Developments in Brief : AIDS Tests Suggested for Assault Victims

Officials in the Minnesota Department of Health have made a new suggestion likely to add to the public controversy about the appropriateness of testing for AIDS antibodies.

In a letter in the New England Journal of Medicine, Minnesota health authorities said sexual assault victims should be tested for the AIDS virus. Such a test, they said, would be “in the best interests of the victim and has important implications for public health.”

They said they made their recommendation after learning of cases in which an individual infected with the AIDS virus had sexually assaulted someone, including the case of a man with AIDS who sexually abused his son.

“Although we acknowledge the important social and legal implications of (testing) for (AIDS), we believe that such screening is in the best interest of the victim and has important implications for public health,” they said.

Michael T. Osterholm, an epidemiologist who co-signed the letter, said in a telephone interview that testing would alert the victim that she has been infected so she can seek treatment and avoid spreading the disease.

“If a woman has been sexually assaulted and is positive, that has implications for transmission to her sexual partner or if she becomes pregnant,” he said.

The presence of AIDS antibodies as detected by the test does not mean the person will get the disease, but it does mean he or she is capable of transmitting the virus.