Word: viruses
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...David Souleles, 21, a psychology student at the University of California at Irvine, the issue of whether to be tested for exposure to the AIDS virus is a simple one. Souleles, a homosexual, openly acknowledges the possibility that he may have been infected with the virus through previous sexual contact. But now he practices what has become known as "safe sex," and, he says, "the information that I'll receive from the test is not going to help me become more safe. If I find out I'm positive, there's nothing I can do about it anyway...
...conference sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control to debate the value of mass AIDS testing. Among the questions to be discussed: How far should the Government go in supporting and even requiring the test? How effective would mass testing really be in containing the spread of the virus...
Civil liberties lawyers are also concerned about the threat of discrimination based on compulsory-testing results. (For this reason, most voluntary AIDS tests offered today are done anonymously.) Once identified as a carrier of the AIDS virus, an individual runs the risk of losing friends, employment, housing and insurance. In New York City, 314 AIDS discrimination complaints were filed in 1986 alone. Says Nan Hunter, a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union: "The antibody test is not like other medical blood tests. People don't lose their jobs because they have B-positive blood...
...more immediate reason mandatory testing will not work, according to many researchers, is that the results of the blood test most commonly administered can be misleading. A positive result on the ELISA (for enzyme- linked immunosorbent assay) screening test means that an individual has been exposed to the AIDS virus and has developed antibodies to it, not necessarily that a person has -- or will fall victim to -- the disease. Scientists assume, but have not proved, that those who test positive are still carrying the virus and can transmit it. Moreover, additional testing is needed to confirm a positive result. Negative...
...line against the U.S. This included publication of a book charging that the 1978 Jonestown massacre, in which more than 900 religious cultists took their lives by drinking cyanide-spiked Kool-Aid, was the work of the CIA. TASS also resurrected totally fantastic and absurd allegations that the AIDS virus was created by U.S. scientists in a Maryland germ-warfare laboratory...