Soviets Adopt Stringent Anti-AIDS Law : Suspected Carriers, Including Visitors, Must Submit to Testing

The Soviet government has adopted a new law designed to control the spread of AIDS that requires suspected carriers of the virus, whether Soviet citizens or foreigners, to submit to medical testing.

Under the law, citizens who refuse may be taken in police custody to a hospital for a blood test, the official news agency Tass said Tuesday.

Foreigners who balk at being tested for acquired immune deficiency syndrome can be expelled from the country under the new legislation.

The law also provides for jail terms for people who knowingly transmit the virus or infect another person with the incurable disease.

It was the strongest anti-AIDS measure taken so far in the Soviet Union, where relatively few people are believed to be infected.

Soviet officials have said three people--all foreign students--have died of AIDS in this country. The number infected with the virus is not clear, although medical authorities said recently that about 40 other students have been expelled and a Soviet man with AIDS had started a chain of infections that involved 14 other Soviet citizens.

While some Soviet officials have argued that the outbreak of the disease in the West reflected lower moral standards there, medical authorities have treated AIDS as a serious potential threat for Soviet citizens as well.

A major research program, including a search for a vaccine against AIDS, has been started in recent months. Valentin Pokhrovsky, president of the Soviet Academy of Medical Sciences, has said the number of cases here could multiply rapidly.

Close Scrutiny

Pokhrovsky advocated mandatory AIDS testing of the thousands of foreign students who spend more than three months in the Soviet Union and close scrutiny of homosexuals and prostitutes, both of whom are high-risk groups.

The penalties imposed in the new law, passed by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, are the same as those for knowingly spreading venereal disease.

Those found guilty of deliberately exposing others to the risk of infection could be sent to prison for five years. Those who actually transmit the disease would face a maximum eight-year sentence.