American Civil Liberties Union

About the author: The American Civil Liberties Union is a national organization that works to defend civil rights and liberties guaranteed by law and the U.S. Constitution.

Some people have proposed that public health authorities should be given the names of all people who test positive for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Such a change to the present system of voluntary and anonymous AIDS testing would endanger privacy rights and would do little to end the AIDS epidemic. People fearing social prejudice will be reluctant to get tested for HIV/AIDS, preventing them from getting treated and hampering efforts to track the spread of the disease. An alternative approach would be to use a system of special codes called unique identifiers to...