HIV tests should be standard for adults and teens

When you go in for an annual pap smear and pelvic exam in California, the practitioner generally asks you whether you want to be tested for sexually transmitted diseases. For most of those tests, you just have to say yes and get a lab slip. But for an HIV test, you have to sign a privacy statement and a waiver and a consent form and it's A Big Deal.

The Center for Disease Control has changed its mind about that and now urges that the HIV tests become much more routine, not surrounded by mandatory counseling and a stack of paperwork, according to the New York Times.

The objections to the CDC recommendations are valid:

Some civil liberties organizations and those representing people with AIDS, while favoring more testing, have lobbied against removing signed consent forms or pretest counseling for fear that such changes will make testing less voluntary.

Some states, including New York, have laws requiring such counseling and consent forms. They were passed in the early days of the AIDS epidemic, when having the virus amounted to a death sentence, the disease’s stigma often led to denial of jobs or housing, and testing was done primarily to protect the blood supply.

But the reasoning behind the recommendations is sound, too. This is one I'm going to have to think about for a while before I can come down firmly on either side.

I support the common goals, though:

• to reduce the number of babies born HIV positive to zero
• to stop the spread of the disease
• to make people aware of their status so they don't wait until they are very very sick before they seek treatment