AIDS AND THE LAW

A MATTER OF POLICY

Health officials, insurance companies, and municipal, state, and federal law should logically treat AIDS as an infectious disease (like tuberculosis) or a sexually transmitted disease (like syphilis), but this has not been the case. The myth that AIDS is "a disease of gay men and drug users" has distorted U.S. policy. For instance:

In most states, you cannot get a marriage license without passing a blood test for syphilis. Because AIDS is falsely seen as a "gay problem" and gays are not allowed to marry, these same states do not require an AIDS test before marriage, so you could marry someone with HIV or AIDS and never know it until you fell ill. AIDS is expensive. If you have health insurance through your employer, you may be cut off from your benefits once you reveal you are HIV-positive, even though you thought you were covered.

The U.S. has no national health-care program, so if you are HIV-positive but do not meet the CDC definition of AIDS (see card 92), you can't get disability. Only CDC-defined AIDS makes you eligible for Supplemental Social Security (SSI) payments.

At the opening of 1993, the U.S. was still refusing entry to HIVpositive visitors, despite the fact that AIDS is already endemic here. For this reason, scientific conventions on AIDS could not meet in the U.S. Worse, HIV-positive political refugees (including many from the dictatorship of Haiti) were quarantined in military camps, where the medical treatment they received was perfunctory at best.

Until President Bill Clinton enacts all his AIDS proposals (see card 89), an HIV-positive diagnosis will be more than a health problem-it will be a social, legal, and financial one as well.

Next Card 92: DR. JAMES CURRAN: The Centers For Disease Control