European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - December 22, 1985, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Page 10 the stars and stripes sunday december 22. 1985 columns & comments William Buckley the rights of aids victims is. The rights of others the Good news is that professor Alan do rho v.i7 has l made up his mind exactly on the question where the rights or aids victims lie and where the rights of others lie. The distinguished Harvard professor has a very difficult time discovering rights other than among those who abuse them but on aids he concedes difficulties. These of course arc posed by inc Power of the aids Carrier to infect others. I put to professor Dershowitz a couple of hypothetical questions Worth Public consideration. Listen carefully to them before you react on the understanding that we Are simply posing questions rather than preaching solutions. Suppose that someone is detected As having inc aids virus. Does society have an inherent authority o quart Anline him the answer would of course obviously be affirmative if aids victims contaminated others by merely breath ing the same air or by touch or faint saliva stain. But of course aids is transmitted primarily by sexual con tact secondarily by dirty Needles. Shall we Grant the presumption thai an aids Carrier will refrain from sex or a common Needle of. But consider now the aids victim identified As hav ing transmitted the disease to an innocent parly by  Contact nol withstanding that he knew himself at the Lime to be a Carrier. What do we do with him what about surgery designed to Dampen the libido professor Dershowitz was recently solicited by a prisoner in the South who found Guilly of rape was Given by the judge the alternative of five years in jail or Castra Tion. Or. Der Showivt replied that he was hardly in a postilion o advise the prisoner which of the two fates was preferable that being  an individual decision. Alt he could do was look into the judge s right to specify the alternatives. But what about it the judge says to the aids offender either you remove yourself to a confined facility a kind of Lep Rosarium for aids sufferers or you submit to castration. Any takers for that As Public policy or think Back to the Scarlet letter. It was once intended publicly to identify the adulterer but the idea has other modalities. A Tattoo equivalent one can imag Ine might be  implanted on a part of the Man s body not exposed except to those who intend intimate Contact. That refinement Over castration pre sup pics that society is prepared to permit a non infected victim to Consort sexually with an aids victim on the grounds that if he wishes to play russian Rou Lette he ought t to be kept from doing so. Granted society can attempt to assert a predominant right on inc grounds that if he contracts the virus he May go on James Reston Fuduli to Hup. R to spread it to others. But the idea is Worth thinking about in that we must assume that the majority of those who have contracted aids from sexual partners would nol have engaged in the exercise with them if they had seen so to speak a keep off the grass sign staring them in the face. All those thoughts have their very ugly aspects but when you come Down to it. Prisons arc ugly As Are scaffolds. What we need is to crystallize social thought and probably the courts Here will be efficient instruments. There arc at this writing suits pending by aids victims of aids victims if you follow this. I.e., the Man who is in a position to prove that the defendant at the time they engaged in sex knew that he had the virus. How is this establish Abl Well More and More people arc having their blood checked. And professor Dershowitz identifies As one of the problems of widespread testing precisely the Point that the guaranteed anonymity is hard to maintain against for in stance subpoenas from those gathering evidence about an alleged tort. We know that the entire armed forces will now be required to talc a blood test and that those found with aids will be discreetly discharged. What happens to their blood record surely it would not make sense to destroy them and if we move in the direction of requiring everyone to have the blood test even As most slates require couples to take a Wassermann test before Tak ing out a marriage License How frequently should we insist that such test be taken every year every two cars every to make it sound ridiculous month we do not know exactly what to do knowing Only that something needs to be done. My suspicion is that society is pulling off hard thought on the subject on the grounds that our scientists will come through before we need to think. Good old science. Well let us Pray. Meanwhile let us also think. Cd 9�5 Universal or s the last thing we need is Reagan As a lame Duck in the last Days of the old year. Congress and the president have been fussing with one another nol much peace or even Good will. And there has been a lot of casual Ulk that Ronald Rea Gan May now be a lame Duck or standby president. This is Odd since the president s rat Ings in the polls Are at the second highest Point since he took office in 1981. It s dangerous to talk carelessly about a standby president. Reagan has More than three years to go and maybe the last thing the nation needs Between now and the election of his successor in 1988 is a crippled president. This is something he and the members of Congress May have to think about while they arc Home for the holidays. They Are obviously not going to resolve their differences Over the budget deficit the Trade deficit and tax Reform by blam ing one another for these tangles. They have a common problem and maybe even a common Opportunity in these coming three years to work together for the control of military arms and the crazy terror of the present world. The contest for control of the Senate in 1986 will and should go on likewise the honest differences Over the budget on the Home front. There might just be a Chance on the foreign front to ease the tensions Between Washington and Moscow and clearly this is not Likely to be achieved by a president crippled by divisions within his own Cabinet and by Domestic political party disputes. In the conduct of foreign affairs inc president must speak for the Republic. Congress with its different and often conflicting stale and local concerns can not replace him and the More it Chal Lenges him at Home the More it s Likely to weaken him abroad this docs nol mean that Congress should evade its constitutional responsibilities or go along with the presidents mysterious twists and turns. But maybe at the beginning of 1986 they should have a Little Summit meeting of their own. For months the president and con Gress have been wondering what was on Mikhail Gorbachev s mind in Moscow. For All they know there May be nothing on his mind. The main and unresolved question is what s on Washington s mind. Along Pennsylvania Avenue we have two remarkable old men Rea Gan who will be 75 in february and tip o Neill the speaker of the House who is retiring next year to Cambridge mass. To work on his slice which hell never cure. What will they leave behind after All their tussles certainly nol a balanced budget or the old new Deal or he new Reagan conservative revolution with All its Supply siders and Back sliders. Reagan whatever he says is not indifferent to history. He appointed a serious objective historian the other Day to sum up the record of his administration. He presided Over a big fancy dinner this week to raise funds for his memorial Library Al Stanford University. What goes into that Library will depend greatly on How he handles Congress and the russians in the next three years. He canno allow things logo along As they be been doing lately. Even his own leaders in Congress Are in Rovoll against his amiable absent mindedness and Are fussing with one another about How 10bail him out. He does t have the votes to impose his will on a re Luciani Congress and inc democrats in Congress Don i have the votes to impose their policy Cven y Lucy could agree on what it is Over his Volo. So in the coming year there will have to be some compromises arranged in Pri vate or fought out on the floor in the headlines and on the evening television news. Maybe ii would be belter to work things out in private. For if the president is battered in Public and then has to sub Mit he will be Hurt in the process and weakened with the allies and Moscow in his last Chance negotiations for a More orderly world. The chances Are that hell com Promise. He s not and never has been since his Days As governor in Sacramento an All outer determined to die on inc barricades for inc ideology of his most conservative supporters. He s running out of Lime. After five years of promising a balanced budget he can t defend the largest deficits in it history of the Republic or blame them on the democrats. Nor can he blame them for the disarray and resign Lions within his own official family or the revolt of the Republican members of the House. He has to establish Bis command u president for if Here is no Confidence in that his authority will be whittled any and that will not be Good for him or to parly or the country. C be York Tom i Newt service