Sanford F. Kuvin

In 1990, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that a dentist with AIDS in Florida appeared to have infected five of his patients, one of whom was a twenty-two-year-old woman named Kimberly Bergalis. The announcement provoked a fierce debate over whether health care workers should be tested for HIV. The following viewpoint is excerpted from Sanford F. Kuvin’s testimony before the House Subcommittee on Health and Environment, in which he argues that all health care workers should be tested for the AIDS virus. Patients have the right to know if their doctor, nurse, dentist, or other health care professional has HIV, he maintains. Kuvin is the vice chairman of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases and chairman of the Hepatitis B Action Group in Washington, D.C...