CDC Question

[LeeRoy]

Any CDC people here who have had an occasion to deal with CDC Bureau of Internal Affairs? How separate is BIA from the rest of CDC? How is BIA viewed and what kind of support do their agents get from the department?

[Topdog]

The CDC came to our agency and gave us an in-service training class where they told us that if we have a prisoner who has AIDS, it is against Federal law for us to disclose it to anyone else, to include fellow officers.

During the class, I gave the CDC nurse an illustration and posed a question to her-- If I just fought someone and arrested them and during the melee, the prisoner got bloody (we all know that blood is a transmitter of AIDS). Before I hand that prisoner over to a fellow officer, can I inform the fellow officer that the prisoner has AIDS? After all, I'd like a fellow officer to tell me that a prisoner he is giving me has AIDS so I can protect myself. AIDS, from what I understand, is a slow death sentence. The CDC nurse told us that we cannot inform our fellow officers about prisoners who have aids. We all laughed because we are going to disobey the Federal law for the safety of our brother officers!!!! You mean to tell me that I can't tell someone who I work next to every day to, "Watch out! He's got AIDS!"

The CDC nurse said if we come to that scenario, we can tell our fellow officers, "Take Universal Precautions" and that will be a code-word meaning that the prisoner has AIDS.

The Federal law is nuts.