective national AIDS policy" (Basten, 1989), mandatory testing for AIDS is being met with derision in other quarters, being labeled "public health lunacy" (Adams, 2005). On the one hand, proponents of mandatory AIDS testing argue that such testing protects sexual partners, coworkers, friends, family, fellow inmates, and others that an HIV- or AIDS-infected individual might come into contact with, as well as providing an opportunity for early intervention to protect AIDS patients' health. On the other hand, mandatory testing could result in catastrophic privacy invasion that ruins careers and marriages based on what is still an imperfect testing medium that yields a substantial number of false positive results. This paper will examine the arguments on both sides of the issue, perform an analysis of the arguments and the evidence, and choose to support one of the perspectives on mandatory AIDS testing.
Arguments in Favor of Mandatory AIDS Testing
AIDS is widely regarded as a fatal disease. For most people, a diagnosis of AIDS has come to mean the equivalent of a death sentence-not a rapid and uneventful death, as with a heart attack, but a long, slow, debilitating death punctuated by years of suffering, loss of faculties, and the very real risk of infecting loved ones and others. The increase in the number of people infected with HIV has led to an according rise in health services and drugs, particularly within the California AIDS Drug Assistance Program, where "annual costs for drugs almost doubled from $145 million in fiscal year 2000-01 to $270 million" in the 2005-06 fiscal year ("Rapid HIV Test Found Highly Effective," 2006). California is an apt focal point for the disease because of the prevalence of HIV and AIDS...