Testing for AIDS: uses and abuses

In response to the public outcry for mandatory testing for AIDS, this Article explores the major issues concerning the identification of persons with AIDS in society. The Article first studies testing procedures and the purposes behind them to determine if a call for mandatory testing of the general populace would better achieve society's objectives for identifying individuals with AIDS. Concluding that testing should not be required of the population as a whole, the Article then explores whether testing should be required of certain subpopulations which society perceives as likely to have or to spread the disease. In this context, too, the Article concludes that mandatory testing would be unwarranted, and that funds proposed for mandatory testing would be put to better use in education and universal precautions to prevent the further spread of AIDS.