Mandatory Testing

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.

Growing national sentiment for protecting patients from health care workers who carry the AIDS virus has gained momentum in recent weeks amid speculation that it will lead to mandatory testing of patients and care givers.From New Jersey to Oregon, the debate is being waged in state legislatures, courtrooms, hospital boardrooms and within professional organizations.In Florida, where an infected dentist apparently transmitted AIDS to three patients, some dentists and hygienists even have begun posting their AIDS test results on their office walls in an attempt to reassure skittish patients.

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.

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.