From TB to AIDS: Value Conflicts in Reporting Disease

Controversies about reporting communicable diseases in both the past present are viewed as political conflicts rather than as scientific or issues. Debates about reporting have been ideological and have different attitudes about physicians' authority and social values. describes the work of Hermann Biggs, public health chief in New York City the mid 1890s, in implementing a compulsory reporting system that confidentiality, as well as the growth of tensions between public and medicine from 1920 to 1960. Although there has been increased of recordkeeping and regulation in the past 20 years, the epidemic acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) has reignited the controversy the use of case reports and has fueled fears in the homosexual population discrimination. (KIE abstract)