Chandler Burr

About the author: Chandler Burr is a journalist and contributing editor to U.S. News & World Report. He is the author of the book A Separate Creation: The Search for the Biological Origins of Sexual Orientation.

Traditional public health measures—which include routine testing for disease, reporting the names of those infected to public health authorities, and tracing and notifying people who may have been exposed to the disease—could have saved thousands of lives if used against AIDS. However, U.S. public health officials did not take such actions because they feared violating people's rights to privacy and freedom from discrimination and because gay organizations strongly opposed these measures. A comparison of the United States with Cuba—a country that did follow...