Mandatory Testing

Mandatory testing of many health care workers and hospital patients for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, "is important enough that the money to pay for it will be found," says Gov. William Donald Schaefer.But, in his first meeting with 18 members of his new advisory council on HIV prevention and treatment, the governor last night failed to discuss a testing bill that state health officials are preparing. He also did not elaborate on the expected steep cost of testing and who would pay -- the state or hospitals.

Mandatory testing of many health care workers and hospital patients for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, "is important enough that the money to pay for it will be found," says Gov. William Donald Schaefer.But, in his first meeting with 18 members of his new advisory council on prevention of human immunodeficiency virus and treatment, the governor last night failed to discuss a testing bill .. that state health officials are preparing. He also did not elaborate on the expected steep cost of testing and who would pay -- the state or hospitals.

The Maryland General Assembly is flirting again with legislation that would compromise the privacy rights of people with AIDS. The state government says it wants mandatory testing of certain populations, particularly health-care workers, to protect the public and to help people who are infected get the treatment they need.Virtually every medical and scientific authority to have an opinion on the subject, including the federal Centers for Disease Control, says that mandatory testing will not achieve those goals.

She was just one of hundreds of women Dr. Rudolph Almaraz treated before he died of AIDS last year. But she could talk to someone few others could: Gov. William Donald Schaefer, one of her husband's oldest friends.The woman was afraid that Almaraz had passed the AIDS virus to her during treatment of a lump in her breast. The governor was sympathetic."There's such a lack of knowledge," Schaefer said in an interview this week. "She had to go through the testing process. There's the fear that's left with people."

Wasting little time, the state medical society yesterday denounced Gov. William Donald Schaefer's call for the mandatory testing of many health-care workers and patients for the AIDS virus, calling it a pointless move that plays into unfounded public fears.The medical society first went on record two years ago opposing any mandatory testing for acquired immune deficiency syndrome. But Dr. Marvin Schneider, chairman of the group's governing council, said that the society decided to respond to the governor's statements Monday that he hopes to make widespread testing the law of Maryland.

ANNAPOLIS -- Gov. William Donald Schaefer wants HIV infection treated like any other communicable disease, enabling health workers to trace a patient's sex partners and others who may have been exposed to the virus that causes AIDS.While the governor's bill would designate at least five confidential testing centers, those who test positive at other sites would be treated as if they had gonorrhea, hepatitis, meningitis, typhoid, syphilis or tuberculosis.This means health workers would follow "contract tracing" procedures -- notifying those who had sex, shared needles, or otherwise exchanged bodily fluids with an HIV-infected patient.

Saying he wants his state to be a model for the rest of the country, Gov. L. Douglas Wilder of Virginia has established a group to study ways to fight campus crime, including the possibility of mandatory testing of college students for drug use.No state currently requires its colleges and universities to test students for drugs, according to education specialists. Legal experts question whether mandatory testing by state institutions would be constitutional, noting that even some programs set up by private institutions have been thrown out by courts.

ANNAPOLIS -- On shaky ground since their introduction this winter, three of the Schaefer administration's AIDS bills are in trouble.A joint subcommittee is recommending that lawmakers kill the ++ so-called "mandatory testing" bill that would require certain doctors and patients to be tested for the virus that causes acquired immune deficiency syndrome.Physicians and health care workers have opposed the state health department's bill on the grounds that it would be costly and would not stop the spread of AIDS.

Johns Hopkins Hospital has announced a new drug-testing program aimed, it appears, at reassuring uneasy patients. Under the new, modified policy all applicants for the medical staff will be tested for cocaine, alcohol, opiates, tranquilizers, barbiturates, marijuana and PCP; current employees will continue to be tested only if there is cause to suspect they are impaired. It is a policy that is certain to generate ongoing controversy.Surely there is nothing wrong with a patient's wanting assurance that the surgeon who holds the scalpel isn't stoned on drugs or alcohol.

The Schaefer administration is poised to seek mandatory AIDS tests for both health-care providers and patients involved in procedures that risk transmission of the deadly virus.Gov. William Donald Schaefer said yesterday he strongly supports such tests and is considering pursuing the issue in the legislature next year.Maryland would be the first state in the country to require mandatory testing and would make the state's requirements more stringent than those recently established by the federal Centers for Disease Control.