This reversal marks, in New York, the beginning of a slide away from an assurance of privacy as it applies to personal health-records information. The Empire State—where the largest number of HIV infections occur-- is now set to join 30 other states that require the reporting of each tested individual's HIV+ status.

All 50 states insist upon the reporting of fully-developed AIDS cases.

Making information available about an individual's HIV status, however, raises the specter of state invasions into the closets of the infected. As AIDS cases continue to multiply, some insist, there could develop a political climate demanding AIDS quarantines such as is practiced in Cuba, a practice which has even recently been found commendable by neo-conservative gay writers.

Those who oppose the tracking of HIV+ persons believe that individuals who may wish to be tested and who were previously assured of absolute privacy, may now be frightened away, knowing that the results of such tests may be communicated to an impersonal bureaucracy, handled by public servants.

There are still those who say, as did popular singer Boy George, that they'd rather not know their HIV status. Boy George told London's Pink Paper: "I'm now very careful sexually, and I don't think that knowing you're positive does you any good. I'd rather not know and just take good care of myself. ... I can see the medical argument for getting testing nowadays -- there are new drugs which help if you know you're positive early -- but there's still a part of me which says no, I'd rather not know. It means I'm more responsible, and careful about who I have sex with."

Preferring ignorance to the acceptance of present-day medicine's insistence on a heavy daily regimen of life-prolonging drugs is a commonplace reaction. Wary AIDS activists say that state name-tracking, if it is added to a preference for ignorance such as Boy George's, will be cause for an increased avoidance of testing by the faint-hearted altogether.

Prior to its policy-reversal, GMHC was preceded by such medical watchdogs as the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and now the issue is slated to go before New York's State Health Department and its AIDS Advisory Council. A New York Times editorial (January 15) says "There is a clear need for some system to track H.I.V. infections. Now that new treatments have slowed the progression of the disease, the epidemic can no longer be tracked by recording only full-fledged AIDS. Authorities need to know where the virus is spreading, what risk factors lead to infections, and where to target treatment and prevention."

Even the Times, however, cautions that "the most contentious issue" will be whether to report HIV infections by name or by code numbers.

Maryland and Texas, according to the federal CDC, have experimented with number codes, but the CDC argues that both states—using the number system only—have missed cases.

AIDS activists, on the other hand, argue that many more such cases will be missed if name-privacy is not assured.