Study Blasts Mandatory AIDS Tests

Mandatory pre-marital testing for the AIDS virus would be an ineffective way to combat the disease and an inefficient use of resources, concluded a study released yesterday by the School of Public Health (SPH).

The study, published yesterday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that it would cost the nation $100 million to detect "fewer than one-tenth of 1 percent of HIVS-infected individuals" and that approximately 350 false positive and 100 false negative results would result nationwide.

These conclusions may affect proposed legislation in more than 30 states, including Massachusetts, requiring AIDS screening for couples seeking a marriage license, said Lawrence Gostin, a member of the six-person committee which authored the study and a senior research fellow at the School of Public Health.

Members of the committee--including medical doctors and legal scholars--said that the drawbacks of required AIDS testing in states where there have been few cases outweigh the advantages of such legislation.

"The [AIDS] test would find more actual cases and have a smaller proportion of false-positives if it were required only in those states already hard hit by the epidemic," said Mark Kleiman, aKennedy School lecturer on public policy who hasalso studied the problem of AIDS testing.

The SPH researchers also concluded thatfocusing on the lowrisk group of pre-maritalcouples is an inefiecient method of testing forAIDS.

"Why pick out one group arbitrarily?," askedKenneth H. Mayer, a member of the study group anda clinical instructor in medicine at the MedicalSchool.

In addition to being impractical, compulsoryAIDS testing raises serious constitutionquestions, Gostin said, legal counselor to the SPHcommittee. Gostin said that legislation requiringtesting for couples seeking a marriage licensecould be declared unconstitutional in court