The moral questions of disclosure about HIV-infected individuals’ information

• Main Authors: Jing-Ru Hsu, 徐靜如
• Other Authors: Shui-Chuen Lee
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2008
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/17397910192096077060

碩士 === 國立中央大學 === 哲學研究所碩士在職專班 === 96 === It’s a thesis on the moral questions of disclosure about HIV-infected individuals’ information. It is an analysis of the controversy between HIV-infected individuals’ privacy and public health. By the way of limited disclosure, we could achieve a balance between the of protecting HIV-infected persons’ privacy and public security and it seems to be a more efficient way for AIDS prevention. Under social discrimination, the privacy of HIV-infected persons is vital to one’s family happiness and the rights to education, to medical service, to housing, and to insurance. However, AIDS Prevention and Control Act imposes the requirement that the AIDS patient must identify the one he or she had contacted. Is such social policy an ethical one? How can we accomplish the prevention mission with good care of the benefits of both the HIV-infected persons’ privacy and public health? This thesis tries to analyze this dilemma from the points of view of public health ethics, Kant’s Deontology, and R. M. Hare’s utilitarianism. In general, the principle of nonmaleficence could justify the overriding of the HIV-infected individual’s privacy in view of public safety. The goal of disclosure of HIV-infected individuals’ information is not only for AIDS prevention, but also educative to society on AIDS and how to accept the infected, and furthermore, to protect the right of the AIDS patient. Due to the improvement and new effective treatments, AIDS is almost considered as a kind of chronic disease. Therefore, to make sure that the AIDS patients could return to their normal lives, we suggest that the infected should be handled by case management and communal health care with limited disclosure, and hope it will be maximally effect for AIDS prevention.