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Lawrence O. Gostin, JD
American Society of Law and Medicine Boston, Mass

JAMA. 1990;264(11):1408.

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

In Reply.—

Dr Shewell enunciates an understandable concern among physicians that the law requires them to treat patients infected with HIV but provides little employment protection if they seroconvert in the course of practicing medicine.

The probable enactment of the Americans With Disabilities Act (which would ban discrimination against handicapped people in the private as well as the public sector) only reinforces the point made in the AIDS Litigation Project that health care providers may not discriminate against patients infected with HIV. This means that providers may not test patients without their consent, arbitrarily refer infected patients to other providers, or refuse to treat them. The reason for these strict legal requirements is that HIV infection is a handicap under federal and state law. Persons cannot be discriminated against because of their disability, any more than they can because of their race or gender. The law, of course, does not . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

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