American Notes CHICAGO AIDS

The Hippocratic oath that all doctors take swears them to keep secret anything they "may see or hear in the lives of men which ought not to be spoken abroad." With the exception of AIDS, the American Medical Association has decreed. Meeting in Chicago, the A.M.A. House of Delegates approved a resolution asserting that doctors not only may, but must warn the sexual partners of patients infected with the AIDS virus if neither the patient nor public authorities can be persuaded to do so.

"Every case we prevent is a life saved," explained Dr. M. Roy Schwarz, head of the A.M.A.'s AIDS task force. The doctors may also have had in mind a few lawsuits that have been filed seeking damages from physicians who did not warn partners of AIDS victims. Gay rights groups and civil libertarians object that the rule will drive AIDS underground: if victims think doctors will expose them, they will simply avoid seeing physicians.