Welcome, this is Anastasia Global for Cato Daily Podcast, Thursday, June 7th.

Should patients be tested for the HIV virus as a standard part of diagnostic services,

no less routine than taking a patient's weight, height, and temperature?

At its face, it sounds like a good idea and even a prudent one. But the legislation that might

make such testing a reality may have a more sinister motive behind it. The Ryan White

grant program requirements that states provide the names of actual HIV patients, not just anonymous

numbers, to receive federal funding for state HIV-related programs.

Director of Bioethics Studies, Zigrid Freire-Vere, contemplates the consequences of the bills now on the floor in several

states in this podcast.

What are the new HIV testing requirements that might go into effect in California, New York, and Illinois, I believe?

Well, in all three of those states, they are considering mandating or creating HIV testing as routine. And what that means is that the tests would no

longer require written informed consent and pre-test counseling. That seems like a pretty good idea to me.

I think that you disagree.

Yeah, that's not a very good idea at all because HIV is not like a cholesterol

test or a blood pressure test.

It's still a result, if you get an HIV positive result,

there's a lot of stigma attached to that.

And so people need to be counseled

about how to react if they get an HIV positive test result.

They also, by eliminating the counseling and the requirement for the doctor to discuss the

HIV test with the patient, you lose an opportunity to talk to the the But people can feel that their whole life is destroyed if they get an HIV positive result and now they're just going to do it in a routine fashion and

send the answer out in the mail and you know people at all. People might have very

...