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The Case for Routine Testing
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13129 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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11 / 1987 |
1,800 Words |
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Gary L. Bauer
Gary L. Bauer is president of the Family Research Council. |
In the face of mounting infection and casualties from the deadly disease AIDS, it is time to stop treating this as a politically protected epidemic. It is imperative that we move forward with the routine health measures that have enabled us to contain epidemics in the past, such as the syphilis epidemic earlier in this century. Routine testing in most cases, and mandatory testing in some, as proposed by President Reagan, is a necessary first step in this process.
Consider the startling facts about the disease. Today there are more than 40,000 AIDS cases and 20,000 deaths. The National Academy of Sciences estimates that between 1 million and 1.5 million Americans are infected with the virus. This may be a conservative estimate.
Even more chilling are the rates at which the disease is spreading. Four years ago there were only 1,500 AIDS cases. A year ago there were about 16,000 cases with 8,100 deaths. The numbers have been virtually doubling every year. If the rates persist, the U.S. Surgeon General calculates that we could have a quarter of a million AIDS cases by 1990.
In addition to ravaging lives, AIDS also threatens to ravage the nation's economy. It costs approximately $1,000 a day to treat an AIDS patient in the hospital. As the number of patients increases, who is going to bear the enormous costs, which almost inevitably exceed the victim's ability to pay? Either the government or the insurance industry will be faced with a staggering bill, estimated at $10 billion by 1991. Researchers Anne Scitovsky of the Palo Alto Medical Foundation and Dorothy Rice of the University of California place the total economic cost
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