We need a way to identify those with HIV

Chautauqua County, N.Y., thought itself unlikely for the kind of thing that
hit it.

"This is the last place the police would think of investigating," one
student reported to James Barron of The New York Times. But they did, and
we know now that one 20yearold (Nushawn Williams) apparently infected
directly through heterosexual sex 28 women many of them more properly
designated as girls and may have infected indirectly (people who had sex
with any of the 28) 53 persons. Billy the Kid killed only 21 people in the
course of his legendary career.

Now here is the nodal point of the story. The county health commissioner,
Dr. Robert Berke, on learning of the profusion of victims, broke precedent
and identified the criminal. He did so on the grounds that there was no
other way to find out where he was and to learn whether he was still
infecting other people.

It turns out that Williams is in jail, on Rikers Island, ready to be
sentenced for selling crack cocaine to an undercover cop. Prosecutors are
cranking up other cases to charge him with after his sentence on the dope
count. He will be charged with assault on those women who contracted HIV,
and with reckless endangerment on those who had sex with him but didn't
contract the disease. The charge is that he acted with depraved
indifference whenever he had unprotected sex with the young women.

At first sight we have just another story of man's bestiality to man:
Williams knew that he was infected when he gave in to his satyriasis. So
much for one more human horror story.

But the second sight is the more arresting. At first sight we have just
another story of man's bestiality to man: Williams knew that he was
infected when he gave in to his satyriasis. So much for one more human
horror story.

But the second sight is the more arresting. Authorities knew in August 1996
that Williams was infected and did what about it? Nothing. Because that is
what the law requires.

The problem is this. The justice moralists take the position that to
contract HIV isn't a crime, and it is hard to quarrel with the judgment:
The 13yearold who had sex and contracted HIV from Williams can hardly be
thought to have had criminal intent.

But having been identified as diseased, Williams went out so to speak,
scotfree to infect others. The delicate question has to do with the
relationship between justice and prudence.

The Williams case is not isolated. In East St. Louis, Ill., a man was
diagnosed with the virus in 1992 but continued sexual contact with dozens
of casual girlfriends who didn't know his infection.

We know that Williams was derelict. But was Berke derelict, or required to
be derelict, by a law that appears to take insufficient account of the
perils of allowing loaded pistols to leave the laboratory without some
effort to warn casual passersby?

Ten years ago, in an open discussion with Alan Dershowitz touching on the
nature of the problem, I suggested the possibility of a discreet tattoo on
those identified with AIDS. I withdrew the suggestion because it was
greeted with such universal shock as might have been appropriate to the
security consultant recommending barbed wire for Auschwitz.

There is a middle way: Over 12 years ago, health commissioners recommended
publicizing the names of men and women who have tested HIV positive.

There are drawbacks to the idea. For one, the passionate young man or young
woman ready to make the embrace that will prove fatal isn't likely to call
an information lifeline to ascertain whether Williams, Nushawn, is safe to
sleep with. For another, it is unpleasant to think of public identification
of those who have the virus many of whom (53 in and about Chautauqua
County, N.Y.) got it innocently, if that is the right word for casual sex
with someone one doesn't think of as infected.

These are quite urgent questions. There are about 40 bills in Congress
right now that seek to augment the right to privacy. Some of these laws are
motivated by the knowledge that Social Security numbers are easily
available through the Internet, others by annoyance that new post office
addresses can be exploited by commercial interest, still others by the
shock of Princess Diana pursued by the paparazzi.

The concern for privacy is a holy concern. But to indulge it at the expense
of all other concerns is unbalanced. It is easy to say that the 28 girls
who had sex with Williams were misbehaving. But it's not easy to say that
the price of misbehaving should be death from AIDS.

The middle way suggests the need for some identification of the virus
carrier, something other than a tattoo.