Wayne Besen - Author, Activist, Columnist, Public Speaker

Monday, May 15, 2006

Busy Body Bush Wants Your HIV Test Results

This Summer, The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will offer new guidelines for AIDS testing. The proposed recommendations suggest that doctors offer the tests not just to people at risk, but as part of routine medical care for all patients ages 13 to 64.

The C.D.C. will also address two current obstacles to treatment. First, the agency will recommend that health care providers shorten and simplify a counseling session that often takes place before the person is tested. In addition, the new guidelines will suggest that patients be allowed to give oral consent to testing — rather than being required to sign a separate permission form.

Under normal circumstances this might fly. But can we trust a government that keeps secret foreign torture chambers and illegally collects our phone data to responsibly handle sensitive information about our health? All this would sound conspiratorial, if it were not for the fact that with the Bush Administration, the conspiracies are actually real.

Furthermore, we alredy know that the Bush crowd cares about politics more than people. They have consistently compromised the health and welfare of millions of people to promote a right wing dogmatic agenda. They would, for example, prefer to see tens-of-thousands of women die from cancer than approve an HPV vaccine. They would rather people suffer than invest in stem cell research. They would rather have the abortion rate soar than have the FDA approve Plan B. They would rathher see people infected with HIV than admit that their abstinance-only education plan is dangerous and useless.

With such an awful record on public health, Bush wants us to trust him?

While the CDC might have the right plan, they have the wrong man as president. This is not the right time to ask Americans to divulge, yet more personal information to moralistic, Nixonian-style political hacks.

4 Comments:

Knowing someone's HIV and other health stats is yet ANOTHER way for big bro to monitor and control us.
posted by Anonymous, at 5/15/2006 1:53 PM

who cares? that is is your negative.
posted by Anonymous, at 5/15/2006 3:53 PM

Since about 1/4 of HIV carriers are unaware of their serostatus, I think something has to be done.

I've been suspicious of names-based reporting because of the impact it has on portability or acquisition of insurance. But if this is in the context of medical care, that is somewhat diminished.

Also, for a long time an HIV diagnosis was the same as outing. Now it is less so, but still has a great amount of social stigma.

Now my biggest concern is also yours. Government (all administrations but ESPECIALLY this one) has an abysmal record of protecting constituents' privacy.

But I just can't think of a better approach. It's disheartening that you have to accept "maybe it won't be a disaster" as the best possible choice.

Timothy
posted by Anonymous, at 5/15/2006 6:19 PM

Timothy, there is no maybe with bush and company; he destroys everything he touches. It would/will be a disaster!
posted by Anonymous, at 5/15/2006 6:27 PM