The Nation - News from Nov. 25, 1987

Alan R. Nelson, a Salt Lake City internist who is chairman of the American Medical Assn., told the President’s AIDS commission that the AMA opposes widespread mandatory testing for the virus because it would yield too many false positive results and would not be a good allocation of medical resources. He was responding to commission member Cory Servaas, publisher of the Saturday Evening Post, who asked why doctors were not testing all their patients at no charge and why the AMA was not pushing such an approach. Servaas, who is a physician, is an advocate of widespread AIDS testing and runs a mobile testing service in Indiana. Later, Commission Chairman Adm. James D. Watkins, retired chief of naval operations, said the panel would take under advisement for “internal” discussions Servaas’ proposal to ask magazine publishers to publish “centerfold” surveys about AIDS.