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Alan Trachtenberg, MD, MPH; Stephen B. Hulley, MD, MPH
University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine

JAMA. 1988;259(7):1015.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor.

—Teachers with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) are being barred from the classroom despite overwhelming medical evidence that the ordinary forms of social contact that occur in a classroom cannot transmit human immunodeficiency virus infection (Am Med News, Oct 23/30,1987, pp 3-4). This deprives such teachers of their civil and human rights. Ironically, it may actually put the students who are kept from such contact at increased rather than decreased risk.

Studies have shown that the major external factor in changing a person's sexual behavior toward a lower-risk profile is the personal knowledge of a person with AIDS.^1,2 However, AIDS is still sufficiently rare in many circles that most students have never known someone with AIDS. As the human immunodeficiency virus epidemic progresses, teenagers will be at increasing risk from the casual sexual experimentation that is prevalent among this age group.³ Contact in the classroom with . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

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