Don't remove safeguards

 
Posted 10/8/2006 8:03 PM

By Rose Saxe

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is right to want more people to get tested for HIV. But eliminating specific consent and pretest counseling, as the CDC recommends, would remove safeguards guaranteeing that testing stays voluntary and informed.

OUR VIEW: Lift stigma from HIV screening

It's not surprising that some doctors and health care workers are welcoming what they see as time-saving measures. But testing people without informed consent doesn't ensure that people with HIV get the care they need. Studies have shown that patients who are tested without consent are less likely to get necessary follow-up care.

Without pretest prevention counseling, we also lose a critical opportunity to educate. The reason people aren't getting tested is not consent requirements or even stigma about testing; it's because people still don't understand HIV. A recent survey found that 22% of Americans wrongly believe that you can get HIV from sharing a glass of water. And 25 years into the epidemic, people continue to lose jobs and housing because of prejudice. Can we really afford to abandon this chance to help people understand HIV?

The new recommendations also raise privacy concerns. Virtually every state now collects the names of those who test positive. If the government is going to collect names and deeply personal information, people tested deserve to know that this information is being collected and how it will be used.

Early in the epidemic, our government ignored AIDS until it was confronted by persistent protests by gay people. As the demographic of the disease shifts to include more women and people of color, why are we abandoning those safeguards? And why is the government so heavily focused on promoting testing, while continuing to fund misleading sex education and refusing to adequately support proven programs, such as needle exchange, that reduce the transmission of HIV in the first place?

Written consent and counseling need not be barriers to HIV testing. Everyone wins when people are able to make informed decisions to protect their health.

Rose Saxe is a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union AIDS Project.