Civil Rights and HIV / AIDS

Ever since the emergence of AIDS in the early 1980s, our nation has been struggling to cope with this terrible disease. But the widespread fear stirred by the AIDS crisis has made the careful development of public policy difficult. There have been unwise calls for the curtailment of individual rights and liberties, and people with AIDS have often faced irrational discrimination -- job firings, exclusions from school, and denials of access to health care.