Word: viruses
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...policy does not represent a "purge of homosexuals." The military realizes that not all homosexuals will test positive for the AIDS antibodies, while some heterosexuals will. One study found that in certain areas of Western Europe 30-40 percent of the prostitutes had AIDS antibodies in their blood. The virus appears to be spreading through the heterosexual population as well, and people of all sexual preferences stand increasing chances of being exposed to the virus...
Individuals carrying the AIDS virus pose a serious problem for the military in another way. In conflict situations all personnel are considered walking blood banks. If no blood is available for casulties, the injured are dependent on their healthy comrades to provide it. But receiving AIDS-infected blood may eventually prove fatal, although the initial injury should not have. This point alone shows that the military's concern is based on more than the unfounded homophobia associated with AIDS...
...response to your editorial of October 2, 1986, denouncing MIT-NROTC [Naval ROTC at MIT which includes Harvard students] and the military in general for its exclusion of students infected by the AIDS virus from officer training, I feel compelled to point out that while this policy may seem discriminatory to a particular campus interest group, it is certainly consistent with the military regulations which exclude from active duty anyone suffering from a variety of ailments ranging from cancer to high blood pressure. On the contrary, the Navy's concern is, understandably, economic...
Forget the legal niceties of how such "unwarranted searches" may violate civil rights. The judge could have ruled the other way. Consider the case of another screening issue in which the Justice Department decided last June that those who test positive for the AIDS virus are not protected under civil rights law from discrimination by their employers...
THERE IS A parallel between those who may carry a virus and those who may carry a drug in their bodies. In both cases testing is justified by placing the perceived welfare of the community over the right of an individual to be free from invasions of his person. The unreliability of drug tests and the improbability of transmitting AIDS shows the rationale of screening to be merely the face of power...