Mandatory testing: No cure for AIDS epidemic

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SOCIALIST ACTION JULY 1987 Mass compulsory testing for presence of the AIDS virus is the latest diversionary tactic employed by the most audacious ideological leaders of the U.S. capitalist class.

There is a real difference of opinion, however, within the ranks of the ruling class over how to deal with this latest manifestation of the system's incapacity to solve society's problems.

One wing has seized on the issue of compulsory testing as grist for its mill. This wing, which includes important components of the capitalist establishment in both the Democratic and the Republican parties, specializes in exploiting the prejudices cultured by capitalist society in order to divide and rule.

Every difference is seized upon—race, religion, sex, etc.—to divert discontent arising from the real problems of capitalism toward convenient scapegoats. Bigotry of all kinds is systematically fostered and exploited to disrupt, in the final analysis, joint defensive action by its victims.

Split in capitalist class Another wing of the capitalist class—the dominant one—is generally more artful and selective. It knows full well that universal, forced testing in capitalist America today serves no good medical purpose in dealing with the mounting threat of the AIDS epidemic. These capitalists realize that mandatory testing would be counterproductive.

Moreover, they are already concerned by, the mounting medical costs of treating AIDS victims. These costs, for which most victims of AIDS cannot pay, will be borne by society as a whole, adding to the problem of the deficit national budget.

The professional right-wingers, however, have seized on the widespread fear of AIDS to advance their political agenda. Their call for universal compulsory testing is not motivated by real public-health concerns. It is intended to fan the flames of hysteria among people already on the edge of panic.

It is a substitute for genuine measures to meet the threat of AIDS. And it is an effective diversion from real solutions because it seems to be a rational medical response to the deadly AIDS epidemic.

Testing: the traditional purpose Testing to control the spread of a contagious disease has always been completely voluntary and truly routine. But the traditional, broadly accepted medical purpose of testing has always been to facilitate treatment of those found to be infected and alert all concerned to follow appropriate hygienic procedures to limit the disease's spread.

Testing for communicable diseases, for instance, is confidential and more or less massive government funded Manhattan Project to find a cure for AIDS is realistic."

routine. Those found to be infected are given effective treatment and most often cured. There is no stigma attached to positive test results and consequently no one has cause to refuse such tests.

But there is, today, no cure for AIDS. Neither is there yet any means for ridding carriers of the dormant virus. The call for compulsory mass testing for AIDS, it is clear, has another non-medical purpose. It is promoted by a variety of right-wingers primarily to whip up hysteria against AIDS victims.

At present in this country, gay people, drug addicts, and their sexual partners suffer most from this epidemic. This provides a choice target for mischievous bigots.

Quarantine: Medical necessity?

The proponents of such testing refuse to provide guarantees of confidentiality. This results in loss of jobs and other economic hardships for those found to be carrying the virus. The logic of forced mass testing, where there is no cure nor means for ridding the body of the virus, leads to quarantining the 1.5 million people estimated to be carriers.

This AIDS virus carriers from economic as well as social life. The inevitable consequence of this is to condemn those millions of carriers of the dormant virus without enormous independent financial resources to life-long detention as pauperized wards of society.

This will inevitably result in mass evasion of such forced testing and in effect the opposite of that alleged to be intended Carriers of the dormant virus will not know this for certain and therefore will be much less prepared to accept counseling on how to ensure the protection of those with whom they have more than casual contact.

The most important measure that can now be taken is to educate everyone —carriers or not—to avoid any careless attitude toward sexual intimacy and other forms of contact by which AIDS is transmitted.

The "responsible" capitalists For the time being, the dominant capitalist policy favors education as the best means available to limit the spread of AIDS. They understand the fact that universal testing without guaranteed confidentiality would be medically counterproductive.

For the present, the dominant capitalists believe it to be dangerously wrong and unnecessary for the defense of capitalism to subvert public-health needs to these ends.

Perhaps more importantly, they know that the economic burden on the U.S. treasury of "quarantine" camps could push the economy, already tottering, over the edge into bankruptcy.

An editorial in the June 7 New York Times is typical of the present more rational ruling-class response to the steadily spreading AIDS epidemic:

"If there were an effective way to rid the body of the AIDS virus, widespread testing should begin immediately. Drugs for treatment of the overt disease are starting to become available, but no remedy for the virus exists. Then why test?...

"There is an inevitable outcome to the logic of those who advocate dragnet testing of low-risk groups: quarantine. The idea is that society, facing a millennial plague, must be prepared to take unflinching measures. Once all carriers are identified, atomic bomb in time to put it to use against its enemies during World War II.

One team of scientists at a private laboratory, working eight hours a day exploring the variety of possible roads to building an atom bomb, might not have achieved its goal in 500 years. But a hundred teams of scientists and technicians —all gathered under one roof, sharing their information in a gigantic social effort— found a solution in less than five years!

Leaving aside for the moment the heinous consequences of the Manhattan Project, the principle underlying this huge government-funded concentration of scientists and material resources is simple and widely applicable especially to solve such problems as the AIDS epidemic.

A race to reap the profits Today, teams of scientists and technicians throughout the world are working in isolation from each other, and for the most part jealously guarding their discoveries from each other.

Their medical goals—to find effective treatments and ultimately a cure-are subordinate to their competing commercial interests. They are in a race to patent their discoveries first so as to reap the profits for the winning entrepeneur.

(The discovery of the means for determining the presence of the AIDS virus, for instance, was claimed by rival laboratories in France and in the United States and resulted in a bitter dispute between them for the lucrative commercial rights to the discovery.)

How many scientific teams capable of AIDS research are being wasted on secondrate pharmaceutical projects? How many such teams are being funded by the United States and other governments to find new biological and chemical agents for military use and other such destructive scientific "advances?"

A massive government-funded Manhattan Project to find a cure for AIDS is practical and realistic. It merely requires the allocation of the nation's vast resources to save millions of the world's people from the horrors of this epidemic.

The U.S. capitalist class-unstinting in its expenditures for death and destruction— dispenses funds for human needs, such as desperately needed medical research, with an eye-dropper.

This year, the federal government has authorized $446 million on AIDS research, treatment, and education. This is less than half of what the government spends on one Trident submarine!

A social revolution to create a society that puts human needs first is long overdue. Only then would the resources of society be systematically and routinely focused on solving such medical problems as AIDS. •

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