Taking Away the Right of Privacy The global AIDS epidemic is having very strong social impacts on many societies. AIDS is being compared with the Bubonic Plague which swept Europe in a mad fury leaving only two thirds of the original population alive. People speculate that this disease is going to be the be all and end all of the human population as we know it. It has been sent to us to end our existence because of what we have done wrong, to the earth and to each other. These are the beliefs of many very frightened people who fear the demise of the human race from this devastating disease. There has been extensive research done on this topic so people know how it is transmitted and how to avoid contraction of it, yet sometimes, that is what scares them. Many people infected do not know they are infected, putting others in sexual contact with them at a high risk level. Also, many know they are infected and do not care what happens to the others around them. There have been many proposals of mandatory HIV screening and testing for these reasons. Some people want mandatory testing for HIV for all people in a certain age range. This seems like a good idea at first because it would lessen the risk of contracting HIV. People would know if they were infected, but there are some problems with this. If people knew they were infected, would they necessarily disclose this information to all people it should be told to? To combat this problem, some people think that this information should be available to people in contact with the infected person. This then would be a direct violation of privacy. So, is this violation of privacy permissible because it would protect the community? Is this a violation of the prima facie rights given to us as humans? In examining these questions, I will use two essays found in Contemporary Issues in Bioethics by Beauchamp and Walters. The first, used only for statistics, by Cochran and Mays is called "Sex, Lies, and HIV.