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HIV

In 1996 at the California Health Care System a young man by the name of Jim Malone was told that he was diagnosed with HIV. The young individual lead the next eight years fighting depression and losing weight, expecting that at any moment in his life me might die. He even attended support group meetings and accepted free meals from an AIDS charity. Malone who is gay had lost a large amount of his friends to HIV and mentioned that he was relieved he no longer had HIV but was still incensed at the doctor. He stated "‘you mean to tell me that all you have to say is you are sorry? Sorry that I lived for all this time believing I was going to die?"' Eventually the mistake was uncovered by the VA's computer system, which is programmed to track HIV patients and conduct a review over the cases.

Due to the fact that I also go to school, I have a large group of friends. One of those friends may have been diagnosed with HIV but it's a good thing that I am unaware of this because otherwise I would feel a little insecure around him or her. Even knowing that it wouldn't physically affect me I would still feel unusual. The situation might also be vise versa. I might be the one with HIV and I wouldn't want my friends to know about that otherwise they would feel insecure around me.
Today I'd like to sway your votes to agree with me about not letting other people know if your child has HIV. In my speech, you will see that people that have HIV should not have to deal with discrimination. Lets begin by looking at what conflicts will occur if the public is informed about the private lives of these individuals. 

My first point is that medical records are private information. Medical records should not be released because it is revealing information which is not permitted by its holder. The medical patient might not feel secure letting the world know about his or her condition. On the release of this information there will be a breach in an act called the HIPPA act. As quoted by CMS "It addresses the security and privacy of health data." The HIPPA act basically does not allow other people to view medical information besides their own. Unless they have consent of the information holder. An example of this law is, for instance if you have HIV and you do not wish for other people to know about you disease. Then the HIPPA act will prevent this information from being released and therefore allowing you to keep your privacy. In this case where as an elementary school child has HIV the parents should not be informed. Otherwise if informed by school system, lawsuits might be raised due to the violation of the HIPPA act. Now you know that it would be illegal to release information on HIV victims. 

My second point is that if the HIV patient's diagnosis is false then their previous dispersion was useless. If the results given to the patient are false, it will be a great loss for him or her. He or she could ultimately lose their job, home, and even friends. As stated by the CNN article (on August 30th 2004), "Jim Malone spent years battling depression and losing weight, expecting to die at any time." To him, HIV is the reason for his suffering and depression. Ever since he was diagnosed with the disease and people found out, they socially started to drift away from him. This directly shows that the dispersion will lead to useless depression. Now in the case of an elementary student, he or she will not only blame the next eight years on HIV, but maybe they're while life. Through out his or her life he or she will fight the same stereotypical people and face the same symptoms of loneliness. They will have a decreased chance of success and will, maybe, never get far in life. You must understand that the mentality of these children will go through a great deal of pressure.

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