Koop Sees Routine AIDS Tests for Surgery Patients

Surgeon General C. Everett Koop predicted today that AIDS testing of surgery patients will soon be routine and said it should be clear in several months whether AIDS will explode among heterosexuals.

Koop also told a House panel he believes that young children can be taught to abstain from sexual relations before they marry but that condoms must be offered to the 70% of adolescents who already are sexually active.

“If you tell that 70% to just say no, they laugh. And if they try to say no, they find it very difficult,” Koop told the House Select Committee on Children, Youth and Families during a hearing on teen-agers and AIDS.

Koop said adolescents exploring their own sexuality and possibly intravenous drugs are particularly vulnerable to AIDS. He said they are “extraordinarily difficult to deal with” because they believe they are immortal and resist changing their behavior.

“I was talking to some teen-agers about long-term monogamy, and this one girl said, ‘How long? A semester?’ ” Koop recalled.

Asked whether hospitals should routinely test patients for AIDS upon admission, Koop said the real problem is with surgical patients. He said doctors and nurses in the operating room are exposed to pin pricks, knife cuts and other incidents that could endanger them.

“There will be an increased demand” by medical personnel for AIDS testing, he said. “The day is not far off when the testing of surgical patients in hospitals becomes much more routine.”

Koop said the federal Centers for Disease Control is conducting a study to determine the incidence of AIDS infection in the general population.

“The thing we would like to tell you, but we can’t, is if we are standing on the threshold of a heterosexual explosion of AIDS,” Koop said under questioning.