'My life has been taken away' Bergalis endorses testing health care workers for AIDS

But Dr. Ed Rozar, a Wisconsin cardiac surgeon who stopped performing surgery after finding out he'd been infected with AIDS, said,in supporting the bill, "If the risk was one in a trillion, and there was something I could do to prevent it, I would do it."

Barbara Fassbinder, a former nurse from Monona, Iowa, and one of the first health care workers known to have been infected by a patient, said she favors education and the strict use of "universal precautions" -- guidelines set forth by the federal Centers for Disease Control under which all patients are treated as if they have an infectious disease -- over mandatory testing.

David Barr, an assistant director of the Gay Men's Health Crisis center in New York, said that while he opposes the Bergalis bill and has been pitted against her, "Kimberly and I are not that different."

"I appreciate and share your anger, Kimberly," Mr. Barr said.

"Like you, I feel that I do not deserve this fate. Although we may have acquired this virus in different ways, I never asked for this, and neither did the over 115,000 Americans who have already died. We are all innocent victims here."