Doctor Battles AIDS

The Column One article, “A Doctor’s Struggle With AIDS,” (Sept. 17) makes a strong case for mandatory patient notification as well as mandatory contact tracing.

The AMA and homosexual-rights organizations claim that AIDS-infected people (and medical doctors especially) can be counted on to act in a sexually responsible manner. When learning of the existence of the AIDS virus, Dr. Don Hagan felt he must have contracted the disease at some point in his promiscuous past. Yet he waited until becoming symptomatic before being tested, and then lamented at the possibility of perhaps having infected his “spouse.”

Presumably others were also exposed before beginning his ultimate relationship. Ironically, by declining to be tested for AIDS while admitting a high probability of being a carrier, Hagan betrays a fear of the disease he finds hard to understand in others.

KEVIN SOCH, Pauma Valley, Calif.