Date: Fri, 17 Dec 1999 00:39:31 -0500
From: Tom Limoncelli 
Subject: Re: HIV+ name reports

Name tracking of HIV test results is bad.

It discourages people from getting tested, and therefore spreads the
disease more.
        The argument that "people are more at ease with the disease
        and aren't worried of being stigmatized" comes from health care
        professionals that have been dealing with AIDS too long and have
        become out of touch with real people.

I could list ten other reasons why it is bad, but the above reason is
good enough.

Long ago in New Jersey (the #1 state for AIDS in heterosexuals, by the
way) they asked for your name but it was optional.  Then they had to
ask for a name, but they didn't have to verify it, and would tell you
that if you wanted to be anonymous to give a fake name.  Then they were
told that they would lose funding if they didn't take names.

See the trend?

My recommendation from 1989 is still the same as it is today.  Only get
tested if it is confidential (they wouldn't reveal results to anyone
but you) and anonymous (they don't have your name so that if the
records are taken by the government they are useless).

If forced to give your name tell them "Ronald Reagan".  I think it is a
great political statement.  I hold him accountable for more than 80,000
American deaths.  More than the total deaths in the Vietnam War.

His coalitioning with the radical right was a big part in stomping out
AIDS education that mentioned condoms or safer sex.  Reagan even
refused to say the word AIDS in public until his last year in office.
It wasn't until terrorist groups formed and scared the government into
talking about the issue.

But most of all, as the father of a gay man, he disgraced this country
by not showing the love and acceptance that anyone that supports
"family values" should demonstrate.

I haven't read the entire thread.  Flame at will, bullocks!

--tal
--
     Tom Limoncelli -- http://mars.superlink.net/user/tal --  tal@plts.org
  "Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation
         and social standing, can never bring about a reform." Susan B Anthony

Marcia wrote a better reply than I could have:

The leaflet was sent out several years after such a concept was first
proposed, partly b/c of Reagan's sensitivities.  Also the word "condom" was
verboten for a bunch of years for the same reason (Remember "what if I told
you that preventing HIV transmission was as easy as putting on this
sock?").(1)  Britain and some other European countries started similar public
health campaigns two or three years earlier than did the United States.(2)
Koop's leaflet mailing was indeed a good thing, but might have done far more
good had it been sent when HIV transmission routes were first understood, and
not years later.

(1) I have no first  hand memory of the Koop mailing -- I was young enough
that I don't think my parents showed me the leaflets.  I do remember the
"sock" posters well into the late 80's.  The book _And the Band Played On_
chronicles some of the timeline for the US public health campaign re HIV.
It's been 8 years or so since I've been to the Navy Medical museum, but there
at least used to be an exibit there, too.
(2) This comment is mostly based on a couple of newspaper articles I read in
'96 or '97 while I was living in Britain.  I have a vague memory of the
articles being in celebration of the success of the early education campaigns
-- that there were a much lower proportion of HIV in the gay community there
than here.  But this is a several year old memory ;-7