1. See, generally, LO Gostin ‘Confidentiality vs the Duty to Warn: Ethical and Legal Dilemmas in the HIV Epidemic' [1995] Journal of the International Association of Physicians in AIDS Care 1, 33–34.
2. The debate about ‘AIDS exceptionalism’ with regard to confidentiality and other public health measures was triggered by R Bayer ‘Public Health Policy and the AIDS Epidemic: An End to AIDS Exceptionalism?’ (1991) 324 New England Journal of Medicine 1500. For a powerful response, see S Burris ‘Public Health, AIDS Exceptionalism and the Law’ (1994) 27 John Marshall Law Review 251.
3. Until AIDS, the classic case on disclosure and confidentiality in the United States wasTarasoff v Regents of the University of California17 Cal 3d 425, 551 P 2d 334 (1976) where a 4–3 majority of the Supreme Court of California, in a controversial decision, held a university liable for the failure by a psychiatrist it employed to warn the victim of the fact that his patient expressed in clinical interviews the intention to kill her, which subsequently occurred.
4. ‘A uniquely stigmatized disease’: see R Bayer and AL Fairchild ‘Surveillance and Privacy’ (2000) 290 Science 1898, 1898. The point is poignantly, if somewhat laconically, underscored by the observation in the 1998 decision of the Supreme Court of India inMr X v Hospital Z(1998) 8 SCC 296 (SCI) 301, [4], discussed in detail below, that, after non-consensual disclosure of his HIV status, the appellant attracted ‘severe criticism’ and ‘was ostracized by the community’, with the apparent result that he had to leave Kohima, Nagaland, and start working in Madras.