ABSTRACT
This chapter presents some of the explanations and justifications given in defence of discriminatory and legally restrictive practices and regulations. Medical personnel are supposed to work for the good of all their patients, and any attempt at discrimination according to sex, skin colour, religion or medical condition is automatically ruled out. The most significant requirements of legal moralism regarding the acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) issue are the demands to prohibit by law premarital sexual relationships, extramarital relationships, 'perversions' in marital sexual life, homosexual behaviour, prostitution, and the misuse of intravenous drugs. Testing for human immunodeficiency virus antibodies has been one of the most contentious issues in the AIDS debate since a reliable test method was developed in 1984. Perhaps the dissident doctors and nurses are ultimately right: maybe it is, after all, perfectly acceptable that they refuse to treat potential AIDS patients.
