Tom Coburn: “Mr. Speaker, I say to my associate, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott), that I would like to address three or four…”

“Mr. Speaker, I say to my associate, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott), that I would like to address three or four questions. Number one is, one of the bases of his arguments is that there is no integrity in the testing system in terms of confidentiality; that has been proven totally false, the basis of that claim. We as a medical community, as a public health community have not allowed leaks; that is exactly the same argument that was stated when children are born to mothers with HIV that they would not come in and get tested because somebody would find out. In fact, what has happened is we have even more women coming in and getting tested because all women are interested in their children. Mr. Speaker, the assumption that there is not integrity in the testing process and somebody outside who absolutely needs to know will violate that person's right is an erroneous assumption, and it is one that is continually used in the HIV epidemic. The other point that I would make, so that the gentleman would surely know this, is that out of the 1.2 million people who have been infected with HIV thus far in our country, 600,000 of them still do not know they have HIV; they still do not know if they have HIV.”