Harvard MD:AIDS Tests Needed

Unless scientists can find a way to control the spread of AIDS, the United States should require people in high risk groups to undergo testing for the virus, a Harvard doctor said yesterday.

Amplifying remarks he made Thursday at a Boston AIDS conference, in which he called for mandatory testing of those in high risk groups, professor of Medicine Arnold S. Relman said: "Suppose 10 years from now we have half a million AIDS cases, then tougher measures will be necessary."

Comparing the situation to "a state of war," Relman said, "We are going to need to know who has the disease, so we will need mandatory testing."

Other doctors who attended the three-day national conference, sponsored by the American Society of Law and Medicine, questioned the feasibility of mandatory testing.

"I don't think [mandatory testing] is advisable now," William J. Curran, a Harvard professor of legal medicine, said yesterday.

"Mandatory testing will have to involve all the population. I mean, who's gay? Will everybody in the audience who's gay please raise their hands?" said James W. Curran, director of the AIDS program at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta.

Public health officials consider homosexuals and intravenous drug users to be most vulnerable to the deadly disease.

Confidentiality of test results particularly concerned one critic of mandatory testing. "We need a stated purpose for the testing. What is going to been done with the results?" James Curran asked.

The AIDS test currently in use screens blood for the presence of antibodies to the AIDS virus. About 18,800 cases of AIDS have been reported to the CDC, but doctors estimate that 500,000 to 2 million people are carrying the virus and the antibodies.

Doctors at the conference disagreed on how soon scientists will be able to find a successful method of treatment for AIDS. "There has been a tremendous explosion of knowledge. I can't see why we shouldn't be able to come up with something," said Dr. Paul Volberding, who directs the AIDS program at San Francisco General Hospital.

But Dr. Robert W. Gallo of the National Cancer Institute, who discovered the virus, said, "I would not be suprised if we did not have a [treatment method] in 10 years."

Massacusetts has no plans to require testing for AIDS, said Deputy Public Health Commissioner George Grady. But, he said, "We have gone to great lengths to make testing available. Self sought testing has a great deal of merit."

The state has set up eight sites where concerned people can undergo anonymous testing for the virus, said public health spokesman Gail Jackson. Since March 1985, more than 1750 people have come in for testing, and 13 percent of them tested positive for the virus, she said.