The Injustice of AIDS Tests

Secretary of Labor William E. Brock III has decided to impose testing for exposure to the AIDS virus on the Job Corps--including applicants, employees and the 40,000 students enrolled in the agency’s training programs. That is a bad idea.

This program of mandatory testing will be combined with a more vigorous educational program to teach the young people in the program how to prevent the contracting of the dangerous disease. The educational program certainly is a good idea.

U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop has spoken loudly and clearly on the importance of prevention, including the crucial role of condoms in protecting those engaged in both homosexual and heterosexual sexual activity. But he has, wisely, rejected the concept of mandatory testing.

The surgeon general’s leadership on the issue has not, however, restrained some people within the Reagan Administration from wholesale testing. Only last month the State Department ordered AIDS testing for Foreign Service applicants and those on active duty, including their families. That was the first imposition of testing on a civilian work force, following an earlier decision of the Defense Department to initiate AIDS screening. Now the Labor Department is going a step further, imposing a mandatory testing program for the first time on those who are not government employees--the students in the Job Corps training programs.

Labor Department officials have justified this move in the Job Corps on grounds that some of those enrolled have used intravenous drugs or engaged in homosexual activities and thus come from high-risk population groups. In practice, however, an official acknowledged that the sole basis for the action was “a couple of reports of diagnosed AIDS cases.”

The AIDS epidemic will not be thwarted by mandatory testing programs. Preliminary evidence suggests that not all, perhaps not even most, people with the virus will develop AIDS. Nevertheless, testing almost certainly will lead to injustices, including job discrimination. The real need is to invest more in research and in educating the public, not in diverting resources to exercises that have limited if any meaning.