Compulsory Testing 101

may thus deter nationals and non-nationals alike from using HIV prevention and care services. Such travel restrictions may encourage nationals to consider HIV a“foreign problem,” so that they feel no need to engage in safe behavior themselves.

Travel restrictions have no economic justification because people living with HIV can now lead long and productive working lives; they pose no potential drain on national health resources. Furthermore such treatments are constantly becoming less expensive.’

We may ask whether treatment should be forced upon an individual who has tested positive. The tradition would seem to demand it. There is a biblical obligation to maintain health along with the assumption that our body actually belongs to God . These principles would operate even when the medical measures only lengthen life, but do not cure it of disease as with HIV.

From my perspective this should not occur, as it infringes on the individual’s autonomy for no good reason. Since there is no cure for HIV, the risk, of transmission remains the same. We might best follow the principle of do nothing(shev v'al ta-ase).

Mandatory testing might be relevant in the compulsory testing of everyone that enters a health care setting. Mandatory as opposed to opt-out testing would make sense only, if the physician could refuse treatment to such an individual. Since the risk of becoming infected with HIV in a health care setting is very small, it would constitute only a doubtful danger(safek sakana), so no treatment should be demanded."

For all these reasons there is no need for compulsory testing for HIV, though opt-out screening would be acceptable.