Where can I be tested for HIV?
HIV antibody testing is available in many different places. In Los Angeles, for example, it's even available in certain thrift stores the gay health care foundation runs, the Out of the Closet Thrift Stores. But there are many sexually transmitted disease clinics, in fact all sexually transmitted disease clinics, would offer HIV antibody testing. And at any doctor's office it can be done. We believe, at the moment, and the CDC believes, that HIV antibody testing should be done much more frequently and routinely than it currently is because a third of the people who are HIV infected in the United States don't know they're infected. And they are the people at most risk of transmitting the disease. Because when someone knows they're infected, they're likely to take precaution not to infect other people. The majority will. But if they don't know they're infected, they can't do that. So we would recommend that everybody who comes through an emergency room should routinely have an HIV antibody test. People who go to their family practitioner should have an antibody test every year. So that we can find people and help them in the early stages of the disease. And I think that change is going to happen. But the test is not done nearly as often as it should be, at least in the minds of HIV practitioners.
